The executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg, has released evidence purporting to show that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm is not prosecuting alleged voter registration crimes.
The evidence is a cardboard box filled with more than 350 referrals for possible same-day voter registration fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The box has been collecting dust in Ms. Woodall-Vogg’s office for three years because Mr. Chisholm never picked it up.
Mr. Chisholm didn’t return a request for comment by press time. When asked by The Epoch Times why she didn’t deliver the box full of referrals to the prosecutor’s office, Ms. Woodall-Vogg didn’t reply.
Wisconsin Statute 7.15 (1) (g) outlines a local election clerk’s obligations in such matters. It reads:
“In a manner prescribed by the commission, report suspected election frauds, irregularities, or violations of which the clerk has knowledge to the district attorney for the county where the suspected activity occurs and to the commission. The commission shall annually report the information obtained under this paragraph to the legislature.”
The “commission” referenced in the statute is the Wisconsin Elections Commission, a state agency.
Ms. Woodall-Vogg has since explained that her office has a standing agreement with the prosecutor’s office to store the referrals until called for by Mr. Chisholm.
Three years have passed, and Ms. Woodall-Vogg has yet to receive a request from Mr. Chisholm for the evidence.
The long-neglected referrals surfaced during a recent visit to the City of Milwaukee Election Commission by researchers from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), who had come to Milwaukee to see if the local referral records about possible voter registration problems matched the state’s data.
PILF’s researchers said that Ms. Woodall-Vogg showed them the box and made copies of its contents for them.
Prosecutorial Disinterest
According to a PILF report, “District Attorney Chisholm has a reputation of a progressive who is part of the nationwide effort to elect progressive district attorneys who exercise ‘prosecutorial discretion’ by not pursuing criminals in some contexts.”The exercise of Mr. Chisholm’s prosecutorial discretion drew national attention in December 2021, when a man ran his car into a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing six marchers and injuring 60 other people. The perpetrator was out of jail on $1,000 bail for allegedly running over a woman and child with his car just days before.
A few days after the parade incident, a public outcry pressured Mr. Chisholm, who has served as Milwaukee County prosecutor since 2007, to acknowledge that the $1,000 bail recommendation may have been too low.
Irreversible Harm
In a statement about the importance of the ignored evidence, PILF said: “These referrals represent 354 illegal votes that cannot be reversed.“In essence, when a same-day registrant gives a bad address and they become impossible to reach in the weeks following an election, their records are canceled and the district attorney is alerted—but the vote is counted.”
Addressing the state of Wisconsin’s program of same-day voter registration PILF said, “While this may seem like a convenience ... the trade-off is a system that allows a person to vote now but confirm their eligibility later.”
PILF President J. Christian Adams stated: “Election officials are best situated to notice and investigate potential violations of election law. ... When a DA refuses to even look at the evidence, that harms Wisconsin elections.”
An Insecure Process
Under the Wisconsin same-day registration practice, the address given by a voter registering at a polling place is accepted by poll workers, and a ballot is issued so that the individual can vote and have the vote counted.No photo ID is needed.
Election workers are then required to attempt to verify the address given by the voter by sending out a postcard to confirm its validity.
Postcards returned to the election office that have been deemed by the U.S. Postal Service to be undeliverable addresses are then supposed to generate a referral to the local district attorney and the Wisconsin Elections Commission and result in the deactivation of the new voter.
Inconsistent With State Law?
It’s unclear how a post-vote verification of identity and address procedure can be consistent with Wisconsin Statute 6.34 (4), which requires the Wisconsin Elections Commission to maintain a system that electronically verifies a prospective registrant’s information “on an instant basis.” In other words, before a person is allowed to vote.A statistical analysis by the election integrity watchdog group Election Watch determined that more than 219,000 Wisconsinites voted on the same day that they registered to vote in the 2020 presidential election.
Election Watch spokesperson Peter Bernegger told The Epoch Times that thousands of other Wisconsinites attempting to register to vote online were required by law to provide photo identification and have their information verified with the Department of Transportation (DOT) before they could be registered and vote.
“Think of it,“ Mr. Bernegger said. ”In the 2020 presidential election, more than 219,000 people registered to vote and voted on the same day without being verified by the DOT. It looks like a clear violation of our constitutional right to equal protection under the law.”
Same-day registration generated 21,083 new registrants in Milwaukee in the 2020 general election. More than 1,200 voters provided addresses that were undeliverable, and of these, at least 354 became referrals that are still sitting in Ms. Woodall-Vogg’s office, according to PILF.
According to its website, PILF is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting free and fair elections within our constitutional framework. It assists states and others in protecting the right to vote and in forwarding the cause of election integrity by fighting lawlessness in the conduct of U.S. elections.
