Protecting Wisconsin’€™s Vote from Misinformation

On Thursday evening the One Wisconsin Institute is hosting the Protect Wisconsin’€™s Vote Education Summit in Milwaukee. It will feature a panel of experts discussing voting rights, voter suppression and other related issues. There will be a partial viewing of the documentary Uncounted and informative videos produced by Milwaukee’€™s MATA Media.

Such an event is necessary because of the consistent and concerted efforts to disenfranchise certain voters by conservatives. The same bogus charges of ‘€œvoter fraud’€ are parroted around every major election. Sadly the false accusations are given front page treatment only to be proven wrong later. Last year the first complete analysis of allegations from the 2004 presidential election was released. It found that the vast majority of allegations were unfounded and that there was no real voter fraud problem in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or the rest of the country for that matter.

In 2004 there were 277,565 votes cast in Milwaukee and 2,997,007 votes cast in Wisconsin. For the analysis of Wisconsin the report came to the following findings:

  • There were 7 substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes-all persons with felony convictions. This amounts to a rate of 0.0025% within Milwaukee and 0.0002% within the state as a whole.
  • There were 11 substantiated cases of votes cast by ineligible Milwaukee voters-all persons with felony convictions. There are 8 substantiated cases of votes cast by ineligible voters from other parts of the state – 2 persons with felony convictions, 1 foreign national, 1 17-year-old voter, and 4 absentee ballots cast by deceased voters. That amounts to a rate of 0.004% within Milwaukee and 0.0006% in the state as a whole.

Unfortunately these facts were never reported in the state’€™s largest newspaper, even though they devoted headlines to all of the usual frivolous conservative charges. Since too many in the media are not reporting the actual facts around alleged voter fraud, efforts and events such as the upcoming Voter Summit are all the more important.

For more information about the summit and voter protection issues, visit ProtectWisconsinsVote.org.

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