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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (680414)	4/22/2005 1:54:36 PM
From: TideGlider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

SEIFFE: On Wisconsin Thursday, April 07, 2005 - Ralf Seiffe OPINION - Conservatives searching for a lumen or two of hope that Illinois can return to “red” status need look no further than our neighbor to the north. Two spirited campaigns are coming to a head this week; one in Wisconsin’s legislature and the other in the state’s polling places. Both have lessons for Illinois Republicans who want to overthrow the Democrat/public employee/human services contractors hegemony here in our state. The Badger Senate will soon consider changing an interesting feature of Wisconsin’s election laws. It allows a person to register and vote on Election Day by merely showing up at the polling place and claiming to be enfranchised. Almost no identification is required and, according to Chris Lato, Communications Director of Wisconsin’s Republican Party, only flimsy evidence is required to support registration. In fact, no real qualifying evidence is required at all; a crumpled utility bill a voter might find in the trash will confer suffrage. Just move into the precinct at 10:30 this morning? No problem, the statute allows a friend to vouch for you. Election officials are supposed to confirm these walk-up registrations by sending a postcard to the address on the utility bill. If the Postal Service is able to deliver it, the officials assume the voter is legitimate. If the postcard comes back as undeliverable, officials have some clue that the voter may have “moved on”. The trouble is that many municipalities are not sending the cards because when they do, an embarrassing number come back. As good as they are, even the Postal Service has a problem locating these phantom voters in vacant lots, abandoned factories, nursing homes specializing in comatose patients and of course, cemeteries. Apparently, this loose process permits unqualified persons to cast many thousands of suspect ballots. Even felons, who probably got their cellmates to vouch for them, cast a large number of bogus ballots. Wisconsin Republicans believe that the overwhelming number of these sham votes went to the Democrats. Many Republicans believe that John Kerry received so many falsified votes that his 11,000-vote Wisconsin "victory" over George Bush last November was entirely due to vote fraud Stealing votes is an art form in Illinois and election “engineering’ is hardly news. What is fascinating is what Wisconsin Republicans are doing about it. They have introduced a bill in the legislature to change the law to require a picture ID when registering and voting on the same day. This pits them directly against the state’s Democrat governor who opposes the change and vows a veto. He is opposed to requiring voters to minimally identify themselves at the polls for reasons that are, frankly, unfathomable. This position is so suspicious that the governor has attempted some misdirection by offering a competing package of “reforms in name only”. These cheesy “RINOs” are somewhat different from Illinois RINOs’ but they certainly have the same effect on the public weal. Republicans have decided to make a principled fight over this and to win. The Party has created an advertising campaign targeted at Wisconsin’s conscience. Specifically, they are running radio advertisements in Democrat-leaning markets that make the point that it is wrong to allow a fraudulent vote to cancel a legitimate vote. These advertisements pass judgment. They present Wisconsin voters a clear choice between right and wrong without spin or equivocation. The ads accuse the governor by name. This tactic has caught traction with the Wisconsin Assembly. It got the message and passed the bill with Democrat support. The Wisconsin Senate is likely to follow suit with support from Democrats even though conventional wisdom says Dems are usually the beneficiaries of counterfeit votes. We’ll have to wait to see if the governor vetoes the bill and thereby ostensibly endorses vote fraud or if he does the right thing. The other Wisconsin event worth understanding is the “non-partisan” race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Nine-term Oshkosh Assembly member Gregg Underheim gave up his safe seat to take on organized education. He proposed a series of common-sense changes such as expanded school choice, productivity improvements and a challenge to the self-serving teachers union that owns the company that sells insurance to the school districts. Underheim challenged incumbent Libby Burmeister, a typical “for the kids” professional educator and mega-spender. Her educrat allies sensed Underheim as a threat to the force and spent what was necessary to beat his well conceived, but underfunded campaign. While Underheim lost in a credible showing, the courage of his candidacy was to identify the organized education lobby as the enemy and to make a differentiated and principled case for change. We learn that antagonizing organized education is not the same thing as teacher bashing and policies that attenuate multiples-of-inflation growth in education spending are key to avoiding state bankruptcy. Illinois Republican office-seekers might do well to learn both Wisconsin lessons. Each distills to taking the right position and broadcasting why voters, even Democrat voters, should be Republicans. That’s principle and leadership. It is working well up north; Republicans in “liberal” Wisconsin control the Assembly 60-39 and the Senate 19-14, the best numbers since Eisenhower was president. How different Illinois would be if we enjoyed the same fortune. © 2005 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved