Jack Zimmerman couldn’t believe it.
”I’m seeing a guy, a preppy, college-aged kid, high-tailing it out the door with a huge stack of ballots under his arm,” he said, describing the events at a Milwaukee, WI, polling place near Marquette University.
Surprised, Zimmerman looked to the voting booth.
“The machine was totally unattended. I could have just walked right up and voted a bunch of times,” he claims.
Zimmerman, a Milwaukee Republican, was sympathetic to the overworked and understaffed poll attendants, mostly elderly women. But he describes chaotic polling operations that, he believes, raise serious questions about the integrity of Wisconsin’s vote last Tuesday.
Because of these questions and the ongoing battles in Florida, the Bush campaign is mulling a recount in Wisconsin, where Al Gore’s margin of victory is less than 6,000 out of some 2.5 million votes cast. They are also considering a recount in Iowa, where the margin, according to Iowa GOP officials, is closer to 3100. In both cases, the Bush campaign must officially request the count. And the campaign must do so before deadlines later this week.
Zimmerman isn’t the only one to have raised questions in Wisconsin. Last week, the Wisconsin state Republican party — which reported receiving more than 800 calls on a voter-fraud hotline it set up — filed a complaint with the Milwaukee district attorney, alleging widespread voter fraud, bribery, and, to use the political phrase du jour, “irregularities.”
“They range from the improper handling of marked ballots to voters being told they already voted when they had not, from voters being given multiple ballots to improper voter registration procedures that may have allowed some voters to vote multiple times in different locations,” reads the complaint.
McCann, the longtime Milwaukee D.A. and a Democrat, has assigned several investigators to the look into the charges. “I believe there was wrongdoing,” he said. “How widespread, I’m not sure.”
At least two of the incidents in Wisconsin were caught on videotape. In one, Connie Milstein, a six-figure Democratic donor from New York who claimed she was “brought in” by the Gore campaign to get out the Wisconsin vote, was videotaped with several other Gore workers distributing cigarettes to homeless voters. Another local Milwaukee television station caught a poll worker prohibiting some voters from entering the polling place after the 8PM deadline, but allows others to enter and cast a vote.
Cheryl Sorenson isn’t surprised to hear about these problems, after her voting experience at a local library. Sorenson says that a man in line in front of her approached the registration desk said he’d like to vote. When the poll worker asked for his address, Sorenson says, the man was nonplussed, and stood silent momentarily until, after consulting a piece of paper he held in his hand, he recited the address. The poll worker then gave him a ballot.
“She didn’t even give him a registration card or anything,” says Sorenson. “He just walked up there and voted.”
Sorenson also claims a man at the front door of the polling center repeatedly yelled anti-Bush comments as voters filed past. “No one said anything to him,” said Sorenson. “I just had this horrible, sick feeling in my stomach.”
Had Sorenson voted in another Milwaukee precinct, she might have been able to remedy her tummy ache. As part of its national get-out-the-vote drive, the NAACP provided lunch and dinner for voters at an inner-city Milwaukee site. Unlike the cigarettes-for-votes exchange, the free food probably avoids Wisconsin’s strict bribery laws, as it would be difficult to prove that the food was given in exchange for votes for Gore. (Throughout the campaign, though, particularly with its national television ads, the NAACP gave up any pretense of nonpartisanship. The group’s scare-out-the-vote campaign ripped Bush repeatedly in inflammatory ads and using harsh rhetoric. What’s more, at the Wisconsin NAACP gathering, eyewitnesses reported dozens of Gore/Lieberman signs and buttons.)
Stories abound — many shared on local talk radio — of teachers handed multiple ballots and college students voting numerous times.
“This was an out of control election in Milwaukee. Absolutely out of control,” said Zimmerman. “It looked like a foreign country, like one of these fledgling democracies. I know what I saw.”