With looked into that address, and says that it was formerly owned by the Mainstreet Diner in Waunakee, but that it is now an unassigned box. If anyone sent those applications in to that address, its likely nobody would have received them, much less "processed" them at all. Disenfranchisement accomplished.
AFP's history of dirty tricks
While covering the AFP mailers earlier this week, Alternet's Adele M. Stan reported on other dirty tricks AFP has carried out in the past, including last August, in advance of the 2010 general election in Wisconsin...
So AFP previously targeted students -- students who might not yet have been back in town after summer break, by the way -- for vote-caging. It comes as little surprise then that the new polling place Photo ID restrictions, as hastily passed into law recently by the state's GOP-majority legislature, do not recognize most student IDs as valid identification for voting.
AFP deception is not limited to vote-caging and wrong-date ballot mailings. In Detroit, MI earlier this year, AFP sought to effectuate their opposition to the planned Detroit River International Crossing Bridge by mailing fake eviction notices, which deceptively informed homeowners that their homes would be taken by the MI Department of Transportation.
Countering fraud with vigilance
It's unlikely that these apparent acts of fraud will be reported by GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters like Matthew Vadum. Of course, had anything even like the dirty tricks mentioned above ever been performed by the now-defunct ACORN -- and nothing like it ever was, despite the misinformation from clowns like Vadum -- the Right would be screaming to the high heavens, demanding Eric Holder personally show up in Madison to make the arrests and that Barack Obama be impeached just for good measure. Such that these very real acts of apparent fraud were carried out by Vadum's compatriots, he couldn't be less interested, and you're unlikely to hear a peep about any of it on Fox "News" and in the rest of the Rightwing echo chamber.
But things are likely to get much worse between now and next Tuesday's unprecedented recall elections for six Republican state Senators (and again before the one for two Democratic state Senators that follow the Tuesday after.)
Jordan Ellenberg at The Atlantic reports today that money from outside groups now flooding the state for the eight recall elections, from left and right, is "substantially greater than the total spent last November, when 15 seats in the State Senate and all 99 in the Assembly were up for grabs."
Mother Jones' Andy Kroll pegs the amount of money being spent at a "staggering" $31 million, while just "$3.75 million was spent on the entire slate of state races in 2010."
These elections are a bellwether for 2012 in more ways than one.
"While the spending is more or less even," for the recalls, reports Kroll, "here's the big difference between the two sides: The left-leaning groups usually disclose their donors, while the right-leaning groups mostly don't." Some two-thirds of the recall spending, Kroll explains, "derives from undisclosed sources" in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's now-infamous Citizens United decision allowing virtually unlimited anonymous spending on campaigns.
Therefore, it's unlikely we'll ever know who the so-called "United Sportsmen of Wisconsin" was really working with or for.
The dirty tricks, by the way, may not be limited to Republicans either. Last Saturday the LaCrosse Tribune reported on robocalls said to have been made by the DNC asking about voters' preference in the 32nd Senate District recall election against Republican Sen. Dan Kapanke. Recipients of the calls who the Tribune spoke with, said they were urged to vote on August 16, though Kapanke's recall election is on the 9th.
On that same Saturday, also in LaCrosse, the headquarters for We Are Wisconsin, one of the state's largest progressive PAC's, was burned to the ground. The cause of the suspicious fire is currently under investigation.
Amongst all of the madness, citizen election integrity groups are hoping to take proactive action next Tuesday to attempt to oversee the election in a state with an election system which is not particularly easy to oversee. For the most part, while most of the voters in the state are allowed to use paper ballots, those ballots are counted by computer and computer only. There is no inspection of paper ballots to ensure that the computers have tallied them correctly.
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