We've seen it over and over and will likely see it again next year.  Wisconsin conservatives running around claiming massive voter fraud conveniently in more progressive areas of the state.  Who could forget the Republican Party's press conference in front of an innocent man's home?  The party leadership stood there and accused the man of double voting on a whim and never publicly apologized for their false accusations.  Also lets not forget that even conservative U.S. Attorney Biskupic has said that he found no widespread voter fraud problem.   Crying wolf on voter fraud is such an important plank of the conservative agenda that they even went over Biskupic's head when he didn't report what they wanted on the voter fraud.  As if all of this is not bad enough, a new study once again shows us that most of the Republican bluster wasn't worth the treatment that they received.

We've seen it over and over and will likely see it again next year.  Wisconsin Republicans running around claiming massive voter fraud conveniently in more progressive areas of the state.  Who could forget the Republican press conference in front of an innocent man's home?  The party leadership stood there and accused the man of double voting on a whim and never publicly apologized for their false accusations.  Also lets not forget that even conservative U.S. Attorney Biskupic has said that he found no widespread voter fraud problem.   Crying wolf on voter fraud is such an important plank of the conservative agenda that they even went over Biskupic's head when he didn't report what they wanted on the voter fraud.  As if all of this is not bad enough, a new study once again shows us that most of the conservative bluster wasn't worth the treatment that they received. 

The Brennan Justice Center at New York University Law School, released the study "The Truth About Voter Fraud" last week.  The report is the most systematic assessment of voter fraud claims ever published.  On a case by case basis, the study analyzed right wing accusations of voter fraud from all over the country including Wisconsin.  They found that the vast majority of the claims were completely inaccurate. 

The report specifically looked at the claims of voter fraud that was made during the 2004 election.  At that time 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.

The study found that in this miniscule number of cases, voter ID requirements would not have prevented anything.  Even including the unsubstantiated allegations, the study found that the rate of possible fraud in Milwaukee and Wisconsin remains very low. 

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the release of this study is that even a week later none of our major media in Wisconsin have reported on its findings.  Even though the front pages across the state fed into the conservative voter fraud hysteria, they have all but ignored this sound analysis of the issue.