Election task force: Much ado about little

While Republicans fall all over one another trying to come up with the most scathing news release, let's just take a deep breath and look at what a task force really said about its investigation of alleged election fraud in Milwaukee last November.

It said the election process is flawed, and was almost totally overwhelmed by the huge presidential election turnout.

It said there is some evidence that some people may have voted illegally, but not in huge numbers nor in any organized way, and it may be impossible to successfully prove fraud in many cases.

That last sentence is worth revisiting. There is no evidence -- no evidence -- of any organized or systematic attempt to steal or influence the outcome of the election. That's what people think of when they hear "voter fraud" -- the stories of Lyndon Johnson stealing an election in Texas or the first Mayor Daley holding up the count in Chicago until he knew "how many votes we need" to win.

That kind of fraud doesn't come from 10 people standing in line for hours to vote with someone else's name. It happens on the inside of the system. And it does not happen here. Never has, never will.

The report said there is a discrepancy in the total number of votes reported in Milwaukee, but the discrepancy is more likely due to incompetence and mismanagement, and what the report called "widespread record keeping errors." There was no suggestion fraud was involved.

The report did not say this, of course, but it also is clear that the much-discussed Republican solution, to require photo ID cards to vote, would solve almost none of the problems identified. (The exception might be where someone voted in someone else's name. If that actually happened, it appears it would have been in a literal handful of cases.)

Here's the report, if you'd like to read for yourself.

Some key findings, which will undoubtedly be misrepresented:

1. The task force has found "widespread record keeping failures and separate areas of voter fraud. These findings impact each other. Simply put, it is hard to prove a bank embezzlement if the bank cannot tell how much money was there in the first place. Without accurate records, the task force will have difficulty proving criminal conduct beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law." (Or, one might add, quantifying such criminal conduct -- or even knowing for certain whether it occurred.)

2. The task force identified "evidence of more than 100 instances of suspected double-voting, voting in names of persons who likely did not vote, and/or voting in names believed to be fake. Those investigations continue." (That's a total of 100 suspicious cases, including people who had addresses outside the city, or who can't be tracked down to verify the information on their registration. That's out of more than 70,000 people who registered on election day. Zero should be the goal, but 100 in 70,000 is negligible.)

3. The task force determined that more than 200 felons voted when they were not eligible to vote. But since the law requires proof that they knew they could not vote and deliberately broke the law, prosecution is unlikely. (Voter ID would not have helped, unless the state were to stamp 'FELON' on their ID cards.

4. The task force determined that people being paid on a per-head basis to register voters had falsely registered 65 people, but there is no evidence anyone used those false registrations to vote. That is registration fraud, but not voting fraud.

So what does it all add up to?

Much ado about very little.

The investigation will continue. Maybe we'll find out some more about what caused the discrepancy in the vote total. Maybe a handful of people will be prosecuted.

But it has contributed little or nothing toward solving the problem. Let's hope that the city task force working on the issue does that.