Republican J.B. Van Hollen is Wisconsin's top cop. Thursday in the Green Bay suburb of Ashwaubenon he warmed up the crowd before John McCain and Sarah Palin took the stage.
The Oshkosh Northwestern reports:
After Green Bay resident Debbie Drumm sang the National Anthem, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen took the stage to fire up the audience. His mention of Palin drew wild cheers. Van Hollen said she would bring "real change" to Washington.
Something else Van Hollen has been up to lately: co-chairing McCain's Wisconsin campaign while filing a lawsuit that seeks to force elections clerks to double-check the legality of at least 240,000 voters before the Nov. 4 election.
According to the Associated Press:
The lawsuit names the Government Accountability Board, which has declined to order elections officials to check information from voters who registered after Jan. 1, 2006 against other state databases. The board warns that step would disenfranchise legal voters if databases list their information differently and create chaos at the polls.
...If Van Hollen’s lawsuit succeeds, elections officials would have to cross-check the voters who registered (or changed their addresses) after Jan. 1, 2006 against Department of Transportation and other records to confirm their identities.
More than 20 percent of voters have been flagged by such checks so far, which would force them to reregister or cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.
The software to perform such checks was not running until last month and the board has ordered elections officials to perform the checks only on voters who register after that. The checks were supposed to be in place by Jan. 1, 2006 under the federal Help America Vote Act and Van Hollen argues they should be retroactive to that date.
The Republican Party in Wisconsin has made hay out of a few instances of voter impropriety in the past in the Milwaukee area. The allegations have been many, the actual instances few, says a report from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice.
A hearing, with 16 lawyers in the courtroom, this week in Madison was held on a motion to have Van Hollen disqualified from the case. Van Hollen's motion argues that conflict-of-interest rules don't apply to him. A circuit judge will rule next Wednesday on the motion, and then the rest of the case will continue.
A good piece in Milwaukee Magazine puts Van Hollen's suit in perspective:
Urban polling places are the most likely to have long lines for presidential elections. Now add to that a situation where a huge number of voters might have to fill out a provisional ballot, because of a discrepancy that has never previously stopped them from voting. This time-consuming process (there has to be a witness for each such ballot) could make some voters give up and go home. By contrast, in municipalities with less than 5,000 voters, the numbers are small and don’t vary that much; provisional ballots can be handled more easily. In short, Democratic voters are more likely to be discouraged and disenfranchised.
Further perspective comes from the story on the Ashwaubenon rally:
Luann Skarlupka of De Pere brought her two children, saying she wanted them to have the experience of seeing the candidates.
Her preteen son, Leo, said "John (McCain) is a very wise man. I think he's ready to lead the United States."