Possible WI Voter Fraud by GOP Aide to VOTER ID Author; No Outbreak of Conspiracy Theories?

Is it possible that Republicans are so convinced of voter fraud conspiracies because they're the ones doing it, so they think everyone else is too? 

Is their voter fraud paranoia simply a problem of projection?

The only case that turned up of voter fraud in the highly contested Coleman / Franken senate race in the 2008 recount was a Republican.  Now one may have turned up in Wisconsin in both the 2008 AND the 2010 election, where recall elections and recounts are a problem.  Of course, it is another case where voter ID wouldn't have helped much to prevent this (alleged) serial voter fraud.  What the news story doesn't cover, but I'd like to know, is did this woman who (allegedly) voted this way in both 2008 and 2010 also vote this way in the more recent State Supreme Court election?

My thanks to my friend and former colleague Sarah Jones, over at PoliticusUSA for catching this one from the Wisconsin State Journal:

GOP legislative aide under investigation for voter fraud

A Republican legislative aide is under investigation for possible vote fraud after she cast her ballot in the November election in Onalaska although she lives in Madison.

La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke said he has forwarded the report from the Onalaska Police Department to Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to see if criminal charges are warranted against Marcie Malszycki, 30, an aide to state Rep. Warren Petryk, R-Eleva.

Records from the Government Accountability Board show Malszycki voted in Onalaska on Nov. 2, 2010, and Nov. 4, 2008, at the same time she had a home in Madison and worked at the state Capitol. Messages left with Malszycki by email, phone and Facebook weren't returned.


Before the November election, Malszycki worked on the campaign of 92nd Assembly District candidate Dennis Clinard. The district lies just northeast of Onalaska.

Gruenke said he believes state law requires the case be handled in Dane County. Ozanne said he is researching which office has jurisdiction.

Petryk, Malszycki's boss, is one of several co-sponsors of the controversial voter ID bill that passed the Senate Thursday. (my emphasis added  DG)

Under state law, "a person who moves to another location for a temporary purpose is not eligible to vote there," said Diane Lowe, the lead elections specialist for the GAB. "At times, it is difficult to ascertain whether a person has an intent to return from whence they came or not."

However, the Facebook posting suggests "that this person was fully aware that her stay in Onalaska was only temporary; she, therefore should have voted from her Madison address," Lowe said

It is reasonable that someone who works in the office of the legislator drafting voter fraud legislation, someone so politically active, should be more aware of what is legal and what is not in voting.  This may be a simple error, but if the shoe were on the other foot and this was a Democratic aide, it would be all over Fox Nuissance, Rush Limbaugh, and other right wing propaganda outlets or the right wing blogosphere echo chamber, as an example of the vast liberal conspiracy to commit voter fraud and steal the election.  Because that is how the right of center believes; I won't deign to call it thinking, it is an emotional not rational response.

But NO, there is no left wing hysteria exaggerating this like the utterly false 103 Dinkytown ballots story circulated by a GOP candidate, or the false ice cream bribery story in Ohio, or the false disabled voter accusations reported to authorities by the guy who wasn't even there when the disabled citizens voted, or the false suspicions that union caregivers fraudulently voted an elderly Alzheimer's patient's vote because someone gave her an 'I voted' sticker. (Yes, Mitch Berg, I'm talking about you and all the people like you or who follow you.)

This story underlines the differences between the left and center, in contrast to the right, in the reactions to apparent ACTUAL REAL TRUE voter fraud, not made up stories of voter fraud whipped into hysteria and conspiracy theories.  The Right, those tea partiers, and GOP supporters should pay attention; they have some lessons here that they need to learn, beginning with the voter fraud - the ACTUAL documented apparent voter fraud - on the right.

I believe this woman probably made an innocent mistake, although she does appear to have voted illegally. Just like so many former felons appear to have done.  Sometimes people are improperly informed that they may vote legally; sometimes they are simply mistaken.  When someone works in an office where voter fraud legislation is drafted, it does seem fair to think they should know something more about it though, doesn't it?  So therefore that outrage over other people making what appears to have been honest mistakes is pure Republican hypocrisy.