A Think Progress investigation has exposed parts of a misleading training manual being distributed to Mitt Romney volunteers in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin.
From Think Progress:
Mitt Romney’s campaign has been training poll watchers in Wisconsin with highly misleading — and sometimes downright false — information about voters’ rights.
Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. A source passed along the following packet of documents, which was distributed to volunteers at a Romney campaign training in Racine on October 25th. In total, eight such trainings were held across the state in the past two weeks and 17 since late September.
One blatant falsehood occurs on page 5 of the training packet, which informed poll watchers that any “person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery” isn’t eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.
The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a “concerned citizen” instead. As Kristina Sesek, Romney’s legal counsel who just graduated from Marquette Law School last year, explained, “We’re going to have you sign in this election cycle as a ‘concerned citizen.’ We’re just trying to alleviate some of the animosity of being a Republican observer up front.”
This packet could cause major problems if Republican observers across the state try to enforce such wrong and misleading information on Election Day. Even if they simply slow the voting process down, this could discourage voters waiting in line and drive drown turnout.
Reached for comment, Ryan Williams, a spokesman for the Romney campaign said, “it’s obvious Democrats are losing when they start peddling the same tired and false attacks they use every election cycle. Our campaign is seeking open and fair elections where every legal vote counts and desperate claims otherwise are offensive and wrong.”
Williams said the Think Progress report left out several crucial pieces of information also contained in the flyers, including instructions to:
- ALWAYS seek “a fair and open process where every person entitled to vote has the opportunity to legally cast a ballot and have that ballot counted properly”
- ALWAYS obey proper orders from the chief election inspector.
- NEVER “interfere with orderly conduct of polls”
- NEVER “interfere with or delay the legal voting process”
- NEVER “interfere with any individual’s right to legally cast a ballot”
- “NOT tolerate any voter intimidation of suppression” that they see.
Meanwhile, a source close to the campaign told theGrio that Kristina Sesek, who was identified in the Think Progress piece as “Romney’s legal counsel,” actually works for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, not for the Romney campaign. The Wisconsin Republican Party did not comment for this story. However, a source with direct knowledge of state party operations confirmed on background that Sesek works for the Wisconsin Republican Party.
The source said the Romney campaign materials Sesek’s volunteers were distributing contained legally accurate information, though that information was heavily parsed. For instance, the source said Wisconsin Democrats’ claim that the training materials falsely lead voters to believe they need ID is incorrect, because the materials specify what types of identification are needed to register to vote. Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration at the polling place.
The Romney campaign materials aren’t the only ones raising red flags in Wisconsin.
A separate batch of “poll watcher” materials from True the Vote, a tea-party-linked organization that has pledged to send 1 million “poll watchers” to swing states to challenge voters who the watchers deem illegitimate at the polls, and to guard against alleged voter fraud, are also raising alarms. True the Vote was funded in part by the Bradley Foundation, which also financed a smaller foundation, the Einhorn Family Foundation, which in turn purchased anti “voter fraud” billboards in the Milwaukee area in 2010 and again in 2012.
According to a legal memo produced by the Institute for One Wisconsin, which works closely with the activist group One Wisconsin Now, the True the Vote materials contain:
- Incorrect and incomplete information regarding who may challenge a voter’s qualifications;
- Incomplete information about how an individual may verify their residence;
- Misinformation about how poll watchers may interact with poll workers; and
- Incorrect information on the timeline a voter may cure deficiencies that required them to cast a provisional ballot.
According to a news release by One Wisconsin Now:
True the Vote is relatively new to Wisconsin, but has been quickly embraced by the Wisconsin right wing infrastructure. In 2011, they received a $35,000 grant from the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation that had previously funded voter suppression billboards in Milwaukee, according to a joint investigation by One Wisconsin and theGrio. They were forced to return the funds, however, due to their failure to secure non-profit tax status.
In addition, True the Vote has partnered with the Virginia-based American Majority to recruit poll workers in Wisconsin. American Majority has received over $650,000 dollars in Bradley Foundation support.
[One Wisconsin Now’s Scot] Ross concluded, “Just like the right wing’s attempt to play the system for their political advantage with voter suppression billboards, any attempt to prevent legal voters who want to cast their ballot from doing so, and having that vote counted, will fail.”
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport.