10 reasons why WI Democrats think Walker, GOP are cheats

[Updated from 12/3] It is not surprising that GOP Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his allies are suing to stop the legal recount of votes in the Presidential election, and also are sure to rewrite state law to further restrict access to the recount process, as Walker and his party have co-opted, bent or broken Wisconsin voting and redistricting laws, and obstructed public access to the ballot box with restrictions later ruled unconstitutional.

Little wonder that Walker and GOP reactions to the ongoing recount look self-serving, even shady, given their long-running pattern of gratuitous abuse of the democratic process, including at least these ten eleven twelve (thanks to a sharp-eyed reader with a sharper memory) documented actions and events that date all the way back to his scandal-ridden, failed 1988 Marquette University student government campaign:

*  When he was Milwaukee County Executive, running for Governor and no doubt prepping for his 2015 run for President, Walker used public funds to underwrite self-promotional motorcycle tours that took him, and his name and image, far from Milwaukee.

*  At the same time, Walker secretly used public staff, Milwaukee county office space and other taxpayer-provided resources to raise his profile, organize partisan events and raise money for his gubernatorial campaign, and other GOP candidates - - moves which eventually led to convictions of six Walker staffers, associates and campaign donors in what became known as John Doe I. 

Walker won the gubernatorial election.

*  As Governor, Walker and his party pushed through a very restrictive voter ID law with known partisan overtones and with admittedly partisan objectives aimed at suppressing voting in minority and college communities which vote heavily Democratic.

*  Forced into a recall election in 2012, Walker raised and received millions of dollars in campaign funds routed through a third party advocacy group at his direction which led to another prosecutorial investigation into known as John Doe II.

Like the events which led to John Doe I, Walker and his funding and organizing methods were an additional weight in his favor on the scales. Walker won the recall election.

* Walker has since signed a bill into law written by his party which ended the use of John Doe investigations into allegations of political corruption.

*  During the 2012 recall elections, the Republican Party openly ran Republican candidates as fake Democrats in Democratic primaries to monkey-wrench the electoral process. 

*  [Update] - - GOP State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, an enthusiastic supporter of the GOP's 2012 fake Democrat candidacies maneuver, this spring wrote a bill which Walker signed into law to help protect the GOP's majority from an election challenge by a popular Democratic office-holder.

The bill prohibited sitting Wisconsin county executives from serving simultaneously in the legislature. It was a maneuver to discourage Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris, a Democrat, from running for an open Senate seat.

Harris ran for the State Senate seat, and lost.

*  Walker signed into law several restrictions to early voting in Wisconsin that were so partisan and undemocratic that a Federal judge had to void them.

*  Separately, another Federal judge determined that the Republicans' redistricting of the Legislature drafted in secret using state employees and public computer equipment inserted out-of-sight into private law firms, and which has for years helped Walker and the GOP to expand their majorities and push through their agendas, was knowingly and illegally crafted to disenfranchise Democrats.

*  Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel, a close Walker and Republican legislative ally, sent election monitors during the November, 2016 elections disproportionally into Democratic-leaning precincts.

*  Schimel's actions echoed the intimidating posting of billboards paid for by a GOP financier and major Walker donor in minority neighborhoods warning against election fraud - - though there had been no record in those neighborhoods of voting fraud in those areas.

All of which makes Walker's talking point of having made it "easier to vote and harder to cheat" in Wisconsin elections - - undermined by these illustrative examples and testimonials and the ten points above - - a disturbing, self-serving lie.