The chairman of the Republican National Committee said Wednesday GOP candidates have to perform 1 or 2 percentage points better than they otherwise would to overcome voter fraud — claiming that voter fraud is far more pervasive than what official reports have shown. About 2.1 million votes were cast in the 2010 race for governor, and 1 to 2 percent would equate to 21,000 to 42,000 votes. Some law enforcement officials have raised concerns about isolated incidents of voter fraud, but never suggested it approached a scale like that. “I’m always concerned about voter fraud, you know, being from Kenosha, and quite frankly having lived through seeing some of it happen,” said Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman and former state Republican Party chairman. “Certainly in Milwaukee we have seen some of it and I think it’s been documented. Any notion that’s not the case, it certainly is in Wisconsin. I’m always concerned about it which is why I think we need to do a point or two better than where we think we need to be to overcome it.”
Richard Saks, an attorney who has successfully challenged Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, said Priebus can’t back up that claim. “They have zero, zero evidence to substantiate it,” Saks said. “It’s simply demagoguery to whip up fear.” He noted that a 2008 investigation in Milwaukee County by Democratic District Attorney John Chisholm and Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen resulted in 20 prosecutions, mostly for voting by felons who were not qualified to vote. “The notion there’s any kind of large scale fraud is simply not borne out by the facts,” Saks said. “It’s a scare tactic that’s used … to try to claim that primarily vulnerable people shouldn’t have a full opportunity to vote.”
Lester Pines, an attorney involved in a separate legal challenge to the voter ID law, also denounced Priebus’ comments, saying they were baseless. “His statement that Republicans need to outperform Democrats by one to two percent to account for vote fraud is an absolute, total 100% lie,” Pines said. “It is a fantasy. And Reince Priebus and his ilk are saying this and they’re saying it over and over and over because they’re using the well known propaganda tool called the big lie. If you say it enough times, people will believe it. There’s no other way to characterize this except that Reince Priebus is a liar.”
Full Article: RNC chairman alleges rampant voter fraud – JSOnline.