 Hello, welcome to the Donahue group. We're glad you could join us for a fast-paced half-hour of political conversation and observations Joining me today Ken Risto who's running for president of the United States at some point in the distant future Tom Paneski professor of mathematics at UW-Shabuigan Cal Potter former educator former state senator. I am not contrary to all representations Sarah Palin I am Mary is running it No, we couldn't win that be a ticket. I can't be from the same state. I am actually trying to introduce myself I'm Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm trying to moderate this group. And so we'll see how well I do this half-hour I may need hazardous duty pay interesting times in Shabuigan I'd like to start talking about the Van Hollen lawsuit which has really grown a lot of legs since the last time we spoke The attorney general filed this action in September, I believe Alleging that the government accountability board would need to check or recheck Voter registrations from August. I believe of 2005 to date. I may have the date wrong And just mail-in registrations not people who registered in person or Or registered at the polls. It has caused quite a storm And Lester Pines is representing the government accountability board. Lester is my old boss I clerked for him and Mark Frankel when I was in law school very good lawyer and He brought an interesting initial Motion to exclude the the the the attorney general's office from representing the From suing the government accountability board because it represents the government accountability board Judge Sumi that really is her name in In Madison and I know nothing of her. I don't I'm sure she's very skilled But ruled that there were enough firewalls that were built So the fact that one part of the Department of Justice was representing the government accountability board didn't prohibit another part of the Department from suing so so the the lawsuit is on All sorts of people are in this case now, and I'm just going to see if I can find my little sheet from the circuit court System we have the American Federation of Teachers Madison firefighters local 311 We have I Don't see we act is is in quite yet American while you're doing that the American Federation of Teachers would represent the teachers from Milwaukee Okay, Milwaukee branch of the only part in the technical colleges, right? NAACP Milwaukee teachers Association the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under the law the Brennan Center These are amicus briefs the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU the Campaign Legal Center the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin the Voting Rights Project of the ACLU Fair Elections, Wisconsin Those are people who would just write briefs to the court to assist the court in making its determination for a case that is only That's what amicus means Friend of the court friend of the court. Thank you professor. Well, just letting our seven faithful viewers I Sorry the jargon meter did go off and I I appreciate that gentle correction Gentle clarification so there's six pages in C cap for a case that's only a month old so I think that's kind of a record There's a motion on October 23rd And I'm not sure what the purpose of it will be or what will happen, but I I don't know if I'd want to be judge Sumi at this point Yeah, I can't resist that. I'm sorry. It's SUMI. Maybe there's another way to end. Well, the stakes are pretty high here because As you can see all these people are concerned because there are going to be in who knows But there's going to be a tremendous I would think given the historic Opportunity here in American history. I think you're going to see large numbers of people voting and turn also going to be very voted and they've not voted before and They're going to be voting primarily perhaps in inner-city communities where historically there's always been difficulties voting long lines lack of I mean long lines lack of Ballots and she's now I mean it goes on and on and so You're really betting the whole ranch that you hope that all of these local Registration processes and all of this same day registration processes are all going to work out in such a way that they somehow come in Compliance with this federal law that oddly enough is called to help America vote. There's something like that We're just going to probably end up being help America not vote so much And and that's not just in Wisconsin, but now there's challenges in Georgia in Ohio They're all Montana it is it's a growing list Florida I believe and they're all Republican attorney generals who all of a sudden are real concerned about the law and so we could expect and There are concerns and I watch and I'm already watching Fox News gin up the Gin up this whole issue already So the there seems to be some concern that what's going to happen is is there going to be a tremendous number of votes challenged in the courts and And if there are close elections in states toss-up states We're going to have this thing resolved in the courts and it may be quite some time before we actually know who wins certain states And who gets a bunch of electoral votes, right? Well, it has to happen before December 12th Yes, the electoral college right and we got that constitutional clock being played out, right? Now maybe a moot point in in Wisconsin because as of today I personally find this very hard to believe Obama is ahead by 17 points If I'm not mistaken, or is it 11 points? It's a it's that part of that issue to our thing congressional elections But then close congressional elections in various states. I think Kagan and and guard will be a very close election I think most other elections. There's not a whole lot of I Mean, I think the incumbents are all pretty safe and in the remaining congressional districts, aren't they? It seems that way. Yeah, I mean, I think Kagan has trouble but But I think we could have predicted that a couple of years ago, so Well, it's interesting. I mean, we have talked on this show repeatedly about those at that time the state elections board dogged determination to keep Accenture as its contractor to Put the help America vote act requirements into place They did a to say that they did a sorry job of it. It's such a high compliment And so now we have a system that is probably not particularly accurate You also have and I am sorry to say this acorn, which is a wonderful group Historic group of community organizers and people who are out there helping poor people Well, they seem to have gone a little bit astray. You never want to pay people to register people by the by the name You can pay them by the hour, but you know, you don't really want to do that economic incentives people do respond to economic incentives And so I you know, I I think there may be In Wisconsin as many three four or five hundred people who are improperly registered It is not the whole scale hijacking of the election dear Republican friend that that the the Republicans would seem to indicate, but I think it's I Think it's yucky. I'm very disappointed Acorn really is a traditional Historic group of fine people and so to have them be known this way is is is troubling to me But it really does Let's just talk about the fact that in this democracy where we have trouble getting people to vote We can't seem to get the system in place Can you it's become a new battleground To to win elections I mean and it's just got a track record of being successful the Gore race is a good example You get to the US Supreme Court You need a president and they start making decisions based on whatever prejudices they may have and personnel that have been involved in the process and So they see the success that occurred Clearly in my book Gore won that race Eight years ago, and if you can replicate that again by litigation Go for it. That's what I think has been determined here And that's why you have all the friends of the court that have filed As friends of the court because they know what can what may happen and they don't want it to happen to disenfranchise people that are legitimate voters who because of well things we've talked about the Software and the company and all that but just the logistics that have gone on for decades That big cities have a difficult time keeping up decent motorless I mean because people die and they are not removed people move People use different names at different times nicknames or middle initials or any you know that's the way it is and we have to we should accept the certain degree of Problems unless we're enabled or willing to put a lot of money into personnel to clean up these voter lists And we don't do that and so rather than having a federal program That says we got to have all these lists. They should have said let's see if we can say there's got to be so many voter Machines and so many ballots printed and so many standards and you know things to ensure that things work out Well, and then there are enough people there to do some checking on these names prior to election day But that's not occurring so it's gonna be a mess and so what are we gonna do? We're gonna elect somebody Based on shenanigans after the fact and that's a sad indictment on this democracy I don't know how it's gonna play out in Wisconsin where you have Same-day registration where you can show up that day I mean is this sort of you know analogous to you know swiping my credit card and they just make sure that I actually have a valid I mean is that is each polling place? Going to have the ability to check online with this master list in Madison when somebody shows up or They're not gonna have to do that so then When I come and register to vote as met some of my students will do Come election day Are they casting a provisional ballot then if they're challenged if they're challenged Well, they're gonna be challenged because it was going to be I mean last I mean the last two elections at least in my little polling place in the south side of Sheboygan there were Republican poll watchers there. I mean they identified themselves as such. They made no bones about it. Oh Yeah, I had a fight with one In fact in my place the polling polling people had to have the police remove that One poll person because they were literally interfering with the work of the I don't know if the government of Utility People have come forth with any type of delineation about what is least apt to be challenged as far as identification You need two forms of identification. It might be a bill. It might be a driver's license and so on I don't know if there's some type of administrative rule or a guideline that they've issued to try to prevent You know some yahoo at a polling place saying I don't agree with that this person's a legitimate voter because I don't like their rent Procedure, I don't like there's this or that I don't I hope that that's been somewhat clarified I mean the statutes clearly state what you need to do with the identification to vote at the poll But that's the challenge is what I think is going to be the the problem, right? But what Van Hollen is challenging is really a fairly narrow Although Local clerks do not have the ability to check these but it's a fairly narrow range or field of people who registered in a certain time period by mail and That's the challenge and my sense of it is Because I'm troubled that the Attorney General of whether it be Democrat or Republican would be so closely aligned with a presidential candidate but it seems to me that just following on on Ken's theory is that The thought is just to call the election into doubt and Not really to challenge any particular voter one way or the other it would appear in Wisconsin Gore one by 10,000 carry one by 6,000 if these polls are correct, and I'm not sure they are Obama it stands to win by far greater than that so that they're really The election would not be called into question But if you've got a margin of 6,000 and you can call into question for 5,000 of those votes my goodness Supposedly the critics of Van Hollen are that he filed a suit after he and several of his colleagues met at the Republican National Convention, and so Sotally they must have had a Carl Rove meeting and said this is a tool that you need to have in your toolbox Go out there folks and file these suits and if we need them they'll be helpful and Something that we can't we we've got to our to our service if we need it Yeah, well, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out and It's hard enough for people to vote you I'm really looking for a non anarchy situation On the day after the election We've talked about this before if there had been it has been evidence of you know fairly Extensive pervasive voter fraud across this country that would call elections into question All of this Sturm undrung as my grandma used to say might be worth it, but there just isn't that right there just isn't that evidence that In modern times anyway that the moderate that fraud has led to some person being elected Because the problems at the polls where people showing up. There's lots of skelson. There's lots of ways. We can make this system better But we have to spend some money, you know Sensibly democracy, you know democracy in cheap It's my theme against today and it's not neat and clean. It's not clean either. Well, let's segue right into then Justice Gabelman who as you know won a hotly contested and ugly ugly ugly race for Supreme Court Is facing trouble on two fronts? The Judicial Commission, which is I think by all measure a pretty neutral Non-political body has filed a complaint against Justice Gabelman for knowingly using An improper or an ad that he knew To contain false information In the butler Gabelman race that Gabelman of course ultimately won Interestingly enough. He is now being tagged on for Making fundraising calls in the 2002 election when he was the Ashland County DA and So I You start having concerns about how many investigations are going to happen after each election I Will argue that I think Justice Ziegler is gonna have it's gonna be a long time before she lives down or lives away from or Moves aside from the the problems that she had in her election I think that clearly the same thing is going to happen with with Justice Gabelman And the problem is this goes to the Supreme Court to decide ultimately if there's not a resolution and Boy, it's a bad way of doing business. I never thought I would come to this point But I'm beginning to think that at least at the Supreme Court level in, Wisconsin We ought to have appointed Justices if we aren't going to have public financing even if we do have public financing You can still use public money to put awful ads out That we should appoint our our justices instead of electing them I Mean it is like the end of democracy in a sense that we can't trust ourselves to be smart enough to run capable elections about Supreme Court Justices Life terms Sure. Why not? I'm getting to believe that federal courts. I mean that system certainly isn't Produced I mean it's produced some incredible judges and it's produced some incredibly mediocre judges as well I'm almost leaning the same way I'm just beginning to see how more and more people really do believe that You can buy a judge And I and and judges never are candid enough to talk about this when the few that I get a chance to talk to but You know if you got a look over your shoulder all the time and worry about whether an ad is going to that could Misrepresent a position you took even when you're not a judge Or a case you ruled on ten years ago I mean courts were designed in our system to stand up for minority rights at least on occasion It's awfully difficult to do this in this environment, and I beginning to believe that we at least in the Supreme Court Level we should probably allow governors and Legislature of the Senate to to you know the mimic the federal model. It's I'm very concerned Justice Abramson's coming up next spring, and I just think that's going to be another just ugly horrible Expensive campaign, and I don't know if we're going to be any better off at the Supreme Court system for it I mean just as Abramson does now have I mean she started running the day after Louis Butler was defeated and She's an indefatigable campaigner. She's remarkable But it's and I can't and I apologize, I can't remember the judge's name. It's Randy begins with a K and He used to be a public defender but he has in his press release painted himself as a conservative and So it's it's it is interesting to me As to as to how the Abrahamson campaign will play out And certainly the Chief Justice has been out there I mean she really is pretty tireless, and I think she has lined up a huge amount of support from law enforcement Last time she went I think she had 70 out of 72 sheriff supporting her And so for somebody who's alleged to be you know soft on crime and so forth and Apparently law enforcement doesn't think so But I'm beginning to think that that That may need to be what happens Well, I you know I hate to see us go to appointment without trying some remedial Work and present system. I think one we need to take seriously the transgressions of these judges I think Gabelman should not be given just a slap on the wrist. I think If there's consequences for behaving like a political goon in running for a Supreme Court Maybe they'll think twice about it But if it's just a slap on the hands and they know that there's no repercussion for being totally Abrasive and abusive they're gonna continue to do it. So that's I think one thing that has to be done somebody has to have guts enough to say it saying you behave like a Thug here and here are some serious consequences if we don't do that like I said there's no consequence the others public financing I think if you can put public financing in place I I think you can start setting criteria. You can maybe have the accountability board look at some of the ads Courts have basically said if you accept public money, you can put some type of strings attached and some say some type of Quality control on this whole thing. Maybe that's what we ought to do The problem I have I guess with appointment is that it's going to be a governor, of course who's gonna Take whatever wishes you know you can have maybe some good retired judges and do a screening process and maybe add some type of high Honor to to selection process, but it's still going to get down to the governor Then it's going to go to the state Senate and 33 people are going to be lobbied by people like right the life and others and all of a sudden one issue is going to probably be the Factor and whether that body even takes up the nomination or not. So I'm not so sure knowing the Supreme Court Yeah, yes, so knowing the process Putting that on the state level and how it operated under the Clinton administration and you know other well We've seen that you know what as you mentioned the US Supreme Court to shenanigans that go on I don't know if that's always going to be the pure system That we that we're looking for on the state level either. I know it's it's it is hard But I think interesting thing is I mean what just as Ziggler did to me by taking cases where her husband was a an interested party although I think I Think it is true that there was never any proof that her husband benefited from her presence on the case and so forth But it was something it was something she should have been aware of But the judicial commissions complained against Gabelman has some fairly striking Charges of deliberately misrepresenting Butler was not a judge and it was not a decision to let this guy go I mean it was clearly false ad it was clearly clearly a false ad more used to those I mean because there are I Just would suggest you they're all false But to varying degrees, but So that's all you need But I think I Do think this is more serious from my perspective and then making phone fundraising phone balls six years ago I mean that may be Might have been a really stupid thing to do. I don't think that much of legislators did the same thing And they were yeah, there was some repercussion there, so right he was doing what a lot of other people were doing Yeah, and and not to excuse that if in fact that is what happened But I I would tend to agree with you I think and no practicing lawyer, of course is going to comment on what should happen to a supreme court justice But in any event I would just suggest that you know that that that was I would I would like to make just a little comment. We're arguing about two Democratic quote cleaning justices that lost and the Democrats on this group here tend to Say things are shenanigans now if they were Republicans that lost I don't know if this discussion would go on, so I just wanted to throw that in there Because you wouldn't see anything wrong That's the way it I mean because I was had a judge that because whatever democratic leading means Well, you're and they produced a blatantly false ad that really perhaps may have swung an election I would be not happy about that at all no and to suggest that that a judge That it's partisan as to whether or not a judge Concerned doesn't refuse herself But they're basic standards of conduct that I think apply to Democrats and Republicans and it's that kind of partisanship Tom if you really if you're so cynical to think that we can't have standards for Democrats or Republicans people vote for as I mentioned earlier acorn which is a wonderful national community organizing group that helps poor people with basic basic services It grieves me to say that they appear to be fairly corrupt on this voter registration stuff And that that that does yeah, that's mixed metaphor or mixed terming. Yeah, but I just good organization I'm just saying that No matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat there are things that are right and there are things that are wrong and Somehow in our public life. We seem not to care about that anymore. And so I guess that's the concern I have but That's my American president speech much shorter than Ken Ristows. I must say but Now we only have six loyal listeners. So in any event Interesting stuff, we'll see what happens. We only have a few minutes left. I'd like to talk just a little bit about The the Jamesville closing that I alluded to in our in our city show interestingly enough the The union contract they must have known something was in the works because the contract provides for pay 85% of their Of their pay for two years will be paid even after the layoff But do you remember the extraordinary extent that Doyle governor Doyle went to to try to get GM to change its mind In there, I mean they had meetings and there was task force and whatever and now not only are they closing it They're closing it a year early. I think the market's dictating it. I mean I agree Yeah, the we're becoming a green culture. We're becoming energy conservationist culture and SUVs are drying up And that's what that plant was making and that's what that plan was making. So you make a business decision Why hang around for a year? We should close early Well, and in this week General Motors has made overtures to Chrysler to merge And if they do they're going to inherit a whole bunch of plants that they probably will have over capacity Just by the fact they merged two big companies and chris was not known for making green cars either. No, yeah So I think the Jamesville plant is among the oldest Of the GM plants. So it's not it's like an old hospital It's not state-of-the-art and everything is expensive to maintain and it's harder to be efficient and All of those things, but that is and Jamesville is not a huge place. It's 1,250 jobs and so it's Yeah, big community impact. Yeah, so it it really is a kick in the teeth And it will be interesting to see long-term how our economy will survive all of this and We were just Wisconsin was just beginning to kind of turn the bend in terms of seeing increased tax receipts That had not been anticipated You know, maybe to help to balance the budget a little bit in our last 30 seconds I just want to tell you and our faithful six listeners maybe five now that Ringo Starr has indicated that he is no longer answering any mail His fan club is now defunct The Donahue group has a small fan club. I think we have one member But in any event among the and it's not the four of us But just to let you know no more calls no more emails no more letters to Ringo Starr It will go unanswered and your life will be broken anyway We will see you hopefully around election time. Take care