Embattled Scott Walker defends voter suppression, badly

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an old hand at playing the victim, as are most Republicans, and he's setting himself up for the possibility that he could lose in the recall next month by pre-emptively declaring that he could very well be the target of voter fraud because the liberals hate him that much. That's in a Weekly Standard article, picked up by Dave Weigel.

"I've always thought in this state, close elections, presidential elections, it means you probably have to win with at least 53 percent of the vote to account for fraud. One or two points, potentially."

That's enough to change the outcome of the election. 'Absolutely. I mean there's no question why they went to court and fought [to undo] voter ID.'

Walker is either really math challenged, or a bald-faced liar (possibilities that aren't mutually exclusive), because as Weigel points out, in a state the size of Wisconsin where there are about 3 million voters, it would take a really organized, large-scale conspiracy to create a one or two point difference in the outcome'30,000 to 60,000 fraudulent votes.

He also points out that a 2008 Election Fraud Task Force, a year-long investigation, ended up charging 20 people. Twenty does not equal 30,000, and the "proven fraud actually amounted to 0.0007 percent of all votes." Additionally, only 12 of those people even lived in the same county, so not only were they not coordinating, they probably didn't even affect a local election, much less the state or national results.

Not that a little thing like facts is going to keep Walker from crying fraud. That's just what Republicans do.

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