runnin' with the devil

nathan wrote at 1:08pm:

I would like to hear your thoughts in your blog about Van Hollen's lawsuit here in Wisconsin.

i think van hollen was better with david lee roth than with sammy hagar, even though i actually don't like david lee roth. ick. he oozes ickiness and smarminess to me. he must be a republican, right? or, wait. that's ted nugent. he's way crazy. off the deep end crazy.

what does van halen have to do with wisconsin politics, anyway?

okay, honestly, i just heard about this the other day. some info from the milwaukee journal-sentinal:

(Wisconsin Attorney General J. B.) Van Hollen sued the state Government Accountability Board Wednesday, saying it must crosscheck voter names with driver’s license records for some voters who registered to vote or changed their addresses since Jan. 1, 2006.

The question that emerged Thursday was what would happen to voters who failed the checks if Van Hollen prevails ...One in five voters who were checked last month initially failed the tests, often because of typos or missing initials.

sounds like the "voter fraud" tactic, no? again: scare the voters. all i can tell you right now is that from an internet search i found a photo of van hollen leaning back in his chair looking smug (and aren't they all? smug? what is that? is there a smug test to get into the republican party? if so, joe lieberman is in!) and i wanted to smack him.

state democratic chairman joe wineke:

"(Van Hollen is) trying to distract and deny voters with fear-mongering. This ploy by the Republican attorney general is nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars and a cynical attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters less than two months before the November election."

government accountability board director kevin kennedy:

"The board believes it would be counter-productive to rush this effort and to create a significant risk, at best of unnecessary hardship and confusion at the polls, and at worst the disenfranchisement of Wisconsin citizens with a clear and legitimate right to vote.

my initial reaction, besides the smugness thing, is if van hollen was so interested in cleaning up the voter rolls, why did he wait until less than two months before the election to make a big deal about it?

let's also keep in mind here the more salient issue in all of this: van hollen is john mccain's wisconsin campaign co-chair.

democrats stand to make major gains from new voter registrations in wisconsin: about 135,000 residents have registered to vote for the first time since the beginning of this year, bringing the total number of voters to more than 3.4 million. another 169,000 have updated their registration with their current address or new name.

with the polls in wisconsin tightening, could j.b. van hollen become 2008's katherine harris?