“This is the kind of thing that I would expect to see… in Chicago or New Jersey,” Jay Heck of the non partisan Common Cause group, stated last week, in reference to the bingo party that Jim Doyle’s campaign hosted for mentally disabled voters. Indeed, Jim Doyle’s dirty politics belong somewhere like Chicago, where people have become somewhat immune to political dishonesty, but in Wisconsin?
Let’s face it; the whole gubernatorial campaign has been pretty dirty. Jim Doyle’s most recent crooked scheme, however, has made me much more motivated to stand firm for McCallum.
Last week, WTMJ news reported that Doyle campaign workers bribed mentally disabled residents of a Kenosha care facility for votes. The workers ran a bingo party at the facility, awarded the “winners” with approximately $.75, provided refreshments, and encouraged the residents to vote by absentee ballot immediately following the party. WTMJ news conducted interviews that verified that the residents were fully aware that the party was made possible by Jim Doyle. While a dollar’s worth of pop and change is pretty inconsequential to me, it was significant enough for at least two of the care facility’s residents to cast votes on the same day as the bingo party. According to Wisconsin’s election laws, which state that it is illegal to give anyone anything of value in order to gain their vote (anything of value being anything worth $1.00 or more), this practice is illegal.
Jim Doyle is certainly not a man of political integrity. Do we really want to vote for a man who would stoop so low to gain that extra vote by offering kringle and pop to mentally disabled residents? Furthermore, if he has already violated the public’s trust with his shady political practices during the election, what further lines will he cross if he is actually elected into office?
-Kim Dunlap, ’04