Jim Doyle and Gwen Moore are afraid of your ballot

The Republican Party of Wisconsin put out a release today calling for stricter laws dealing with acts of “political sabotage” – the polite term for what most of us know as election tampering. This, of course, all comes in wake of Democratic U.S. Representative Gwen Moore's son pleading no contest to charges of slashing tires on GOP get-out-the-vote vehicles as dawn crept across the Election Day sky in 2004.

What is most stunning about the RPW release, though, is not the common-sense rebuttal to this dastardly act but, rather, the simple compilation of events offered at the end:

The tire-slashing incident is just one of a series of reprehensible acts by the Democrats in the 2004 and 2000 elections. Reported cases of vandalism, theft and political ploys include:

*The use of grass killer to draw large swastikas on the lawns of homes of three Madison residents that displayed Bush-Cheney campaign signs.

*Numerous instances of Bush-Cheney signs being stolen or defaced across Wisconsin.

*Project Vote workers who filled out voter registration cards using fictitious information.

*Democratic workers in Milwaukee who gave homeless men packs of cigarettes in exchange for absentee votes.

What Ms. Moore's son did was abhorrent and, as I have said before, easily constitutes grounds for her to return from Washington, DC at once and commence searching for another job. (Not that I can think of any respectable employer who would hire her.) Still, when painted in this larger context, the matter becomes all the more nauseating.

As I commented to a liberal friend the other day, I am a rather thick-skinned individual. Negative attack ads don't bother me. Character assassination during elections is fine in my book. I don't believe that campaign funds should be regulated in the slightest. And, having been there for everything from the Iowa caucuses to the St. Louis debate while covering the 2004 presidential election, I like to think I have been exposed to a good portion of the darker side of politics.

Such, after all, is merely the furtherance of free speech in the grand tradition of the American democratic ideal. But the guiding rationale behind such a tradition is that people may be influenced before they go to the polls. Once it comes time for the public to pull levers, check boxes and connect lines, the playing field must be perfectly level.

Dirty trick on Election Day are, of course, an old tradition within the Democratic Party. It worked in Chicago in 1960 and, sadly, it worked in Wisconsin in 2004.

So long as people like Ms. Moore and Jim Doyle are in power, you can bet on such foul play in the Dairy State come 2006 as well.

Isn't it time we stop bribing people with Marlboros, slashing tires and phonying up ballots? The people have a right to fair and honest elections. And I just can't understand what it is about this concept that scares the Democratic Party so badly.