Newest voter list contains non-existent addresses
By MARK MALEY  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Last Updated: Oct. 30, 2004

As the state Republican party raises questions about the validity of addresses on Milwaukee's voter rolls, a just-released list of newly registered voters contains at least two dozen non-existent addresses, a Journal Sentinel review has found.
The newspaper asked the city's Election Commission for a list of all voters who had registered to vote since April 6. The city on Friday provided a list of 16,408 names and addresses.

Using the city's database of property tax records, the Journal Sentinel identified about 3,300 addresses that appeared to be suspect. From that list, the newspaper randomly selected 200 addresses to check.

Each of those addresses was individually checked with city property records and other online databases to determine whether they were valid. The newspaper narrowed the list of suspect addresses to 60 and then had staff members drive to where those addresses should have been.

A total of 20 addresses - or 10% of the sample of 200 - were verified as non-existent. In addition, on the initial list of 16,000 voters, the newspaper found five voters registered at addresses that are listed on city records are vacant lots.

Also, the new list of registered voters contains 34 instances in which people with the same first name, last name and middle initial are listed twice. Because a new state law prohibits elections officials from releasing the birth dates of registered voters, it was not immediately certain whether those newly registered voters with the same names were the same people, or whether they were different people with the same names.

The Journal Sentinel's findings are similar to what state Republicans say they found in reviewing the city's entire list of more than 300,000 registered voters. However, while some of the problems on the master list of registered voters could date back years, the discrepancies found on the list of newly registered voters surfaced in the last six months.