Scot Ross [Executive Director, One Wisconsin Now]: "Wisconsin Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen, the co-chair of the John McCain for President campaign, filed a lawsuit last week against the state's Government Accountability Board (GAB) to require crosschecking of all new voters registered by mail against driver's license and Social Security records all the way back to January 1, 2006. Van Hollen claims he is doing so under the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act, but as the law is written – Wisconsin is meeting its requirements.

Van Hollen's partisan suit would remove those voters from the rolls and could result in them having to file a provisional ballot. HAVA specifically notes that no action to a voter who fails the match is required. Most of the differences come from minor clerical errors and do in no way compromise the integrity of our elections. In addition, municipal clerks from across Wisconsin report that meeting this new "Van Hollen standard" could affect over 1 million records and voters. They told the GAB the time spent reprocessing these minor clerical errors will prevent them from, among other things, processing absentee ballots for Wisconsin soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GAB's outside counsel, hired at taxpayer expense, has asked that Van Hollen be removed from the case because he is currently GAB's attorney in an unrelated case. The case will be heard before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi this Thursday. When Van Hollen announced in August that he would serve as the co-chair of the McCain for President Wisconsin Campaign, he wrote in a newsletter to campaign supporters, "I'm honored to help lead John McCain's Wisconsin campaign, and I'm looking forward to his victory in November." This record of political partisanship puts Van Hollen's motives in filing suit against the GAB into question."