MILWAUKEE – In March, Dan Shansky left Wisconsin for California to take a job with a union there, but that didn’t stop him from casting a ballot in the June 5th recall election. The community organizer, who lists the Milwaukee-based Community Action Now as a recent employer, was heavily involved over the past year and a half in the protest and recall movement in Wisconsin. Shansky’s Facebook comments announcing his new job and the move to California in March were greeted with congratulations by various liberal organizers employed by many of Wisconsin’s most high profile left-wing groups.
Wisconsin state law requires that before a person cast their ballot in a Wisconsin election they be a resident of the state. Specifically, residence is defined as the place “where the person’s habitation is fixed, without any present intent to move, and to which, when absent, the person intends to return.” [Wis. Stat. 6.10(1)]
Shansky’s move to California in March, nearly two months before the election, and acceptance of a job out there would almost certainly mean that he does not qualify as a Wisconsin elector and should not have cast a ballot. He no longer lives in the state and he does not appear regard his move as a mere temporary absence from Wisconsin.
A local blogger writing under the pseudonym of “Jack Straw” discovered Shansky’s possible voter fraud after Voces De La Frontera, left-wing Hispanic social action group, began helping coordinate a workers strike at Palermo’s Pizza in Milwaukee. Joe Shansky is a spokesperson for Voces De La Frontera and the relationship between the two men has not yet been confirmed.
While it is his own Facebook page comments that show his move to California, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’s Voter Public Access database proves Shansky voted in the June 5 election. The government roll shows Shansky applying for absentee ballots for both the recall’s primary and general elections. But the Milwaukee Clerk’s office only received and counted his ballot for the general election.
In March, close to the time when Shansky said he made the move to California, the Rock County District Attorney’s office filed a disorderly conduct charge against him. The case is still pending in court.
Shansky’s actions, although involving absentee voting, highlight concerns that conservatives continue to have over the security of Wisconsin’s election process. A photo identification requirement for in-person voting is currently stuck in a legal battle even though the state’s law mirrors a similar passed several years ago in Indiana and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Shansky even made a passing reference to the photo ID requirement saying in a Facebook post after mailing his ballot, “Well no photo proof but absentee ballot is in the mail-Up yours Walker! (Thanks Matthew Finnell for keeping me out of jail.”
Finnell left a responding Facebook comment with a bit of gallows humor, “Already forwarded to Media Trackers.”
Finnell works for Wisconsin Jobs Now!, an SEIU-front group that was involved in a barbecue-for-votes scandal in the summer of 2011 and is currently led by individuals under investigation by the Milwaukee District Attorney’s office for voter fraud. Media Trackers discovered, investigated and publicized both of those voter fraud situations. The group Shansky worked for, Community Action Now, has ties to Citizen Action of Wisconsin, which was also implicated in the barbecue-for-votes scandal.
This report by Brian Sikma.
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