The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is not a Watchdog of the Truth

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Jim Fitzhenry is the Ideas Lab Editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) and the USA TODAY NETWORK - Wisconsin. Beneath his picture and title on the MJS website is the statement, “Our journalists adhere to the USA TODAY NETWORK Principles of Ethical Conduct For Newsrooms.”  Jim Fitzhenry wields a great deal of power. Those who have power can choose to leverage it for good or for evil. The editor of an opinion section, like the Ideas Lab, plays a crucial role in shaping the content and direction of the paper’s editorial voice. Key responsibilities include content selection, editorial oversight (including feedback to authors), and diversity of perspectives. Opinion editors’ decisions can be crucial in influencing public opinion and discourse.

 

The MJS has published multiple columns about Wisconsin’s elections in recent months. Some of them are presented as news articles and others are included in Fitzhenry’s opinion pages. They all have the same theme: election results are accurate and there is nothing to see here. There has never been any investigation (or mention) of the serious design defects in the Wisconsin Election system that make it impossible to verify results and make elections vulnerable to intentional fraud.

 

Recently, Fitzhenry published several columns authored by four former elected officials from both political parties. These authors are pushing the consistent theme that Wisconsin’s elections are “safe and secure” and, in doing so, they intermingle two unrelated concepts: human errors during the process of ballot counting and criminal fraud.

 

The latest column by these four was published in the Sunday Ideas Lab on September 6. The authors used the incident that occurred in Milwaukee County during the August 11 primary election to once again falsely reinforce that Wisconsin’s elections are “safe and secure.” I immediately reached out to Fitzhenry to request a column to set the record straight on the factual inaccuracies and misinformation that were included in the latest column. What happened in the weeks that followed is chronicled below verbatim.

 

September 7 – My email to Jim Fitzhenry:

 

Greetings,,

I am writing to you as the Ideas Lab Editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to request the opportunity to serve as a Guest Columnist for a “Your Turn” column in an upcoming Sunday edition of the paper. I have been a member of an investigative team from On Wisconsin Outdoors researching the design of the Wisconsin election system for the past few years. The columns that have been published by Guest Columnists Tom Barrett, JB Van Hollen, Scott Klug, and Michael Tate on Wisconsin’s election system in recent months have been factually inaccurate and misleading.

 

I am making this request in the spirit of the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics unequivocal declaration that “The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.”  The omission of important, undisputed facts about design flaws in the Wisconsin election system is a great disservice to Wisconsin voters.

 

I appreciate your consideration and appreciate hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Joan Ellis Beglinger

 

September 8 - Jim Fitzhenry responded by email the next day:

 

Hi Joan:

I’m happy to review a draft of a column. Aim for about 750 words.

Jim

 

September 14 - My email to Fitzhenry was accompanied by the draft of my column:

 

Hello Jim,

In follow up to our previous communications, attached you will find my draft for a “My Turn” column in an upcoming Sunday issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I appreciate your consideration and am available for any follow-up conversation.

 

Thanks very much and make it a great day,

Joan Ellis Beglinger

 

My column:

A Rich Reservoir for Fraud - Wisconsin’s Elections are not Verifiable

 

Tom Barrett, JB Van Hollen, Scott Klug, and Michael Tate, all former elected officials from both political parties, have been writing about Wisconsin’s elections. They claim, “Our elections are safe and secure,” undefined terms that are meaningless and often used by politicians and members of the media to convince us “there is nothing to see here.”  But the fact is Wisconsin’s elections are not verifiable, meaning every vote cast cannot be tied to the name of a currently eligible voter.

 

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on September 6, the writers used the August 11 primary incident in Milwaukee, in which audit logs were downloaded onto memory sticks rather than election results, to send the message that mistakes happen; the error was discovered; the system works.

 

Their contention that “catching errors means Wisconsin’s election system is actually working” is factually inaccurate and misleading. Their conflation of unintended human error with criminal fraud serves to confuse rather than clarify important election issues that must be addressed.

 

Human error will occur in the best of systems and, in the case of elections, after action reviews, audits, and recounts may indeed catch errors and allow for their correction. These methods are useless in the fight against sophisticated criminal fraud.

 

Wisconsin’s election system has serious design defects that must be corrected to create safeguards against criminal fraud and ensure verifiable election results.

 

More than four million ineligible voter names on the Registered Voter List are a rich reservoir for sophisticated hackers to create fraudulent ballots and manipulate outcomes. Included are people who at one time were Wisconsin voters who have died, moved away, been convicted of a felony, declared incompetent, or had any change in status that rendered them ineligible. They serve no useful purpose, are a violation of cybersecurity experts’ best practice recommendations, and violate the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 requirement that “accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.” They must be purged.

 

250,000 driver’s licenses have been issued by the State to non-citizens here legally. They are identical to citizen licenses and must be clearly marked “Not for Voting.” A valid license is all that is required to register to vote or cast a vote.

 

The process of issuing voter ID’s to students on university campuses must be revised to require proof of citizenship to prevent the thousands of non-citizen students on Wisconsin campuses (8,000 in Madison alone) from accessing them.

 

The significant fraud exposed in government programs in recent months confirmed what we already knew. People with criminal intent will cheat and steal whenever the opportunity exists. System design must prevent this to the extent humanly possible.

 

Cybercrime is the fastest growing crime in the world. The FBI logs nearly 3,000 complaints every day. The state of Wisconsin posts breaches of “secure” data bases on its website, which in recent months included the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Green Bay Packers Organization.

 

Advanced, Persistent Threats (APTs) are targeted cyberattacks in which sophisticated hackers gain access to a network, remain undetected for extended periods of time (years in some cases), steal sensitive data, and disrupt critical systems. They are the methods by which Wisconsin’s Registered Voter List can be hacked, fraudulent ballots created from ineligible voter names, and elections stolen.

 

Every state Legislator and member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is fully aware of Wisconsin’s significant election system defects. They have chosen to ignore them. Wisconsin voters must confront them at every opportunity with “Why?” until the pressure becomes so intense that they respond, or we replace them with people who will. There is no credible defense of, or dispute about, the contamination of the voter rolls with millions of ineligible voters, driver’s licenses that have been issued to non-citizens that can easily be used to vote, or the process of issuing student voter ID’s that does not require proof of citizenship, leaving only two plausible explanations for their refusal to act – corruption or cowardice.

Tom Barrett, JB Van Hollen, Scott Klug, and Michael Tate have positioned themselves as knowledgeable sources whose advice on Wisconsin elections should be heeded. If they are oblivious to the serious election system flaws, they have no basis whatsoever for declaring our elections are appropriately protected. If they are aware of them, they’re lying to us.

 

September 21 - Email submitted to Jim Fitzhenry:

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Good morning, Jim

It's been one week since I submitted my draft of a "My Turn" column in which I corrected the factual inaccuracies and misinformation that were contained in the "Our Turn" column authored by Tom Barrett, JB Van Hollen, Scott Klug, and Michael Tate and published in your paper on September 6.

I would appreciate an update on the status of your review. The timeliness of this information for the citizens of Wisconsin given the upcoming election is significant.

 

Thanks very much and I look forward to hearing from you.

Joan Ellis Beglinger

 

September 25 - Voicemail for Jim Fitzhenry followed by an email:

 

Good morning, Jim:

I am looking forward to connecting with you regarding publication of the My Turn column I submitted for your review nearly 2 weeks ago. I tried to reach you by phone this morning and left a voicemail.

 

The design defects in Wisconsin's election system detailed in my draft are of critical importance to the verifiability of our elections. I would appreciate hearing from you at your earliest convenience. 

 

Thanks very much,

Joan Ellis Beglinger

 

September 30 - Having received no acknowledgement from Jim Fitzhenry of my draft column or any of my communications, I sent my final email:

 

Jim,

This is my final attempt to engage you on publishing the “My Turn” column titled “A Rich Reservoir for Fraud – Wisconsin’s Elections are not Verifiable.”  My submission corrects factual inaccuracies and misinformation that have been published in recent columns about the security of Wisconsin’s elections. I complied with your direction to keep my submission to 750 words, less than half of the length of other opinion columns you publish, and I had it to you on September 14.

 

The column I submitted is 100% factual. It details the serious design defects in Wisconsin’s election system that prevent the imperative verifiability of results and make it vulnerable to intended fraud. You will find no member of the Wisconsin Legislature or member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission to deny these flaws exist, because they do. If you had consulted a cybersecurity expert, they would have corroborated the extreme risk of cybercrime posed by maintaining millions of ineligible voter names on the Registered Voter List and confirmed the importance of purging them to mitigate the risk.

 

You routinely publish opinion pieces and articles presented as news about Wisconsin elections that all have the same theme: election results are accurate and there is nothing to see here. Last Sunday, the Ideas Lab carried a “Your Turn” column once again deflecting from the core issue of verifiability to accurate counting of ballots. There is something to see here, and it has nothing to do with accurate ballot counting.

 

You ignored my email follow up on September 21, and my voicemail and email follow up on September 25, denying me the common courtesy of a conversation and leaving no doubt you have no intention of providing your readers with the critical information contained in my column.

 

Your suppression of the truth is an egregious violation of journalistic ethics, a betrayal of the people of Wisconsin, and a serious threat to the Democratic Republic reliant on the integrity of a free press for unbiased, credible information. And certainly, most alarming, you already know that. Replacing those who are peddling themselves as journalists with truthtellers will be essential to taking our country back.

 

I truly regret that our brief exchange only served to confirm the absence of journalistic integrity in our own backyard.

 

Sincerely,

Joan Ellis Beglinger

 

September 30 – Jim Fitzhenry responded:

 

Dear Joan:

We are still doing a fact-check on your claims.

 

Jim

 

Know Your Enemies

 

The corruption and dishonesty of the media have emerged as one of the greatest threats to freedom in the fierce fight to take our country back. It will not dishearten us; we must know who our enemies are before we can defeat them. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is not a watchdog of the truth.  This is a fact.  We know it to be true because we are watchdogging them.