Last week, we reported about Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a "rising star" among Republicans who caught caught using taxpayer money to send out a newsletter falsely informing people that they needed a photo ID to vote, even though the US Supreme Court had put a stop to it for the November elections.
Alexander defended herself by saying that she sent out a correction postcard to notify her constituents that her newsletter contained the false claim.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a blurb about the incident, giving Alexander cover by calling it a mistake.
Instead of keeping quiet and hoping the story would go away, Alexander tore into the journalist, Georgia Pabst, in a press release from her official office. Alexander accused the reporter of of "sloppy journalism":
Friday evening, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Georgia Pabst published an article with a misleading title and context.
Ms. Pabst called Supervisor Deanna Alexander twice on Friday to ask about a newsletter sent to constituents in October. The newsletter, accurate at publication, alerted fall general election voters that they would need to show a photo ID to vote. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Voter ID requirement for the November election, Supervisor Alexander used email, social media, and a second mailing—a bold post card—to update voters with the new information that electors would not need to provide an ID in order to vote.
“Ms. Pabst knew all of this, yet continued to publish an article falsely proclaiming that the notice was a mistake,” Supervisor Alexander said. “This irresponsible report has increased confusion by leading voters to believe that I either didn’t notice the error or purposely sent untrue information.”
“Ms. Pabst knew on Friday that I had provided voters with two rounds of information and that each were accurate at the time I published them; there was no mistake. Her article is
disappointing and sloppy journalism.” Supervisor Alexander concluded.
Like I said, Alexander would have been better keeping her mouth shut.
It turns out that Pabst did some more of that sloppy journalism and found that Alexander was lying through her teeth.
First off, she did not send the correction postcard. Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnezki, who had received numerous complaints about Alexander's newsletter, is the person who sent out the postcard correcting her lie:
The post card mailing sent out the weekend before the November 4 election to 7,000 constituents of County Supervisor Deanne Alexander to tell them they did not need a photo ID to vote, was initiated and paid for by County clerk Joe Czarnezki.
Czarnezki said he received complaints about the information in Alexander’s newsletter that was received by many residents in Alexander’s northwest side district the weekend of October 25 saying they needed photo ID to vote. After consulting with the Government Accountability Board in Madison, the board recommended that correspondence be sent correcting the information, so the post card mailing was prepared, he said.
Postage and mailing for the post card cost about $2,000, he said. Alexander’s name was on the post card, along with Czarnezki’s . She contacted him about the matter after the post card preparation was under way, he said.
But there's more!
Pabst found out that Alexander's misleading and false newsletter wasn't mailed until October 21, almost two full weeks after the Supreme Court ruling. Alexander had more than enough time to stop the mailing of the newsletter, if not the printing of it. Yet she willfully chose to do nothing.
Something tells me that this is not the end of this story. Because when it comes to Republican corruption, there's more. There's always more.
