Thousands of Milwaukee votes are cast by individuals with non-existent addresses, vote totals are off by thousands, commissions are paid to solicitors for dubious voter registration submissions, votes are cast without any requests for identification, tires are slashed on Republican vehicles, the list goes on and on. Election fraud has become an essential part of the Wisconsin Democratic victory plan and whenever Republicans try to do something about it - or even TALK about it - they are shut down. We’re exaggerating, they claim. Show us the proof, they demand.

The proof is hard to find because ghost votes aren’t traceable and it’s difficult to charge a person for voting when the only record you have is of a fake name, not a real one. That’s why it’s imperative that proven cases of election fraud be treated seriously. But in Milwaukee County the outgoing district attorney has refused to pursue election fraud cases with any zeal. All of this is why the wrist-slapping of a prominent Democrat caught illegally voting in Republican Waukesha County is so galling.

Donovan Riley, who was a heavy favorite to win a seat in the state Senate from eastern Milwaukee County this year, was caught red-handed double voting in the 2000 presidential election in both Chicago and Waukesha County. This wasn’t a case of a naive mistake by an uninformed person. Riley was the dean of a major Chicago medical school at the time, is a practicing lawyer and former high-level administrator in the University of Wisconsin system. He knew precisely what he was doing when he cast a vote using his ex-wife’s Oconomowoc address and then voted the same day using his full-time Chicago address. He was charged with a felony.

But, like virtually every other election cheat, Riley is escaping serious consequences. In a plea bargain with outgoing Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, Riley agreed to plead guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge and received a preposterously lenient sentence. He has to forfeit his law license. (Big deal; he’s not even a practicing attorney.) He has to pay a $10,000 fine. (Whoop-de-doo; he has fat pensions from two states after years of holding very high paying educational jobs.) He has to give back campaign contributions to those who request reimbursement. (Almost all of his funds were donated by himself.)

The outcome was shocking because Bucher has been a cobra for two decades in the district attorney’s office and has passionately pursued justice. His motivations are unknown. (Perhaps he’s bitter with Republicans after losing the primary election for attorney general.) He had a virtually open-and-shut case against Riley and undercut his incoming predecessor, Brad Schimel, by plea-bargaining a case Schimel could have easily taken to trial. The bottom line is this: If a prominent Democrat caught voting illegally in Waukesha County isn’t punished, no one ever will be. Bucher and the Democrats may as well simply declare double, triple and quadruple voting legal.

Government’s legitimacy comes from its subservience to the people. We elect our leaders in this country. When elections are stolen, the public loses faith and all control of government. Republicans in Wisconsin are being disenfranchised by every two-bit Donovan Riley and enabled by the likes of Paul Bucher.

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Our area’s newest government agency, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority, is a fast learner. Only weeks old, its leaders are already proposing new taxes. Their endorsement of a sales tax increase to pay for the Kenosha-to-Milwaukee commuter train and for local bus service is the beginning of an attempt to create an enormous bureaucracy that will fleece suburban and exurban taxpayers to pay for services of no benefit to them.

While the initial proposal involves only Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties, it will eventually swallow up the whole region. The Kenosha-Milwaukee train will never achieve projected ridership levels because it duplicates service already provided by Amtrak and covers only three communities. It is inevitable that calls will be made to expand it with spokes jutting to Waukesha, Port Washington, West Bend and Lake Geneva. That’s when residents of Waukesha, Washington, Walworth and Ozaukee counties will be sucked in.

While the train would only use up a portion of the tax, the bus proposal is the really money-gorging one. It’s a way of getting residents of western Kenosha and Racine counties (which don’t have service) to pay for the operation of buses in the two cities. Likewise, the portions of the adjacent counties with virtually no buses will be bankrolling service in other communities.

The only fair way to pay for the commuter train is to impose a tax on the cities that will have train stations. That won’t happen because the whole purpose here is to get rich suburbanites to pay for something they’ll never use. Sound familiar?