Madison police arrested 39 people Tuesday in--- a sticker sting operation aimed at cracking down on voter fraud.
Dressed in civilian garb and posted in back alleys and rundown parking lots, MPD officers lured in non-voting but would-be sticker-wearers with subtle head nods and provocative eyebrow raising before administering them a healthy dose of the law.
MPD Sergeant Clark Spiegel, who headed the assignment, explained the necessity of the operation.
“What people don’t understand is just how ubiquitous voter fraud is. It’s election day, I reckon in Madison alone there’s hundreds, maybe thousands of nonvoting scumbags flaunting ‘I Voted’ stickers right under our noses,” said Spiegel. “Your neighbors, the clerk at the convenience store—heck, even family—how do you really know if they voted? Does a sticker prove that? They’re hypocrites and it makes me sick.”
Recent epidemic levels of voter fraud have put democracy in a stickier situation than ever before, according to several online blogs and talk-show radio hosts, and Wisconsin’s capital is no exception to a national problem.
Counterfeit stickers have successfully monetized voter fraud in Madison’s burgeoning black market, in which a community of entrepreneurial bootleggers has made “literally tens of dollars peddling ‘I Voted’ stickers,” according to an MPD report.
For Spiegel, there needs to be a community effort.
“It starts with us, the citizens. Interrogate your coworkers, friends, family, anybody you see wearing a sticker. Ask them for details—where did they vote? What time? What font style was on the ballot? It’s not hard to sniff out the fakers with a few basic questions,” said Spiegel. “It’s time to save our democracy, one sticker at a time.”
