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Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest

 
 
Reply Thu 19 Apr, 2007 10:06 am
Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
More coverage of the U.S. attorneys scandal

WASHINGTON - For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights "fundamentally flawed."

She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws," citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English speaking voters.

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

-Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

-Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

-Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

-Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

The administration's presence was felt last year in at least one state legislative battle over voter identification.

In Missouri, where Republican Sen. Jim Talent was fighting to hang onto his seat and hold the U.S. Senate for the GOP, a Republican-backed photo ID requirement cleared the state House of Representatives by one vote in May 2006 after an intense lobbying effort in which backers alleged voter fraud in heavily Democratic St. Louis and Kansas City.

"The White House was heavily involved" in the effort to win passage, state Rep. Bryan Stevenson, the Republican floor leader, said in a telephone interview. Stevenson said he wasn't privy to the details of the White House efforts.

In late 2001, Ashcroft also hired three Republican political operatives to work in a secretive new unit in the division's Voting Rights Section. Rich said the unit, headed by unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Mark Metcalf of Kentucky, bird-dogged the progress of the administration's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and reviewed voting legislation in the states.

One member of the three-person political unit, former Georgia elections official and Republican activist Hans von Spakovsky, eventually took de facto control of the Voting Rights Section and used his position to advocate tougher voter ID laws, said former department lawyers who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Those former employees said that Spakovsky helped state officials interpret the Help America Vote Act's confusing new minimum voter identification requirements. He also weighed in when the Voting Rights Act required department approval for any new ID law in 13 states with histories of racial discrimination.

In November 2004, Arizona residents passed Proposition 200, the toughest state voter ID law to date, which requires applicants to provide proof of citizenship and voters to produce a photo ID on Election Day. The Voting Rights Act state requires states to show that such laws wouldn't impede minorities from voting and gives the Justice Department 60 days to approve or oppose them.

Career voting rights specialists in the Justice Department soon discovered that more than 2,000 elderly Indians in Arizona lacked birth certificates, and they sought their superiors' approval to request more information from the state about other potential impacts on voters' rights. Spakovsky and Sheldon Bradshaw, the division's top deputy and a close friend of top Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, a former Bush White House lawyer, denied the request, said one of the former department attorneys.

Later in 2005, career lawyers wrote a memo recommending that the department oppose a new Georgia law requiring voters to present a $20 photo ID. They argued that the requirement would discriminate against poor blacks, but that was quickly rejected.

Toby Moore, one of the five career lawyers who reviewed the memo, said the only dissenter to the recommendation was a new hire, Joshua Rogers, a member of the National Republican Lawyers Association, a partisan organization interested in election issues.

Moore said that John Tanner, who'd just been appointed the new section chief, "doctored the memo ... reversing many of our findings," and used the occasion to change procedures so that he alone could make future recommendations.

A Georgia state judge, acting on a suit by civil rights groups, struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Moore, now the project manager for American University's Commission on Election Reform, said he believes that administration officials felt the Voting Rights Section was populated by "recalcitrant, embedded, liberal Democrats ... and they were determined to plant their DNA, change the institution and bring it to bear on behalf of Republican interests."

Spakovsky, who declined to be interviewed, also played a role in an expansive interpretation of the new federal election law.

The Help America Vote Act directed states to create central, computerized voter registration lists, to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible names and to match new applicants' driver's licenses and Social Security numbers to those in state databases.

A failure to match wasn't grounds for rejection: Tiny variations such as the inclusion of a middle name or misplaced figure could prevent a match. But when confused state officials asked the Justice Department about the requirement, Spakovsky offered a harsh reading of the law.

In a letter on Sept. 8, 2003, he advised Judith Arnold, Maryland's counsel for election laws, that the application "must be denied" if an applicant's data failed to match that in driver's license and Social Security databases. He wrote that "the prudent course" would be to let those voters cast provisional ballots that would count only if their registration information were verified later.

His guidance was posted on the Voting Rights Section's Web site.

Some states, including California, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington, began to reject applicants whose credentials didn't match.

The rejections prompted a lawsuit and protests by civil rights groups, which halted the practice.

The practice was "a barrier to voting," said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, whose suit in Washington state led to a court injunction.

Catherine Blinn, Washington state's assistant elections director, said in a sworn statement last year that her state was merely following guidance from the Justice Department and cited Spakovsky's letter to Maryland.

Just before the 2006 election, the California Secretary of State's Office rejected more than 20,000 registration applications, including 43 percent of Los Angeles County's new applicants. Those rejections were reversed before Election Day amid a public clamor.

Former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, a moderate Republican, said in a phone interview that Justice Department officials reviewed his office's regulations and okayed the rejections, but gave no hint that they exceeded federal law.

The Bush administration also has shifted enforcement priorities under the National Voter Registration Act, known as the "Motor Voter" law because it provides for registration at state vehicle licensing and public assistance agencies.

In the last six years, the number of voters registered at state government agencies that provide services to the poor and disabled has been cut in half, to 1 million.

Instead of forcing lax agencies to increase registrations, the Justice Department sued at least six states and sent threatening enforcement letters to others requiring them to scour their election rolls for potentially ineligible voters.

Deputy Director Michael Slater of Project Vote, a national voter registration group, called this "selective enforcement. ... They've focused on purging of voters from registration rolls at the expense of enforcing provisions that encourage registration."

He said that Kentucky eliminated 4,000 people from its list of voters, but "did it poorly, and took off people who lived there and tried to vote."

One of the Justice Department suits was filed against Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Last week, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey in Jefferson City, the capital, threw out the suit, noting that the motor voter law was intended to increase voter participation and eliminate fraud.

The judge wrote that the Justice Department had offered no evidence that anyone had been denied his right to vote as a result of deficiencies in voter rolls, and "nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred."

For more information on the Georgia litigation, as well as other major election law litigation: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/common-cause.php
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BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 08:29 am
Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?
Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sun, July 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - A New Mexico lawyer who pressed to oust U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pressing for tougher voter identification laws.

Iglesias, who was one of nine U.S. attorneys the administration fired last year, said that Albuquerque lawyer Patrick Rogers pressured him several times to bring voter fraud prosecutions where little evidence existed. Iglesias believes that he was fired in part because he failed to pursue such cases.

He described Rogers, who declined to discuss the exchanges, as "obsessed . . . convinced there was massive voter fraud going on in this state, and I needed to do something to stop it."

Iglesias said he only recently learned of Rogers' involvement as secretary of the non-profit American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund - an activist group that defended tighter voter identification requirements in court against charges that they were designed to hamper voting by poor minorities.

Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and a candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connected GOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister group played a significant role in the party's effort to retain control of Congress in the 2006 election.

That strategy, which presidential adviser Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.

McClatchy Newspapers has found that this election strategy was active on at least three fronts:

- Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and the Lawyers Association were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.

- The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.

- The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.

Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.

Public records show that the two nonprofits were active in at least nine states. They hired high-priced lawyers to write court briefs, issued news releases declaring key cities "hot spots" for voter fraud and hired lobbyists in Missouri and Pennsylvania to win support for photo ID laws. In each of those states, the center released polls that it claimed found that minorities prefer tougher ID laws.

Armed with $1.5 million in combined funding, the two nonprofits attracted some powerful volunteers and a cadre of high-priced lawyers.

Of the 15 individuals affiliated with the two groups, at least seven are members of the Republican National Lawyers Association, and half a dozen have worked for either one Bush election campaign or for the Republican National Committee.

Alex Vogel, a former RNC lawyer whose consulting firm was paid $75,000 for several months' service as the center's executive director, said the funding came from private donors, not from the Republican Party.

One target of the American Center was the liberal-leaning voter registration group called Project Vote, a GOP nemesis that registered 1.5 million voters in 2004 and 2006. The center trumpeted allegations that Project Vote's main contractor, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), submitted phony registration forms to boost Democratic voting.

In a controversial move, the interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City announced indictments against four ACORN workers five days before the 2006 election, despite the fact that Justice Department policy discourages such action close to an election. Acorn officials had notified the federal officials when they noticed the doctored forms.

"Their job was to confuse the public about voter fraud and offer bogus solutions to the problem," said Michael Slater, the deputy director of Project Vote, "And like the Tobacco Institute, they relied on deception and faulty research to advance the interests of their clients."

Mark "Thor" Hearne, a St. Louis lawyer and former national counsel for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is widely considered the driving force behind the organizations. Vogel described him as "clearly the one in charge."

Hearne, who also was a vice president and director of election operations for the Republican Lawyers Association, said he couldn't discuss the organizations because they're former clients.

But in an e-mail exchange, he defended the need for photo IDs.

"Requiring a government-issued photo ID in order to vote as a safeguard against vote fraud and as a measure to increase public confidence in the fairness and honesty of our elections is not some Republican voter suppression effort," Hearne said.

Hearne called photo IDs "an important voice in election reform."

Hearne and Rogers appeared at separate hearings before the House Administration Committee last year in Ohio and New Mexico. They cited reports of thousands of dead people on voter registration rolls, fraudulent registrations and other election fraud schemes.

As proof, Hearne, offered a 28-page "investigative report" on Ohio events in the 2004 election, and then publicly sent a copy to the Justice Department, citing "substantial evidence to suggest potential criminal wrongdoing."

So far, no charges have been filed.

Earlier, in August 2005, the Legislative Fund issued a string of press releases naming five cities as the nation's top "hot spots" for voter fraud. Philadelphia was tagged as No. 1, followed by Milwaukee, Seattle, St. Louis and Cleveland.

With a push from the center's lobbyists, legislatures in Missouri and Pennsylvania passed photo ID laws last year. Missouri's law was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, and Democratic Gov. Edward Rendell vetoed the Pennsylvania bill.

In an interview with the federal Election Assistance Commission last year, two Pennsylvania officials said they knew of no instances of voter identity fraud or voter registration fraud in the state.

Amid the controversy, the American Center for Voting Rights shuttered its Internet site on St. Patrick's Day, and the two nonprofits appear to have vanished.

But their influence could linger.

One of the directors of the American Center, Cameron Quinn, who lists her membership in the Republican National Lawyers Association on her resume, was appointed last year as the voting counsel for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

The division is charged with policing elections and guarding against discrimination against minorities.
---------------------------------------------

(Researcher Tish Wells contributed to this article.)
0 Replies
 
mysteryman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 08:33 am
And yet after every election since 2000,its been the dems that have cried about voter fraud and its been the dems that have cried "foul" every time they lost an election.

How does that jibe with your post?
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 08:55 am
MM
mysteryman wrote:
And yet after every election since 2000,its been the dems that have cried about voter fraud and its been the dems that have cried "foul" every time they lost an election.

How does that jibe with your post?


I won't comlain when any political party wins an election through persuasion of the benefit of their quest. What I object to is when a party's goal is to deprive eligible voters of the right to cast their votes. That is undemocratic and against the Constitution. It also shows the weakness of their cause when they have to rely on voter suppression to win.

BBB
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:02 am
I wonder if there is any credible data on either side of this debate. In states where you can vote without a picture ID, how many instances of vote fraud have actually happened? In states requiring picture IDs, how many votes have actually been suppressed? At present I see lots of heat and no light on this issue -- on both sides.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:22 am
Thomas
Thomas wrote:
I wonder if there is any credible data on either side of this debate. In states where you can vote without a picture ID, how many instances of vote fraud have actually happened? In states requiring picture IDs, how many votes have actually been suppressed? At present I see lots of heat and no light on this issue -- on both sides.


I don't see much evidence of Democrats attempting to supress Republican voting. What I have seen is evidence of fraudulent voting by Democrats in mostly poor and minority communities. That can be controlled by proper and legal voter identity. Supressing voter rights is unconstitutional and the Voting Rights Act.

BBB
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:30 am
In your opinon, is it a suppression of voting rights to require that prospective voters show an ID?
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:47 am
Thomas
Thomas wrote:
In your opinon, is it a suppression of voting rights to require that prospective voters show an ID?


No.

BBB
0 Replies
 
squinney
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:56 am
I think the argument is that the poor / working poor that don't have a drivers license or the time / mode of transport / money to get one, are being prevented from voting based on that requirement.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 09:57 am
Squinney
squinney wrote:
I think the argument is that the poor / working poor that don't have a drivers license or the time / mode of transport / money to get one, are being prevented from voting based on that requirement.


In New Mexico, I understand that the poor can provide other types of indentification.

I found the following information:

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/elect/taskfc/voteridreq.htm

BBB
0 Replies
 
squinney
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:13 am
I posted about this HERE back in 2005.

The more we learn about the DOJ and other shinanigans regarding US Attorney firings and the changes at DOJ Civil Rights Division pertaining to voting, the more correct I feel about predicting that we won't be having an election in 2008.

Call me paranoid, silly, whatever. Then watch. Cause it's the whole attitude of "where's the proof" while everything in this administration gets stamped Secret or Executive Privelege that's gonna bite your butts.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:22 am
That's why I asked for evidence from both sides. While I'm sure that there are both fraudulent voters and frustrated legitimate voters, I don't see much reason to think that either is a major problem in practice. The federal government doesn't hold all the data about elections, so evidence should be there even if Bush/Cheney withhold all the data they have.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:33 am
Thomas
Thomas wrote:
That's why I asked for evidence from both sides. While I'm sure that there are both fraudulent voters and frustrated legitimate voters, I don't see much reason to think that either is a major problem in practice. The federal government doesn't hold all the data about elections, so evidence should be there even if Bush/Cheney withhold all the data they have.


I worked hard with thousands of other people to give voting rights to all American citizens. I'm shocked that you don't think "either is a major problem in practice." I hold my right to vote as a sacred right not to be taken away from me by anyone or by any method.

BBB
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:37 am
Re: Thomas
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
I'm shocked that you don't think "either is a major problem in practice."

Well, then why don't you show me that it is a big problem in practice?
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:41 am
Re: Thomas
Thomas wrote:
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
I'm shocked that you don't think "either is a major problem in practice."

Well, then why don't you show me that it is a big problem in practice?


George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have had two terms in office as a result of voter suppression, tablulation fraud and illegal opinion by the Supreme Court. If that can't convince you, nothing I could say would convince you.

BBB
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:43 am
Fine. We disagree. I can live with that.
0 Replies
 
HokieBird
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 10:49 am
squinney wrote:
I posted about this HERE back in 2005.

The more we learn about the DOJ and other shinanigans regarding US Attorney firings and the changes at DOJ Civil Rights Division pertaining to voting, the more correct I feel about predicting that we won't be having an election in 2008.

Call me paranoid, silly, whatever. Then watch. Cause it's the whole attitude of "where's the proof" while everything in this administration gets stamped Secret or Executive Privelege that's gonna bite your butts.


They've cancelled the 2008 elections?
0 Replies
 
squinney
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 11:06 am
Thomas - Come on. Your a brilliant guy. The point is there is NO PROOF because they DO hold the information related to elections and voter suppression being alleged and there has been NO PROOF of voter fraud to support their side which is calling for MORE suppression of votes as demonstrated by the now fired attorneys stating that they were being pushed to prosecute for voter fraud in cases that had no merit.

Someone a week or so ago pointed out in an article that I read that the whole fair and balanced media approach is a major disservice to the public. Media now feels obliged to state what each side is saying and leave it at that. There's no right or wrong, no facts versus spin, no finding of the truth. Just typing out what each side says, or what their take on it is, doesn't give us the truth and leaves each new development open to interpretation as if whatever everyones individual interpretation is has merit.

It doesn't.

Sometimes horse **** is horse **** and ya gotta watch your step.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 11:10 am
horse ****
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1536535/2/istockphoto_1536535_horse_shit.jpg
0 Replies
 
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Sun 1 Jul, 2007 11:23 am
Thinking about "landslide Lyndon"
Where fraud exists, of course, it should be prosecuted and punished. (And politicians have been stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes since senators wore togas; Lyndon Johnson won a 1948 Senate race after his partisans famously "found" a box of votes well after the election.) Yet evidence of actual fraud by individual voters is painfully skimpy.

Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don't pan out. Consider a list of supposedly dead voters in Upstate New York that was much touted last October. Where reporters looked into names on the list, it turned out that the voters were, to quote Monty Python, "not dead yet."

Proven voter fraud, statistically, happens about as often as death by lightning strike.

Yet the stories have taken on the character of urban myth. Alarmingly, the Supreme Court suggested in a ruling last year ( Purcell v. Gonzalez) that fear of fraud might in some circumstances justify laws that have the consequence of disenfranchising voters. But it's already happening -- those chasing imaginary fraud are actually taking preventive steps that would disenfranchise millions of real live Americans.
0 Replies
 
 

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