By the Way…
Remember how the Bush administration accused some of the fired US Attorneys of not pursuing voter fraud with sufficient vigor? Maybe that’s because it just isn’t happening.
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
Most of those charged have been Democrats [surprise, surprise!], voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.
…A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country [again with the surprise], according to a review of the original report by The New York Times that was reported on Wednesday.
Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.
“There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election,” Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.
Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: “If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”
Not that reality has stood in the way of the Justice Department’s zeal.
For some convicted people, the consequences have been significant. Kimberly Prude, 43, has been jailed in Milwaukee for more than a year after being convicted of voting while on probation, an offense that she attributes to confusion over eligibility.
…Previously, charges were generally brought just against conspiracies to corrupt the election process, not against individual offenders, Craig Donsanto, head of the elections crimes branch, told a panel investigating voter fraud last year. For deterrence, Mr. Donsanto said, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales authorized prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against individuals.
Some of those cases have baffled federal judges.
“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.”
I’m not at all surprised that Karl Rove is involved:
The Justice Department stand is backed by Republican Party and White House officials, including Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser. The White House has acknowledged that he relayed Republican complaints to President Bush and the Justice Department that some prosecutors were not attacking voter fraud vigorously. In speeches, Mr. Rove often mentions fraud accusations and warns of tainted elections.
And guess who’s assisting the administration’s efforts:
Enlisted to help lead the effort was Hans A. von Spakovsky, a lawyer and Republican volunteer in the Florida recount. As a Republican election official in Atlanta, Mr. Spakovsky had pushed for stricter voter identification laws. Democrats say those laws disproportionately affect the poor because they often mandate government-issued photo IDs or driver’s licenses that require fees.
At the Justice Department, Mr. Spakovsky helped oversee the voting rights unit. In 2003, when the Texas Congressional redistricting spearheaded by the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, was sent to the Justice Department for approval, the career staff members unanimously said it discriminated against African-American and Latino voters.
Mr. Spakovsky overruled the staff, said Joseph Rich, a former lawyer in the office. Mr. Spakovsky did the same thing when they recommended the rejection of a voter identification law in Georgia considered harmful to black voters. Mr. Rich said. Federal courts later struck down the two laws.
Former lawyers in the office said Mr. Spakovsky’s decisions seemed to have a partisan flavor unlike those in previous Republican and Democratic administrations. Mr. Spakovsky declined to comment.
“I understand you can never sweep politics completely away,” said Mark A. Posner, who had worked in the civil and voting rights unit from 1980 until 2003. “But it was much more explicit, pronounced and consciously done in this administration.”
Read the whole thing — the Justice Department and the RNC like to make noise about rampant voter fraud, but that pesky reality just refuses to support them.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
what? voter fraud = pretext for vote suppression!
similarly shocking headline tomorrow: bears crap in the woods.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I knew about the staff being overruled on the Georgia law and the Texas redistricting, but I didn’t know the name or background of the guy responsible until now. Very interesting (and infuriating) stuff.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
According to Al Gore, the republicans are trying to make it illegal for minorities to vote. Does anyone (other than Hollywood) take that guy seriously anymore?
April 12th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
“According to Al Gore, the republicans are trying to make it illegal for minorities to vote. Does anyone (other than Hollywood) take that guy seriously anymore?”
Well, apparently the federal courts do, given that they overturned the Texas redistricting plan and the Georgia voter ID plan.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
So redistricting and requiring people to have IDs takes away a person’s right to vote. Hold on, I’m sliding down the slippery slope here.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Georgia’s law didn’t just require people to have IDs. It required them, if they didn’t have driver’s licenses (as quite a few lower income people don’t) to pay for a state-issued ID, and there were only a few places around the state that were authorized to issue them. So — no DL, no money, and no transportation = no vote.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
So poor people = minorities? Does this mean liberals think only minorities are poor?
April 12th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
“According to Al Gore, the republicans are trying to make it illegal for minorities to vote. Does anyone (other than Hollywood) take that guy seriously anymore?”
what relevance does this have to the initial post?
April 12th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
“Mr. Spakovsky overruled the staff, said Joseph Rich, a former lawyer in the office. Mr. Spakovsky did the same thing when they recommended the rejection of a voter identification law in Georgia considered harmful to black voters. Mr. Rich said. Federal courts later struck down the two laws.”
Kathy helped make my point that evidently Al Gore and the people like him that claim the evil right is out to stop minorities from voting. They follow the logic that poor=minority.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
so, are you denying the observable fact that id laws have a disparate impact on minorities?
i understand that when facts contradict conservative ideology, the facts have to go, but i’d still like to hear you say it.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Kathy, I can’t tell from the Times article which Georgia voter identification law it refers to as being struck down by a Federal court. Doesn’t Georgia have a voter photo ID law that has passed Federal muster?
While the article deals mostly with Federal elections and seems to infer that it is Republicans who make most ot the claims of voter fraud, on the state and local level here in Alabama it’s a non-partisan and multi-ethnic organization, The Democracy Defense League {http://www.thedemocracydefenseleague.com/) that is pushing for a voter photo ID law. It has been ruled in court that voter fraud led to the election of the mayor of Greensboro a couple of years ago. Similar instances of voter fraud have occurred and still do in other places. A requirement for a photo ID could help reduce or eliminate that fraud especially if it requires the ID to be presented at the time an absentee ballot is requested, because that is the most widespread means of casting illegal votes. Without honest elections we can’t have honest government.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Don, the most recent reference I can find shows that the dispute over Georgia’s new voter ID law is now in the hands of the state supreme court. The issue doesn’t appear to be the need for ID in order to vote; it appears to be the changes that limited the types of acceptable ID and charged for the new ID cards. IIRC, people had to go to the DMV to get the state-issued IDs, and Georgia had reduced the number of DMV offices to the point that there isn’t even one in the city limits of Atlanta. I think there were around 50 DMV offices for approximately 150 counties. This seriously limited access to people without cars, who are less likely to have driver’s licenses and therefore would need the new ID.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Kathy, thanks for the link to the article about the court challenges to Georgia’s voter photo ID law. It says a federal case is still pending even after the legislature revised the original law (enacted in 2005, I believe it says) last year, and that now even the revised law is being challenged in Georgia state courts. Nevertheless, until the law is revoked by some court, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website (http://www.sos.state.ga.us/elections/ga_photo_id.htm) it’s the current law.
For the life of me I can’t understand how anyone can have a legitimate objection to Georgia’s voter photo ID law because (as I read it) it allows any registered voter to obtain the required photo ID at NO COST TO THEM in every county in Georgia. How does that disenfranchise anyone?
April 13th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Well said Don.
April 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Don, I have no problem with requiring photo ID to vote. I just think the laws must be written with the realization that, unlike most legislators, there are voters out there who don’t have driver’s licenses. There are also folks who don’t have access to their birth certificates, which are not always readily available if one doesn’t live near one’s birthplace and which do require money and legwork to obtain.
April 13th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Kathy, rather than further clutter up your blog with a rather lengthy reply I sent you an email.