This has been a steady undercurrent for the entire period Bush has been in office, but now it is beginning to come to light with a vengeance.
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.
The story goes into great detail about the efforts of the Dept. of Justice to justify voter ID laws which tend to exclude citizens in Democratic-leaning districts, its efforts to emasculate its own Civil Rights Division, and its efforts to force US Attorneys to pursue actions against possible voter fraud, even when there was no evidence of same.
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.
[snip]
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.
If you have any doubt that the Department of Justice has been turned into a puppet of the Executive Branch and a partisan enforcement shop, read this article. Then go read Digby, who has much more.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 20, 2007 12:01 AM | TrackBack