But only if it gets told, gets told loudly, clearly, simplistically and repetitively. It is still unfolding, even though it has been happening for years. It is pervasive, deep, goes against the very first and most basic premise of democracy and is a concerted effort by many individuals and organizations throughout the republican party, its affiliated “associations” as well as many levels of government whose primary purpose is to ensure that this most basic premise of democracy is not subverted.
The story, of course, is election fraud. Gaming the electoral system from the inside. To unfairly favor republicans. Favors and promotions for those who go along. Demotions, firings and blacklisting of those who don’t. Nonexistent charges of voter fraud and threats or coercion for these charges to be investigated. Illegal redistricting. Petty lawsuits against the Voting Rights Act. Voter ID laws that border on illegal, if not overtly illegal. Conflict of interest between party “reelection officials” and Secretary(ies) of State. Get accustomed to hearing about it, prepare yourself to say it. And not just things that can be dismissed such as exit poll discrepancies or hackable voting machines. The real deal. The whole enchilada.
It doesn’t get any lower than this. Using any means necessary to get and remain in power.
I first mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, and then again in much more detail last week. And even since last week, there has been a detailed piece from ePluribus Media on the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section’s Special Litigation Counsel Robert Popper and his major conflicts of interest with respect to voting rights, the Help America Vote Act and the Voting Rights Act.
There has been an article by McClatchy about Hans Von Spakovsky and his connection to voter ID laws, his attempts to influence the federal Election Assistance Commission’s research into the dimensions of voter fraud nationally and the impact of restrictive voter ID laws – research that could undermine a vote-suppression agenda, as well as other actions and campaigns to suppress voter rights of minorities. Oh, by the way, Hans Von Spakovsky was a civil rights lawyer in the Justice Department and a recess appointment to the Federal Elections Commission.
And that is in just three days. Who knows what the rest of this week will bring in terms of surprises.
There is still talk about the US Attorney purge being “political”. And even though that is, on the most basic level, true – it goes way way beyond that. To describe it as mere politics is to justify it as sleazy but legal. However, to describe it as it is blatant and concerted actions to promote those who helped and punish those who hindered efforts to suppress minority votes or influence the election in favor of republicans is more powerful, more truthful – and more scary.
The evidence is mounting at a furious pace. We have someone (Von Spakovsky) who is linked to voter suppression efforts within the republican party not only put in a position as a civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department, but on the goddamn Federal Elections Commission.
You have Robert Popper – an attorney with a notorious and detailed history of bringing (many times baseless) lawsuits in order to target minority voters and districts as the Voting Rights Section’s Special Litigation Counsel. You have little to no cases or investigations into voter suppression since 2001, yet numerous suits and investigations into voter rolls that weren’t properly purged.
You have Tim Griffin, a man who was responsible at the Republican National Committee for “caging” activities that suppressed minority voters who were stationed in Iraq, which he is currently under investigation for, promoted (at Karl Rove’s request and hidden from Congressional investigations) to US Attorney.
You have not one, not two, not three but at least four US attorneys OTHER THAN GRIFFIN whose jobs depended on whether they brought charges of voter fraud or charges in general against Democrats close to Election Day 2006.
You have the White House itself – the Big Cheese, home of both “the Decider” AND “Commander Guy” – including Karl Rove’s office AND Alberto Gonzales’ office discussing the desire to pursue voter fraud cases against Democrats in New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania a mere few weeks before the 2006 elections.
It goes back even further than this. Phone jamming in NH tied to Abramoff, the NH Republican Party and Tom DeLay. Redistricting in TX in between census periods and violations relating to the redistricting. Voting machines that were used even after they were decertified as unsafe. Willful acts to destroy and disqualify Democratic voter registration cards and applications – by the Secretary of State of the state that “swung” the 2004 election, by voter registration groups associated with the republican party. Thousands – tens of thousands purged from voter rolls in Georgia, Florida and other states.
None of this being investigated.
Who knows how many votes were cast but not counted. I have heard numbers that were in the millions, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these numbers. Who knows how many people did not get the chance to vote because of being purged, suppressed or illegally challenged by republican party operatives? Again, none of this investigated.
We do know one thing. A very strong pattern has emerged and continues to emerge. A pattern that touches state republican party officials, national republican party officials, the Justice Department, the White House, Congress, and the very groups whose purpose is the HELP voting rights and ensure that all votes are counted – the Voting Rights Section, the Civil Rights Section, the Federal Elections Commission.
All of this done by design. By the republican party. At all levels.
It is a simple story to tell, as ugly and complicated as it is to untangle. The republican party has used its power to undermine and suppress the votes of those most likely to vote Democratic in order to keep power. It should spell doom for the republican party for decades to come.
Is anyone brave enough to call a duck a duck, take this story and give it the exposure it deserves?
A good article in Slate on the Republican created American Center for Voting Rights.
If you didn’t know better you would swear it had been Raptured away.
Unfortunately, this is not a story which will resonate with the mainstream media like a $400 haircut or how many nights a year the Clinton’s spend together.
It is another piece of the puzzle in the evolution of a top to bottom criminally involved Republican Party which will only become exposed through the slow passage of time. No one in the mainstream media will ever put forth the effort to connect all the dots and make all the correlations necessary to expose how corrupted our system has become under these criminals. What is plain right now to so many of us dirty f$#&@ing hippies will take years to rise to the surface and be noticed by most of the American public. By then, all the players will have moved on to their high priced positions as lobbyists and corporate shills.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to investigate this issue. Congressional Democrats are too blind to see how they were screwed. And you can bet your ass it will happen again whenever the opportunity arises again and the Republicans once again hold power. It is innate in their Party’s core. The leopard cannot change it’s spots.
just amazing. It goes so deep and has so many layers. They disappear somewhere and reappear elsewhere.
yup. Keep hammering this story.
thx Boo – I plan on it.
already working with ePM on 4 more stories like this – more detailed about certain people, states or events.
also in orange
cross-posting my comment from DKos because I think you may be more apt to see it here.
I’m curious — what evidence is there that poor people are less likely to have photo IDs than wealthier people? I’m not clear that this is true. If it is, are there statistics that say what the difference is?
I sometimes feel that people draw a false equation between ID and driver’s license. To be sure, poorer people are less likely to have cars, and less likely to have licenses. But many, many poorer people without driver’s licenses get state ID’s, for all sorts of reasons — for instance, while wealthy people can deposit checks in their bank accounts without ID, poor folks, if they are without bank accounts, as many are, have to cash their checks instead of depositing them, and that requires ID.
[I’m cross-posting my reply to ClammyC’s response at DKos. He suggested that the burden should be on those pushing new rules to show that fraud has actually made them necessary, and pointed to a string of Republican voting rights sins, some of which I readily agree with.]
I’m fine with much of what you’ve said …
But I also worked for an office (held by a Democrat, though it was non-partisan, in an overwhelmingly Democratic jurisdiction) that ran voter registration, and I see some things being said that don’t jibe well with my knowledge of voter registration and voting.
For instance, the complaint that many tens of thousands of people were purged. Without knowing the exact numbers, that seems like a normal thing with voter rolls the size of Georgia’s. Certainly close to 100,000 were purged in a given year in the jurisdiction where I worked (with some 2.5 million voters). Tens of thousands of people do move from election to election. Whether the Georgia purge was conducted fairly is a very different question(and certainly the 2000 Florida purge was NOT conducted fairly), but the numbers you cite are not particularly damning by themselves.
The idea that any purge was aimed at soldiers overseas is pretty much nonsense. Soldiers register using a special FEC form that serves as both registration AND absentee ballot application. They fill one out for each election. Unlike other registration and voting forms, it can be faxed, so it’s a very easy thing for them. And there are voting officers in most units to help explain things and make sure they get their opportunity (it’s supposed to be every unit, but I doubt it really is). Purging of the prior registrations of soldiers overseas wouldn’t even do anything, since their application for an absentee ballot would automatically re-register them. Notably, I have not heard this particular complaint coming from active duty personnel.
I don’t like the challenges to minority districts. (I actually liked Lani Guinier’s spin on proportional representation, for that matter.) I don’t like the Texas mid-decade redistricting. I do think there are an ample number of things to attack when it comes to the GOP approach to voting rights.
I’m just asking some questions, because I think it’s more useful to direct our efforts at things that will really matter. I have a genuine question about the prevalence of ID’s in different communities. There may be a vast discrepancy. I’m just surprised that I’ve never seen any stats. And this issue has been coming up since Motor Voter was signed by Clinton way back in 1992, because it allowed states to ask for ID when voters who registered by mail came to the polls.
By the way, while I agree that there is no good evidence of “Democratic” vote fraud hurting the GOP, I have seen very suggestive evidence of vote fraud that made a difference in a Democratic primary race here. And I’ve even seen Republican absentee ballot fraud, though I don’t think it mattered in the particular contest.
An election for Mayor in NW Indiana was thrown out a year or two ago because of absentee fraud. And likewise, 10 years ago or so, the mayor’s race for the city of Miami was ordered re-held because of rampant absentee fraud. It’s not like this stuff never happens, and it’s a legitimate concern in general. That doesn’t mean it should be used to disenfranchise honest voters. But we do need to use evidence to make the case on individual initiatives, like the ID initiative. I’d like to see more evidence.
Greg Palast has been all over this issue at the BBC, not only starting with the 2000 debacle, but projecting and anlyzing the ground work already in place for the 2008 election. the msm won’t touch it.
interview w/ BuzzFlash
both long, and enlightening.
lTMF’sA
…but just to call further attention to the great stories he and others have been doing to dig up what exactly has been happening in the Voting Section to disenfranchise voters and basically manipulate elections… take a gander at these articles: