Hattip to Publius Revolts for the Helena link.
crossposted from ePluribus Media
You all may remember Roxy’s mother’s problems voting in the 2004 Presidential election, as quoted here Voter Fraud and Fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton.
My mother … bless her heart … turns 98 years young today. To the best of my knowledge she has never missed voting in an election. I grew up with the mantra — “if you don’t vote, don’t bitch.” She has lived in the same district for the last 82 years, and in the 2004 election she ran afoul of the Montana’s new voter ID law.
Mom has never had a driver’s license — or any state issued photo ID — and when she got to the polls they asked her for ID. She didn’t have ID, but determined to vote, she made the person that drove her to the polls take her home to get a piece of mail. (The elections folks would accept her social security card, but would not accept her medical insurance ID or her baptismal certificate). There are only 753 (maybe less now) people in the little town where she lives. The poll workers all knew her, her name was on the voting register … yet, the “two men in suits” insisted she provide ID to vote.
Well, apparently, the tactic of conjuring the false specter of Voter Fraud in order to suppress the vote is still “full steam ahead.”
Yesterday’s Helena Independent Record in its article Under federal pressure, secretary of state changes voter verification lets us know that the crew in the Civil Rights Divison, Voting Section are still hard at work keeping us safe from little old ladies who have voted in the same district for 82 years.
For latest from the Independent Record, jump below the fold.
May 23, 2007 HELENA – Facing mounting pressure from the federal government, Secretary of State Brad Johnson ordered county election officials Tuesday to use a new method to verify Social Security numbers provided by a small percentage of voters to prevent fraud.
Johnson took the step after U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division twice since March 2006 threatened to take enforcement against the Montana secretary of state’s office if Johnson didn’t put a system in place to comply with the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act.
“If your state is not prepared to take this action promptly to comply with HAVA in a timely manner, we are prepared to take appropriate enforcement action,” John Tanner, chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department, said in an April 23 letter to Johnson.
Much of this information is familar to ePluribus Media readers — see Resurrecting Jim Crow: The Erratic Resume of the Voting Section Chief | Dismantling Voting Rights Enforcement | Voter Rights: Is Robert Popper the Fox Guarding the Henhouse? | and The Voting Rights Act, Voter Disfranchisement and the Tail Wagging the Dog.
But it’s worth pointing out a little known organization, the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit two years ago on March 3rd 2005 in Virgina, is the engine that pushes the meme of Voter Fraud, through propaganda, legislation, and amicus briefs.
As sentient Americans recognize, voter fraud as a serious threat to democracy has been debunked by several news organizations, including The New York Times. Even the Department of Justice’s numbers show how miniscule the problem of voter fraud is: according to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announcement that, after 5 years of intense work through the Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative, a mere 86 individuals have been convicted of ballot fraud offenses, (119 individuals have been charged).
That averages out to a stunning (snark intended) 17 persons (out of, what, maybe 2.3 billion???) a year proven to have committed ballot fraud — and this after an intense “initiative” by the DOJ, complete with annual two-day seminars intended to train DOJ staff to spot and investigate the scalywags!
Yet in these times of fear of the immigrating “brown other,” the threat of voter fraud provides a perfect cover for dismantling voting rights and manipulating elections.
I just keep thinking about Roxy’s Mom.