Cross-posted at Project Vote’s blog, Voting Matters
Harper’s Magazine has released an examination of Republican efforts to politicize the Justice Department and argues that these efforts have propagated a scam on the American public – voter fraud – in order to ensure Republican victories in future elections. Long-time readers will recognize this issue from numerous past blog postings and can find longer discussions of attempts to subvert the machinery of elections for partisan gain in recent Project Vote publications, The Politics of Voter Fraud and Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters.
Some choice quotes from Scott Horton’s exhaustive article:
“The Republican project of the past seven years has been to build on [the Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore], to transform the legal apparatus of the United States into an instrument of partisan force.”
“The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, actually told the Houston Chronicle in 2007 that it is an `article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,’ but then acknowledged that such faith was unfounded. What he did believe, according to the Chronicle’s paraphrase, was that `requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote.'”
“The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn. It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy. High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president.”
The full report may be read here.
