How Republicans Quietly Hijacked the Justice Department to Swing Elections

[Echo In Light]

How Republicans Quietly Hijacked the Justice Department to Swing Elections
By Steven Rosenfeld, Ig Publishing



The GOP may have committed massive vote fraud in plain sight by encouraging widespread voter purges and restricting registration campaigns.

The following is an excerpted chapter by Steve Rosenfeld from the new book "Loser Take All," edited by Mark Crispin Miller (Ig Publishing, 2008

Jim Crow has returned to American elections, only in the twenty-first century, instead of men in white robes or a barrel-chested sheriff menacingly patrolling voting precincts, we are more likely to see a lawyer carrying a folder filled with briefing papers and proposed legislation about "voter fraud" and other measures to supposedly protect the sanctity of the vote.

Since the 2004 election, activist lawyers with ties to the Republican Party and its presidential campaigns, Republican legislators, and even the Supreme Court -- in a largely unnoticed ruling in 2006 -- have been aggressively regulating most aspects of the voting process. Collectively, these efforts are undoing the gains of the civil rights era that brought voting rights to minorities and the poor, groups that tend to support Democrats.

In addition, the Department of Justice (DOJ), which for decades had fought to ensure that all eligible citizens could vote, now encourages states to take steps in the opposite direction. Political appointees who advocate for stringent requirements before ballots are cast and votes are counted have driven much of the DOJ's Voting Section's recent agenda. As a result, the Department has pushed states to purge voter lists, and to adopt newly restrictive voter ID and provisional ballot laws. In addition, during most of George W. Bush's tenure, the DOJ has stopped enforcing federal laws designed to aid registration, such as the requirement that state welfare offices offer public aid recipients the opportunity to register to vote.

The Department's political appointees have also pressured federal prosecutors to pursue "voter fraud" cases against the Bush administration's perceived opponents, such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which conduct mass registration drives among populations that tend to vote Democratic. Two former federal prosecutors have said they believe that they lost their positions for refusing to pursue these cases.

The proponents of this renewed impetus to police voters comes from a powerful and well-connected wing of the Republican Party that believes steps are needed to protect elections from Democratic-leaning groups that are fabricating voter registrations en masse and impersonating voters. Royal Masset, the former political director of the Republican Party of Texas, said in 2007 that is an "article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections." While Masset himself didn't agree with that assertion, he did believe "that requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote."

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/82348/

[Echo In Light]

1. Bump

[madrchsod]

2. obama`s statement about gore sunday night was about this issue

i expect as soon as this crap is over he will speak more to this issue. i think this time we will see people demanding that their ability to vote and have their vote counted will not be denied.

we will be watching

the world will be watching

[horseshoecrab]

3. kicking

recommending

:kick:

horseshoecrab

[gratuitous]

4. Voter fraud . . . interesting

Isn't that the easy accusation the Republicans have been slinging around for the last few years? Isn't it strange that every time the GOP Noise Machine makes a big stink about something, it turns out they were up to their beady little eyeballs in whatever crime they're accusing someone else of?

Well, I'm sure there's nothing to it, merely a series of coincidences too disconnected to mean anything.

[L. Coyote]

5. ACVR's OHIO Report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH, Prisoner No. 28882-016), & Jive F. Turkey, Sr.

"... requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote."

Says it all. One strategy in a complex political assault on liberals, and the rights of the People.

ACVR's OHIO Report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH, Prisoner No. 28882-016), & Jive F. Turkey, Sr.
Jun-22-07

OHIO ELECTION ACTIVITIES AND OBSERVATIONS
Report to the United States House of Representatives
Committee on House Administration, Representative Robert W. Ney, Chairman
Submitted by The American Center for Voting Rights, March 21, 2005
http://web.archive.org/web/20060209215847/www.ac4vr.com/reports/032405/OhioElectionReport.pdf

Contributors (aka Felonious Bob's Jive Turkey List):
Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II, William M. Todd, Mary C. Mertz, James E. Burke, Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Charles H. Gerhardt, III, Drew M. Hicks, Douglas G. Haynam, Mark R. Weaver, Mark Landes, Jeffrey Stankunas, Jack Morrison, Jr., Thomas M. Saxer, Thomas R. Houlihan, Tim A. Greenwood, James P. Silk, Jr.

The American Center for Voting Rights, in association with various law firms and legal
counsel involved in the conduct of the Ohio presidential election, has assembled this report of
events that occurred during the 2004 election. This investigation found the following:

Third party organizations, especially ACT, ACORN, and NAACP engaged in a
coordinated “Get Out The Vote” effort. A significant component of this effort appears to be
registering individuals who would cast ballots for the candidate supported by these
organizations. This voter registration effort was not limited to registration of legal voters but,
criminal investigations and news reports suggest, that this voter registration effort also involved
the registration of thousands of fictional voters such as the, now infamous, Jive F. Turkey, Sr.,
Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins. Those individuals registering these fictional voters were
reportedly paid not just money to do so but were, in at least one instance, paid in crack cocaine.

The fraudulent voter registrations, however, appear to be only part of the effort of these
organizations to influence the election. There was an apparently coordinated national litigation
strategy to manipulate election laws in battleground states and, specifically, to eliminate the
provisions of election law that would prevent vote fraud. ....

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from: FITRAKIS: Ohio, the DOJ scandal and "Thor" - the god of voter suppression
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1159656