Bush operative pushes voter ID law

[EV_Ares]

A senior legal adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign is working behind the scenes to help enact a Missouri state constitutional amendment that critics say would suppress the vote in the key battleground state this November by requiring voters to show proof of citizenship.

Mark “Thor” Hearne, Bush-Cheney’s national counsel in 2004 and now a partner in the St. Louis, Missouri, firm of Lathrop & Gage, has been collaborating with Missouri’s Republican state Rep. Stanley Cox, the sponsor of the constitutional amendment, Cox’s office confirmed this week.

For years, Hearne has been a leading Republican figure demanding stricter voter identification laws and popularizing claims about widespread voter fraud, although many election experts dismiss such alarms as hyperbole.

During the 2004 campaign, Hearne reportedly worked with White House political adviser Karl Rove on “voter fraud” issues and spearheaded GOP efforts to challenge voter registration drives by pro-Democratic groups.

According to a posting at his law firm’s Web site, “Hearne traveled to every battleground state and oversaw more than 65 different lawsuits that concerned the conduct of the election.”

Hearne also has shown up as a background figure in the Bush administration’s scandal that erupted over the firing of nine federal prosecutors, some of whom came under White House criticism for not seeking pre-election voter fraud indictments in 2006.

More recently, Hearne has been instrumental in pushing state lawmakers to pass strict voter identification laws in Missouri, New Mexico, Indiana and other states. The Indiana voter ID law recently was upheld by a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hearne conducted much of this work through his now defunct organization, the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), which called itself a non-partisan group defending voter rights and seeking to enhance public confidence in the fairness and outcome of elections.

rest of the article @ link: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3291.shtml

[Kip Humphrey]

1. RNC 2008 & beyond disenfranchisement strategy revealed by actions of a Republican goat. /nt