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Faux Voter Fraud Engine used to Suppress the Vote in Missouri

by roxy317

Wed May 02, 2007 at 03:18:12 PM EST

in collaboration with cho and a hat tip to standingup

Before the news on Voter Fraud, something just breaking: These McClatchy folks never tire, Margaret Talev reports:

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to turn over all e-mails to or from White House political adviser Karl Rove in connection with the controversy over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys.
The subpoena suggests that the congressional inquiry is focusing on Rove and whether he shaped the firings and hirings of U.S. attorneys and whether the purge was influenced by GOP concerns about corruption probes and investigations of voter fraud in battleground states during the last election.

Now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

McClatchy continues its reporting on Republicans trumping up voter fraud (dead men voting) cases. Earlier this year, The New York Times (archived) provided statistics debunking the allegation of massively-organized voter fraud.

Reporting on the same subject, McClatchy Washington Bureau's Greg Gordon focuses on Missouri in 2006. He profiles the "key players" involved.

Joining the push to contain voter fraud were Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, who charged that votes by dogs and dead people had defeated Ashcroft, GOP Gov. Matt Blunt, whose stinging allegations of voter fraud were later debunked, and St. Louis lawyer Mark "Thor" Hearne, national counsel to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign who set up a non-profit group to publicize incidents of alleged voter fraud.

Remember that name ... Mark Hearne ...

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Voter Fraud versus Vote Suppression

Voter Fraud is what Ann Coulter was investigated for in Florida for lying about her residency and voting district. The fraud refers to a person making fraudulent claims about his or her eligibility to vote. Voter Suppression occurs when persons, organizations or entities attempt to restrict eligible American citizens from exercising their voting rights.

Often, fear-mongering about Fraud is used to pave the way for employing tactics designed for voter suppression.

Hearne appears to be a chief cog who employed this technique in 2006:

Responding to the bedlam, Democrats won an emergency court order [in 2000 ] keeping some polls open beyond their scheduled 7 p.m. closing. That outraged Republicans and Hearne, the Bush campaign lawyer, won an emergency appeals court ruling that shut the polls within an hour.

Prior to the election, Hearne had been actively pursuing voter fraud cases across the country.

[...]in February 2005, Hearne helped establish the non-profit Center for American Voting Rights, which issued lengthy reports alleging voter fraud in states across the country, including Missouri. One director for the supposedly non-partisan group was Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, who switched parties in 2000 and headed Democrats for Bush in 2004.

But as Gordon points out in his article 2006 Missouri's election was ground zero for GOP:

In fact, no significant voter fraud was ever proven.

However, Gordon reinforces what we are all coming to know:

..the Republican preoccupation with voter fraud was part of a wider effort to protect the GOP majority in Congress with a series of measures to dampen Democratic turnout. They included stiffer voter ID requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.

About that ballot fraud? The DoJ itself reports that since the Voter Integrity initiative started in 2002, "119 individuals have been charged with ballot fraud offenses and 86 individuals have been convicted of these crimes." That averages out to be a whopping 19 individuals convicted in each of the five years since 2002.