Voter turnout limits (of Democrats) said to be White House goal

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/79393.html

Voter turnout limits said to be White House goal
BY GREG GORDON
[email protected]

WASHINGTON --
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and public records and documents.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a mid-term battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political advisor Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights ``fundamentally flawed''.

FULL story at link.

[aquart]

1. Nice to see it in print.

After six years of shouting it from the rooftops.

[jen4clark]

2. Hey, Omaha Steve

Did you catch Digby's post about this from Thursday? A MUST read!! :wow:

Hans Across America

Sometimes I feel as if I've been writing about the same things over and over again for years and it never adds up to anything. But in the case of this "voter fraud" issues, I have been concerned about what the Bush administration was up to for some time and it appears to be adding up to something quite huge. (Of course, I'm not the only one who was following this --- many people knew it was happening.)

Today, McClatchy has a barn burner of an article about the Bush administration's efforts to suppress the vote. It's no longer possible to argue with a straight face that they didn't use the power of the Justice Department for partisan reasons. The Bush administration has been pursuing phony voter fraud like it was a massive scourge, helping states enact all kinds of specious laws that only result in disenfranchising legitimate voters --- the kind who tend to vote Democratic. (I wonder why?)

Read the whole article and then come on back and we'll unpack just a tiny little piece of it, blog style.

Longtime readers will recall that way back when I wrote a bit about "Buckhead" the man who miraculously discovered in a few short moments that the kerning and fonts of the Dan Rather memos were "off" and put his "findings" up on Free Republic. You all know the results of his magnificent bit of internet sleuthing. In researching Buckhead, whose real name is Harry McDougal, I found out that in addition to being a member of the Federalist Society and someone who helped write anti-Clinton briefs for Kenneth Starr, he was a member of the Fulton County elections board which ruled that the extremely dubious Sonny Perdue and Saxby Chambliss wins in 2002 were perfectly a-ok. The guy got around.

It turned out that another interesting Republican fellow had previously been on that elections board by the name of Hans von Spakovsky, whom you just read about in that McClatchy piece. He was hired by the Bush Justice Department's civil right's division shortly after his stint down in Florida during the recount. Anyway, Von Spakovsky is not just another Atlanta lawyer. He had for years been involved with a GOP front group called the "Voter Integrity Project" (VIP) which was run by none other than Helen Blackwell, wife of notorious conservative operative Morton Blackwell. (Many of you will remember him as the guy who handed out the "purple heart" bandages at the 2004 GOP convention but he's actually much better known for years of running the dirty tricks school "The Leadership Institute" and is even credited with coining the name "Moral Majority." Let's just say he's been a playah in GOP circles for a long time --- and the VIP is one of his projects.

~ Much more...

[Omaha Steve]

4. No I didn't

I had a 14 hour shift Thursday. This is the first I've seen of this. Thanks.

[bemildred]

3. Stolen elections? Can you say "Stolen elections"? nt