Federal Prosecutions for Illegal Voting 2002-2005

[underpants]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/16/voter-fraud-study/


STUDY: Feds Prosecuted Only 38 Cases Of Voter Fraud Between 2002-05, 14 Were Thrown Out

In today’s Washington Post, columnist Harold Meyerson highlights a little-noted study on the politics of voting fraud published in March by Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Columbia University, for a group called Project Vote. The study “makes unmistakably clear” that “the government’s failure to prosecute or convict more than a handful of people for voter fraud isn’t for lack of trying.”

Since 2002, the Justice Department’s Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative has, as Gonzales put it, “made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority.” And yet between October 2002 and September 2005, just 38 cases were brought nationally, and of those, 14 ended in dismissals or acquittals, 11 in guilty pleas, and 13 in convictions. Though a Justice Department manual on election crime states that these cases “may present an easier means of obtaining convictions than do other forms of public corruption,” federal attorneys have failed to rack up those convictions, for the simple reason that incidents of fraud have been few and far between.

As the Republican Myth has it, nothing is more fraught with fraud than voter-registration campaigns waged in working-class and poor neighborhoods that are largely black or Hispanic. According to the 2004 Census, 15 percent of blacks and Hispanics were registered during such campaigns; the figure for whites is just 9 percent. But of those 38 prosecutions that the Justice Department brought between 2002 and 2005, a grand total of two were for fabricating or falsifying voter registration applications. This qualifies as one of our smaller crime waves.

Here’s a chart from the study:
votefraud1.gif

Given these figures, the Justice Department’s intense focus on voter fraud is hard to explain. Yet, as Meyerson notes, from Karl Rove’s perspective, “a crackdown on voter registration campaigns in minority communities made cold electoral sense.” In close races, a key plank of his strategy “was to suppress black and Hispanic turnout — a task that would become far easier if the airwaves were buzzing with news of voter-fraud indictments. It was a task that required federal prosecutors who would indict first and ask questions later.”

[mod mom]

1. Thanks. It's a always just been a rovian scheme to suppress the Dem vote.

You might want to post this in ER where it won't fall so fast. :hi:

[L. Coyote]

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

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. ....

MORE in DU Archive Jun-22-07: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1159656

[underpants]

3. Excellent

Well done L.