http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5788675.html May 18, 2008, 2:22PM
Report: All state AG's cases in last 2 years target Dems
Associated Press
snip: DALLAS — Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, who said two years ago Texas faced an epidemic of vote fraud, has prosecuted 26 cases since then and all against Democrats, most of them blacks or Hispanics, according to a published report.
The cases have usually resulted in small fines and little or no jail time, The Dallas Morning News reported in Sunday's editions.
snip: Most of the cases his office pursued involved mail-in ballots. In 18 of the 26 cases, the voters were eligible and their votes were properly cast, but the people who gathered them for mailing were prosecuted. State law bans carrying someone else's completed ballot to the mailbox unless the carrier's name and address are on the envelope.
Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a group that supports Democrats, said Abbott has mostly gone after people in heavily Democratic precincts who helped elderly or disabled neighbors vote.
Angle called the prosecutions "an exercise in intimidation. They are trying to send a message to a much larger community that voting is a risky business."
snip: Jerry Strickland, spokesman for Abbott, said each case that the attorney general prosecuted started with a complaint from an outside party.
The newspaper said it couldn't tell how many complaints the attorney general has received or investigated because Abbott's office declined to release documents that the newspaper sought under public-records laws, except a list of the cases prosecuted.