Mark Kirk Accused Of Hiring 'Voter Intimidation Specialist' For Voter Integrity Squad (VIDEO)

[ProSense]

Mark Kirk Accused Of Hiring 'Voter Intimidation Specialist' For Voter Integrity Squad (VIDEO)

Is Mark Kirk planning a Karl Rove-inspired voter intimidation program in Chicago this November? His opponent Alexi Giannoulias thinks so--and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann linked a key figure in Kirk's "voter integrity squad" to voter intimidation that occurred in black communities while President Bush was in office.

Last week, ABC 7 Chicago obtained a recording of Kirk saying that he planned to hire a voter integrity squad to monitor African-American communities in Chicagoland that tend to vote Democratic.

"These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat," Kirk says on the tape. While the Kirk campaign says this strategy will keep the election honest, others are crying foul.

In an interview with Talking Points Memo this week, Michael C. Dorf, a lawyer for the Giannoulias campaign, said these "voter integrity squads" are actually scare tactics, being used by Republicans on a national level to frighten voters in minority and low-income areas out of casting a ballot.

Also, as Olbermann pointed out Thursday on his show, Hans von Spakovsky was in Chicago this week recruiting Republican attorneys for "voter integrity" efforts. In 2006, von Spakovsky, according to the Washington Post, pushed to require Georgia voters to provide photo identification that had to be purchased--basically creating a poll tax that disproportionately affected the black community.

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Rove's Voter Suppression Guru Swings Through Chicago

Last night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann examined Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Mark Kirk's "voter integrity” program. Michael Dorf, General Counsel for the Alexi Giannoulias campaign, told the anchor what steps his office was taking to ensure nobody in the precincts Kirk allegedly wants to target will be scared away from the polls. Watch it:

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Perhaps the most interesting tidibt from the spot was the news that Hans von Spakovsky was in Chicago yesterday http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mRbAL49umnYJ:https://www.fed-soc.org/events/id.2674/event_detail.asp+Voter+Fraud+%26+the+Election">talking to a local Federalist Society chapter about "steps (that) can be taken to minimize the opportunities to commit fraud and change election outcomes." Von Spakovsky, a member of the Federal Election Commission during the last Bush Administration, was one of Karl Rove's voter suppression gurus, helping to politicize the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. As Talking Points Memo put it, the man worked to "purge voters from the rolls, ensure that voter ID laws were approved with no fuss, and punish lawyers who did not toe the line."

While the Federalist Society is not connected to the Illinois Republican Party in any way, it's certainly conceivable that the folks who attended his lecture might be game to volunteer for poll-watching duties organized by the party.

Coincident?

Here is a http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mRbAL49umnYJ:https://www.fed-soc.org/events/id.2674/event_detail.asp+Voter+Fraud+%26+the+Election">cache of the page announcing the Von Spakovsky event from the Federal Society site.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Gee, what's the matter? They losing faith in their computers? nt

[AspenRose]

2. They caught wind that the black vote plans to show up en masse.

I'd expect as much. Shouldn't surprise anyone anymore.

[ShadowLiberal]

3. We need to organize our own 'integrity squad' to expose them on camera

Seriously, it's time we do something about this crap republicans keep on pulling.

The GOP used heavily edited videos to bring down ACORN, why can't we get people to follow Kirk's 'integrity squad' around with cameras and then upload all the stuff that makes them look bad to YouTube. Hell, maybe we'll get really lucky and a video will go so viral that the national media covers it and blasts the GOP for intimidating voters.

I've read that people in other countries with military/police that bully civilians and try to steal their property/keep them off of their own land have had great success getting them to back off by carrying a video camera everywhere with them.

[angee_is_mad]

4. this democratic win is all base on AA turnout

and the rethugs, and teabaggers know this man!!!!!