By Kenneth J. Theisen, 5/14/07
Voter fraud or more accurately voter suppression appears to
be one of the motives behind the firings of U.S. prosecutors late last
year. According to the Washington Post,
five of the twelve attorneys who were actually fired or who were being
considered for firing were responsible for prosecuting voting law violations in
areas that Karl Rove or other high-level Republican officials thought were
“trouble spots for voter fraud.” The
five U.S.
attorneys were identified as being lax on voter fraud before their dismissals.
Wait a minute! We are
supposed to believe that the folks who stole the 2000 Presidential election and
then repeated the theft 4 years later care about voter fraud? Well yes and no.
It is obvious that Karl Rove and the Bush regime do not
really care about voters rights. But
they do care about power. And in order
to hold onto power the regime needs to make sure that the majority of votes
“recorded” support the regime. One way
to do this is to suppress the voting of the opposition. Even though Bush regime supporters make noise
about people voting repeatedly, dead people voting, or those that are not
eligible voting this is not really about what they are concerned.
What Rove and company really wanted was to create a
political climate by using voter fraud prosecutions to intimidate opposition
voters from actually voting and also to pass laws that would make voting more
difficult for those most likely to support the opposition. There are many types of laws that suppress
voting.
During the Jim Crow era there were literacy tests and poll
taxes. Blacks who sought to vote were
asked questions such as “Who were the first five U.S. Secretaries of State?” If the voter did not know the answer, they
failed the literacy test and could not vote.
The poll tax was an actual fee charged to vote which kept the poor from
voting due to the cost. But during the
60s both of these were outlawed.
So those that wish to suppress voting have to be more
creative. Some of the laws now used to suppress voting include voter
identification. These ID laws may restrict the forms of ID that are accepted at
the polls. In some cases this is a poll
tax as the ID may be costly. In other places the documentation necessary to get
the ID may be too cumbersome and discourage voting. Laws against convicted
felons voting are another effective law for voting suppression. Because of the discriminatory ways that
criminal laws are enforced these laws disproportionately affect people of color
and low-income persons. In many states
people with names similar to convicted felons were kept from voting. And many
non-felons were “mistakenly” put on the lists or purged from them. Some states
have passed laws requiring groups who register voters to meet stringent
requirements. At least one state
requires proof of citizenship and restricts what proof is acceptable. Ohio passed a law making
registration workers liable for the validity of registrations. Whenever these
laws are struck down, the right-wing thinks up a new one to limit voting.
But before you can pass these types of voter suppression
laws, you must convince the public that there is a need for them. If there is little voter fraud, why waste
time and money on new laws? This is why
the Bush regime was intent on having U.S. prosecutors bring voter fraud
prosecutions. Even if these cases were
not successful they create the idea that voter fraud is a problem. And if those who are prosecuted are in the population
that you wish to keep from voting, the prosecution can intimidate potential
voters.
From the time that the U.S. Attorneys were dismissed it has
been clear that the failure to bring voter-fraud cases was a factor in some of
the firings. But it appears to be a larger factor than thought. Recently it was
discovered that Prosecutor Todd Graves was told to resign in 2006 by the
Department of Justice (DOJ) after he failed to agree on a DOJ lawsuit involving
Missouri’s
voting rolls. In the last few elections,
Missouri was
a swing state and the suppression of votes there could greatly impact any
election.
Another U.S. Attorney also was the target of Rove complaints
because he was not aggressively pursuing voter fraud cases. He was the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
another close state. Prosecutor Steven Biskupic was spared though because the
DOJ thought his firing would cause trouble due to his support in Congress.
Earlier revelations have already come out about some of
President Bush’s role in the firings. The White House has admitted that Bush
passed along complaints to Gonzales about alleged voting fraud allegations in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania
and New Mexico., U.S. Prosecutor David Iglesias was fired in New Mexico after he was unsuccessfully pressured
to bring early charges against democrats just before the 2006 election by a
Republicans in Congress.
And Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political advisor, seemed to be
obsessed about voter fraud cases. Just
weeks before the 2006 mid-term elections, his office sent a packet to DOJ
containing voting data about Milwaukee.
But a DOJ employee reported to Congressional investigators that he didn’t act
on it because he felt doing so would be a violation of rules against
investigations just before elections.
Another of the fired prosecutors where “voting fraud” was a
factor is John McKay, the former U.S. Attorney in Seattle. The White House was upset with him
because he did not prosecute anyone after the disputed 2004 Washington
Governor’s race. McKay found no fraud. His
mistake seems to be not to have prosecuted someone anyway.
Daniel Bogden, the U.S. Attorney in Las
Vegas was also one of the dismissed U.S. prosecutors. According to notes turned over to Congress, Nevada was another area
allegedly on the list of voter fraud problem areas of concern to the White
House. All the areas identified as
problem areas just happened to be critical to the Republican chances of holding
onto Congress and had been identified as such by none other than Karl
Rove. What a coincidence?
But maybe I am just suspicious. According to our distinguished Attorney
General, DOJ has an obligation to prosecute voter fraud. “This notion that
somehow voter fraud is a dirty word, I don’t understand it, because you’re
talking about people stealing votes, canceling out legitimate votes,”
Gonzales says. And I am sure that the
former counsel to George W. Bush who helped him steal two elections would never
ever entertain any political motivations in suppressing votes.