"Florida 2000 Redux": Republican Claims of Voter Fraud, and Their Preference for Vote Suppression

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:37 PM EDT

Article Source: washingtonindependent.com

politics, mccain, election, republican, john-mccain, gop, election-2008, 2008-election, presidential-election, acorn, voter-fraud, voter-registration, community-organizer, vote-suppression, project-vote, obama-barack-obama, multiple-registration

Seeded by iarnuocon

Such registration problems don't mean people are committing voter fraud, however. Experts point out that even if someone moves and registers to vote at their new address without canceling their old registration, there's no evidence that they actually vote twice.

It's a point the Supreme Court acknowledged in April, even as it upheld Indiana's controversial voter identification requirement. "Indiana's voter registration rolls include a large number of names of persons who are either deceased or no longer live in Indiana," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority in Crawford v. Marion County.

Still, there was no evidence that someone was trying to vote on their behalf. "The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history," Stevens wrote, noting that to do so would be a felony. In fact, to find an example of widespread voter impersonation the court had to reach back to the New York City elections of 1868, in which William (Boss) Tweed sent "repeaters" to vote in different names.

..."Voter fraud is a huge canard," said Robert Atkins, a partner at Paul Weiss Rifkind & Garrison who is working with the Brennan Center on the case against Florida. "There's a long history of systemic attempts to rip off elections. There's no evidence to support individual efforts of voter fraud. It's a sham."

Indeed, until 2007, the Justice Dept. policy was not even to investigate claims of individual voter fraud, on the grounds that it has "only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process."

That policy was changed by the Bush administration to allow prosecution of individuals at the prosecutor's discretion. Congressional hearings later revealed that some of the U.S. attorneys fired under Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales were targeted due to their failure to prosecute claims of voter fraud urged by Republicans in their districts.

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Meanwhile, the Brennan Center's studies show that rules like the one Wisconsin's attorney general is advocating disenfranchise thousands of people – most often the poor, elderly and minorities.

In Florida, for example, where the Brennan Center sued the state on behalf of the state's NAACP, studies showed that black voters made up 13 percent of all registration applicants, but were 26 percent of all matching problems. Similarly, Latinos were 15 percent of the total voting population, and 39 percent of those blocked; while white voters were 66 percent of the voter applicant pool, but only 17 percent of those whose applications didn't match.

"The law inevitably leads to higher and heavier burdens being placed on less affluent voters and voters of color," said Adam Skaggs, counsel for the Brennan Center. "So more of those voters will have their votes not counted in November. And as we saw in 2000, it can take only a couple hundred voters to make the difference in the election."

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#1 - Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:51 PM EDT

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"Florida 2000 Redux": Republican Claims of Voter Fraud, and Their Preference for Vote Suppression

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