Phony Fraud Charges???

NYT reported In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud.

Maybe the reason there is no evidence is that the attorneys refused to investigate the complaints.

But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

Do "minorities and poor people" have some sort of right to vote multiple times?

John McKay, one of the fired attorneys, says he was pressured by Republicans to bring voter fraud charges after the 2004 Washington governor’s race, which a Democrat, Christine Gregoire, won after two recounts. Republicans were trying to overturn an election result they did not like, but Mr. McKay refused to go along. “There was no evidence,” he said, “and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.”

The purpose of the grand jury is to determine whether there is evidence or not.

Later, when he interviewed with Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, for a federal judgeship that he ultimately did not get, he says, he was asked to explain “criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor’s election.”

What was the answer?

Mr. McKay is not the only one of the federal attorneys who may have been brought down for refusing to pursue dubious voter fraud cases. Before David Iglesias of New Mexico was fired, prominent New Mexico Republicans reportedly complained repeatedly to Karl Rove about Mr. Iglesias’s failure to indict Democrats for voter fraud. The White House said that last October, just weeks before Mr. McKay and most of the others were fired, President Bush complained that United States attorneys were not pursuing voter fraud aggressively enough.

Then he did the right thing by firing people that were not doing enough. After all, they serve "at the pleasure of the President, and if he is not pleased, they should go."

There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in this country.

There certainly have been many examples of voter fraud. What about the fake voter registration forms submitted by the highly partisan ACORN group. What does it take before the NYT sees them as rampant. Do Republicans have to benefit, and is voter fraud that helps Dems O.K. with the NYT.

Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. They have intimidated Native American voter registration campaigners in South Dakota with baseless charges of fraud. They have pushed through harsh voter ID bills in states like Georgia and Missouri, both blocked by the courts, that were designed to make it hard for people who lack drivers’ licenses — who are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities — to vote.

You have to have a photo id to board a plane, or cash a check, or fill some prescriptions at the pharmacy counter, or rent a video at Blockbuster. And Georgia, at least, was willing to provide them for free to low income people, and have a van that drove to the neighborhoods to issue the cards.

Florida passed a law placing such onerous conditions on voter registration drives, which register many members of minorities and poor people, that the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its registration work in the state.

Maybe that was because of the fake voter registration forms submitted by the highly partisan ACORN group.

Rick Moran blogged I guess thousands of fake voter registration forms submitted by the highly partisan ACORN as well as other frauds perpetrated by the usual suspects at the AFL-CIO, Moveon, and other liberal advocacy groups should be allowed into the system – at least according to the Times. We wouldn’t want to disturb the moronic notion that partisan Republicans use “code” to differentiate between real people and sock puppets who would be capable of voting 5, 10, or 20 times at different polling stations. Democrats never perpetrate these kinds of frauds – just ask the dead people in any Chicago cemetery and they’ll swear on their graves that such shenanigans never take place.