Vanishing Voter Fraud
Posted on | June 10, 2007
The Republican effort to trump up imaginary voter fraud into an excuse to trample voting rights has disappeared before our eyes as the US Attorney scandal escalates:
Imagine that the National Rifle Association’s Web site suddenly disappeared, along with all the data and reports the group had ever posted on gun issues. Imagine that Planned Parenthood inexplicably closed its doors one day, without comment from its former leaders. The scenarios are unthinkable, given how established these groups are. But even if something did happen to either, no doubt other gun or abortion groups would quickly fill the vacuum.
Not so for the American Center for Voting Rights, which has vanished with no notice, little comment and with no apparent replacement. This operation – the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem – simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences sometime late last year.
Its Web domain name has expired, its reports are all gone (except where they have been preserved by its opponents), and its general counsel, Mark Hearne, has cleansed his résumé of his affiliation. He also won’t speak to the press about the group’s demise.
Its life and death says a lot about the Karl Rove-led Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. One part of the attack, at the heart of the Justice Department scandals, involved getting U.S. attorneys in battleground states to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud. After exhaustive effort, Justice discovered virtually no polling-place voter fraud, and its efforts to fire U.S. attorneys who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfired.
But the second prong of this attack may have proven more successful. This involved using the American Center for Voting Rights to give “think tank” cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem. The center’s work was used to support the passage of onerous voter-identification laws that depress turnout among the poor, minorities and the elderly – groups more likely to vote Democratic.
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