Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers is reporting that Claire McCaskill was the target of a coordinated voter suppression campaign conducted by Missouri's Republican legislature, Matt Blunt, and the Karl Rove Justice Department, lead by voter suppression specialist Brad Schlozman. Hiding behind claims of massive "voter fraud" the Republican voter suppression efforts were cynically aimed directly at minority and poor voters. The Republican campaign was thwarted by timely rulings of from Federal and Missouri courts. As evidence of the coordinated nature of the Republican voter suppression campaign Gordon points to the following:
-Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.Last August Ajbari Asim wrote in a Washington Post Op-ed of the then soon to be held unconstitutional Missouri voter ID law:
-The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House's help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.
-Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat.
-Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election.
-In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he'd just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who "are well aware of" the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had "a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene" to keep the election clean.
Blunt and others say the law will prevent fraud. Their opponents rightly point out that the measure disproportionately affects those who have been disfranchised in the past, such as the poor and racial minorities. Besides, they argue, Missouri hasn't exactly suffered from an epidemic of imposters showing up to vote.You can read the Missouri Supreme Court opinion in Weinschenk v. Missouri here.
As one of the lawsuits filed to block the measure puts it, "It is statistically more likely for a Missourian to be struck by a bolt of lightning than to have his or her vote canceled by someone posing as another voter to cast a ballot."
UPDATE: For a sample of how this story is being blogged locally, you might want to check out KC Blue Blog's comment.
Elected officials inside the Missouri Republican Party may have knowingly worked with political operatives in accomplishing this goal. Thomas Hearne, a high dollar Republican from St. Louis, founded the non-profit Center for American Voting Rights, in Feb. 2005. This center was used as the hub for drafting reports that purposely launched hysteria campaigns involving non existent voter fraud, or cases that were investigated and found to be nothing, to give the appearance that it was a massive problem in Missouri and other swing states. For the record, over the last 5 years nationwide there have only been a total of just over 100 cases total.
Republican State Senator Delbert Scott (R-MO), along with other Republican State Representatives and Senators worked with Mr. Hearne to draft legislation to restrict lower income voters through their "Voter ID Bill" which was found to be unconstitutional. In making the argument Republican State Representatives and Senators, including every Lee's Summit State Representative, may have been told to make these hyped up, fake claims of "preventing dogs and cats from voting, etc." in speeches and local newspaper articles to create an illusion that the bill was needed, so that the real reason wasn't focused on.
