The Voter Fraud Fraud

As Kentuckians prepare to vote tomorrow, it's a good time to look more closely at the very real national GOP effort to stop Democrats from voting.

Josh Marshall, who recently won the prestigous George Polk Award for Talking Points Memo's exclusive exposure of the U.S. Attorney's scandal, brings us up to speed on the latest bamboozlement. I trust he will forgive me for quoting his post in full, as every word is critical.

For TPM's full coverage of the Voter Fraud Fraud, go here.

Since its inception, TPM has been chronicling the Republican party's efforts to push bogus or wildly exaggerated claims of vote fraud to suppress voting among predominantly Democratic constituencies like the old, the poor and the non-white. And here we have another installment from the GOP vote fraud bamboozlement file.

Two years ago Texas' Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas. He set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.

Now, two years on, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News, we have a run-down of what Abbot came up with -- 26 cases.

The details tell the story: All 26 cases involved Democrats, and almost were either blacks or Hispanics.

Of the 26, 8 appear to have been genuine cases of fraud, two of which were cases of people actually casting fraudulent ballots, as opposed to bogus registrations.

The remaining 18 cases all involved eligible voters casting legitimate mail-in ballots. The 'fraud' was that others collected the ballots and deposited them in mailboxes without putting their own name and address on the envelope in which the mail-in ballot was sent. These latter instances were almost all cases involving elderly or disabled voters who could not easily mail their own mail-in ballots. In other words, the great majority of the cases in his meager haul were technical violations that non-politicized prosecutor's offices most likely never would have pursued.

The final verdict is one that will be familiar to anyone who's followed this on-going scam. Claims of widespread vote fraud justify big investigations, which more or less transparently target minorities, and find at most a handful of actual cases of wrongdoing.

No one denies there are isolated cases of vote fraud. The question is how organized and widespread it is, whether it's affecting the outcomes of any actual elections, and whether (depending on the answers to those questions) whether the extent of the problem justifies measures which also have the effect of making it either more difficult or more perilous for eligible voters to exercise their rights at the ballot box. The fact that these politicized and morally corrupt prosecutors offices can't come up with more than a trivial number of actual cases makes the answer to the question pretty straightforward.

Remember the larger context too. In the case of the US Attorney firings, most of the dismissals targeted prosecutors who refused to use the power of their office to advance the interests of the Republican party by engaging in these kinds of witch hunts.

Not surprisingly, Abbot is also pushing for a new law in Texas to require photo IDs to be allowed to vote -- the latest gambit to try to shave a few percentage points off voter participation among the targeted groups.

Nor should we forget that President Bush just spent five months in a stand-off with the senate over his efforts to put the country's top voter-suppression guru, Hans von Spakovsky, on the FEC.

Late Update: TPM Reader GS points out that the Texas Observer had a really good piece on Abbott's shenanigans back in April. Give it a look.

So when you approach the poll worker tomorrow, and show the driver's license that Kentucky law demands as proof you are worthy of the opportunity to vote, remember all your indigent, homeless, elderly, disabled and just plain eccentric fellow American citizens who are barred from voting because the fascists in the General Assembly don't think they deserve to vote.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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Electronic voting still unaccountable

Voting machines: Can you trust them? The issue heats up nationally as one state faces a lawsuit.

Once again, electronic voting problems have resurfaced as Topic A during the election season. MoveOn.org sent email alerts to sign an "urgent petition asking local, state, and federal officials to require paper ballots" and cited the Sunday NYTimes Magazine cover story, "Can You Count on Voting Machines?" The answer is no. Next week, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) plans to introduce an emergency bill to fund a "push for paper ballots and vote count audits" before November 2008. With so much at stake, we can't afford to allow our next president and legislators to be decided by unreliable e-voting machines.

In Georgia, the electronic voting fight will head to court after years of battling resistance to overhaul the state's Diebold touch-screen system with a verifiable audit trail. On July 13, 2006, VoterGA.org filed suit to challenge the state's e-voting -- a system that was nationally ranked last by the conservative D.C.-based Free Congress Foundation. Says a lot, doesn't it? When the lawsuit comes before a Superior Court judge next month, voters will hopefully learn what election remedies the state must undertake if VoterGA wins its motion for summary judgment.

The counts in the lawsuit -- which names the Georgia State Election Board, former Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox (D), and Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) as defendants -- are persuasive. Via email, I received an update from Garland Favorito of VoterGA (with emphasis):

...the lawyers are currently finishing a motion for Summary Judgment in which we are asking the judge to rule in our favor on each count because the state has admitted most of our contentions in deposition.

...the evidence was clear the electronic voting machines were acquired illegally in 2001 [count No. 8] and never properly certified before use in 2002 [count No. 9].

The lawsuit was amended to include this new evidence to bolster the case. As a result, VoterGA's attorney Walker Chandler agreed to an extension giving the defendants time to examine the acquisition and certification evidence until the newly-agreed February 2008 court date.

We now have completed what I think is an absolutely compelling case and have a good chance to win some of the counts without a trial. If we win any one of seven counts we will have essentially won the suit against the current voting machine implementation and the state will be forced to make a major change. Here is an overview of the counts of the lawsuit:

[Keep reading... more after the jump!]

1. The state law currently attempts to exempt voting machines from the Constitutional requirement to produce a ballot

2. The Georgia Constitution states that elections are conducted by the people but the people cannot even verify any of the three key aspects of voting,

Choosing candidates on their ballot;

Casting their ballot;

Counting the votes.

3. The law requires that every ballot be recorded correctly and accurately at the time the voting machines are used on Election Day and it is impossible to implement any procedure to confirm that the ballots cast on Election Day were recorded correctly and accurately.

4. A re-accumulation of electronic ballots has and will always produce the same results as the original count and therefore subverts the intent of the law that entitles candidates to a legitimate recount of votes when the margin of victory is within 1% of the total votes cast.

5. The electronic voting machine implementation does not provide Constitutionally required equal protection for electronic voters vs. optically scanned absentee ballot voters because:

Electronic ballots can only be re-accumulated and not recounted for recounts

Electronic ballots can only be re-accumulated and not recounted when it is necessary to investigate discrepancies

The voter cannot verify what is on an electronic ballot as they can on an optical scanned ballot

6. The law requires that every ballot be recorded correctly and accurately at the time the voting machines are used on Election Day and the new technology piloted in 2006 still renders it impractical to implement a procedure to confirm that the ballots cast on Election Day were recorded correctly and accurately.

7. The new technology piloted in 2006 produces a sequential roll of ballots in the exact order in which the voters voted and therefore cannot ensure secrecy of the ballot as required by the Georgia Constitution

8. The electronic voting machines were procured illegally in 2001 because the law required them to have an independent audit trail for each vote cast and the machines do not have any such capability that is independent of the machine or its vote casting mechanism

9. The voting machines that were implemented in 2002 were improperly certified because:

The state is unable to produce the state certification reports required by state law

The machines do not meet the 1990 and 2002 federal standards that require them to prevent fraudulent manipulation the vote and identify each person to whom access is granted,

The machines were not recertified after they were patched in the summer of 2002

10. The judge has the authority to rule on these matters (Mandamus)

Essentially, the state's Diebold electronic voting system remains unaccountable and "cannot be verified, audited, or recounted."

Garland Favorito, one of the plaintiffs, will provide more details in the future as the case progresses. All state electors, the plaintiffs on behalf of approximately nine million voters include eight members from a wide spectrum of political affiliations -- the Constitution Party, the Georgia Green Party, a Democratic campaign worker, the Libertarian Action Network, and the non-partisan group Defenders of Democracy.

Something as fundamentally democratic as voting can bring together a diverse mix of folks. On getting e-voting right, they are united.

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Schlozman out at Department of "Just Us"

Bradley Schlozman has resigned, sneaking out last week, his exit unannounced. An exit like that is truly an embarrassment for such a high-profile Loyal Bushie. That is called leaving not with a bang, but with the proverbial whimper. Schlozman skulks away a pariah in the legal community, an abject failure, having seen his grand voter suppression schemes blow up in his face, revealing to the entire world that he is nothing more than a gormless cheat. (Rather like the much ballyhooed and terribly overestimated Karl Rove.)

I take personal the truncation of the Department of Justice. The feckless Schlozman was the U.S. Attorney in my city, installed without a Senate confirmation after Todd Graves was wrongly fired. From that position, Schlozman abused his power to derail the political career of Katherine Shields, a prominent Kansas City Democrat. He replaced the ninth fired U.S. Attorney, Todd Graves, who was very much John Ashcroft’s man, and had a sense of right and wrong, and refused to tamper with elections. Schlozman had no such qualms of conscience. He came to us from the Voting Rights Division, where his purpose was to suppress the rights of groups that were likely to vote for Democrats. One of the most revolting schemes he cooked up was the caging strategy that was used to deny African American members of the armed services their Constitutional right to vote. He and fellow political operative Hans Von Spakovsky schemed to politicize the hiring process for career Justice Department officials and eviscerate the Voting Rights Division. They were successful in doing so, but at steep cost. Throughout the Justice Department, positions remain unfilled. People simply do not want to work for the Department in this politicized environment, feeling that any connection with the Gonzalez Department of Just Us would be a kiss of death to a career they want to see continue past January 2009.

Schlozman is merely the latest perjuring rat to desert the sinking ship that is the Gonzalez Just Us Department. He is the latest hack to leave, joining Goodling, Sampson, Taylor, McNulty, Elston, and Mercer…just off the top of my head.

Like the others, he will not be missed. This is just more good riddance to bad rubbish.

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