As a southerner who has *seen* Republican voter intimidation operations (their euphemism being "voter fraud investigations"), there's no way around this being about suppressing minority vote. I don't know whether that's as painfully evident to everyone as to me; if so, it's not being said out loud enough: This is not about voter fraud. It's about suppressing minority vote. It's communicating to voters that if they vote, there's a chance they'll get caught in a hostile legal system.

Don't go vote, the lines are too long at a your polling place. And they'll ask for an id and if they trip you up, you could end up being prosecuted. Look at these ordinary people who tripped up! The Republican precinct workers here in Mississippi are a very hostile presence in precincts with serious numbers of minority voters. (I got shoved by one at a particularly heated point in an election here, and told him if he touched me again he was going to find himself arrested).

One prosecution was someone who filled out two registration forms *because the election workers told him to do so.*

This goes way back. One of the things that emerged about Wm. Rehnquist in his two confirmation hearings was his role in Republican voter suppression as a young lawyer in Arizona.

I've heard Republicans try to argue that this is just their version of equivalent work done on the Democratic side. What would the Democratic equivalent be? Voter registration drives and having vans working turn out operations?

From the reigning monarch of stolen elections comes an concern about voter fraud. Godwin, meet Kafka.

Can anyone suggest a productive alternative to just smashing a bunch of stuff?

Here is a Gonzo-Gate story that will really make you angry. Bud Cummins is one of the eight attorneys recently fired (serving the state of Arkansas). His replacement: J. Timothy Griffin.

Here is what Truthout says about Mr. Griffin:
"Through a process known as "caging," Griffin's team sent letters to newly registered voters in envelopes barring any forwarding, so they would be returned if a voter wasn't at that address. BBC's investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovered Griffin's role in this practice that proved especially effective in "caging" African-Americans who lived in low-income areas or who were serving in the U.S. military. The "caged" voters would then be challenged by Republican lawyers when they arrived at the polls. According to Palast and his BBC report, Griffin "was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election. Key voters on Griffin's hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women." Palast noted that "targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

Link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_200...6/ 032907F.shtml

Needless to say, I will be covering this in my forthcoming book on the Florida 2000 Recount. More to the point, state and federal election laws were violated by Griffin, who should be prosecuted as an offender, certainly not rewarded with an Attorney General appointment. This is especially galling. The emerging picture: A pernicious and pervasive attempt to guarantee neo-con majorities in future elections, by hook and by crook. Result: Minorities will again become disenfranchised.

That's the maddening thing -- people can sincerely be worried about voter fraud; it's reasonable to have safeguards against it, and some concern about whether those safeguards work properly doesn't make you a bad person. The issue is the difference in magnitude between the opposing problems -- of blocking and discouraging legit votes, versus stopping illegal votes. All the resources of the Justice Department comes up with dozens of illegal votes nationwide; while the proposed extra safeguards and wrongful overenforcement of current laws affect tens of thousands of voters.

One of the things that have come out in this whole USA flap is that the majority of the 100+ Federal fraud prosecutions (7-1 against Democrats, IIRC) are state and local cases which wouldn't normally make the national news. The stuff in Wisconsin only came to light because of the USA firings, and there are two cases in Minnesota (in the Twin Cities and in an Indian Reservation) which have only come to light because of the Paulose appointment (even though Paulose wasn't involved personally).

Legal intimidation is accompanied with illegal or deceptive practices such as distributing bogus fliers, bogus robo-calls, etc. It's mostly low-level small-time but there's a lot of it and it adds up.

I've heard Republicans try to argue that this is just their version of equivalent work done on the Democratic side. What would the Democratic equivalent be?

Idealist has argued here recently that the Democratic equivalent is actual tampering with the voting machines and tampering with the ballot boxes. That is, of course, something that is both a Democratic and a Republican problem, depending on who is in charge. I've never heard any non-psychopath claim that voting by noneligible voters is a serious issue nowadays.

By "who is in charge" I mean "who is in charge locally", not "who runs the US government".

I don't think Idealist's claims were quite that strong -- he said he'd personally seen somewhere around five or fewer voting machines with extra votes for Democrats on them, and none for Republicans. He might commit himself to a claim that Democrats commit voting fraud and Republicans don't, but I doubt it.

He might commit himself to a claim that Democrats commit voting fraud and Republicans don't, but I doubt it.

One of my strongest objections to the current mode of political discourse is that I would never be so foolish as a claim that my allies are all virtuous or that my opponents are all evil or stupid, so no, I would never make that claim. Who does it is a function of many things, including I am sure--as Cryptic Ned notes above in 7--who is in charge and thus has the practical opportunity and power to do stuff. For example, the Democratic Party machinery in Brooklyn has for a long time, and much in the news recently, been implicated in corruption related to the appointment and election of state court judges. This mostly is a function, I would argue, of the combination of how judges end up on the bench here with the complete dominance of the Democratic Party in Kings County, and not much about the inherent corruptness of the local Democratic Party.

I believe him, but I don't think anyone pointed out at the time that his concerns are a non-sequitur with respect to the "problem" that is actually being "addressed" by all these efforts to disenfranchise voters. Tampering with the voting machines by the people in charge is a completely different issue from fraud perpetrated to increase the number of people voting.

At noon today this was reported: those 1,000s of e-mails on White House/GOP terminals may be irretrievably lost. How convenient.

Oh, and here he is. Unfortunately I have to go do flow cytometry now.

10: And, you know, Brooklyn generally. Whaddya gonna do? Geez, those guys were blatant.

I have to go do flow cytometry now

That sounds nasty. There must be an ATM joke there someplace.

Me, I have to go listen to various panelists talk about biotech licensing.

No, what's nasty is the 24-hour fecal fat test. Also, toxicology tests on the decomposed livers of recovered bodies.

Boy Emerson, the hoops people have to go through to be eligible to vote these days are awful.

"... individual errors, resulting in a vote here and a vote there that should not have been case, have no effect at all on the outcome of elections ..."

This is not true. The errors can be biased in one direction. Perhaps this will be more obvious to you if you consider individual errors caused by bad ballot design.

My point's not resting on the idea that the individually improper votes are randomly cast. I'd be perfectly willing to believe that erroneously improper votes trend Democratic, on the ground that people in categories that might be mistaken about their entitlement to vote (immigrants, felons) might trend Democratic. The point is that the individually improper votes are few in number. All this prosecutorial effort, and they're coming up with dozens of bad votes nationwide, when you'd need thousands in an individual race to have an effect.

"Perhaps this will be more obvious to you if you consider individual errors caused by bad ballot design."

That would strike me as a systematic error.

20

You are making some distinction between a confusing ballot design and confusing voter eligibility rules?