Voting

Von Spakovsky: 1982 Feels Just Like Yesterday

Kate Klonick | October 31, 2008, 6:48PM

Rick Hasen over at Election Law Blog has a great find from a recent FOX News opinion piece written by legendary voter suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky:

One doesn't have to look far to find instances of fraudulent ballots cast in actual elections by 'voters' who were the figments of active imaginations. In 1984, a district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y. (a Democrat), released the findings of a grand jury that reported extensive registration and impersonation fraud between 1968 and 1982.

Other things that happened in 1982:

• The end of commercial whaling

• The first compact discs -- commonly known as CDs -- are released in Germany

• The Double Stuf Oreo goes on sale.

• The Dow hits an all-time high of 1,065.49.

• Michael Jackson releases Thriller.

• Time's "Man of the Year" is given to the first non-human: The Computer.

Voting

Colorado's Secretary of State Goes Rogue

Kate Klonick | October 31, 2008, 6:30PM

Despite just reaching a settlement with voter rights groups on Wednesday, Colorado's Secretary of State Mike Coffman has continued to purge voters from the roll, causing a judge to issue a cease and desist order.

Earlier today, Coffman told the Rocky Mountain News that the settlement "still allowed him to remove voters from the state rolls when he found duplicate names, people who moved or deceased voters." An interpretation voter rights groups have roundly dismissed.

"The Court unambiguously stated that Colorado's voter cancellation practices violated federal law," Myrna Perez counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice -- a party in the suit -- told TPMmuckraker. "The Secretary of State and Colorado counties must provide the agreed upon safeguards to protect the voters adversely affected by the illegal practices."

The suit against Coffman alleged that more than 35,000 voters were purged from the rolls based on a faulty system for identifying illegitimate voters, and within 90 days of the election -- both of which violate the federal Voting Rights Act. The settlement allowed for 20,000 purged voters to be put back on the rolls and cast provisional ballots in Tuesday's election.

ACORN

Von Spakovsky and Co. Urge DOJ To Keep Probing Voter Fraud

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 6:15PM

Five ex-DOJ officials have written to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, urging him to keep investigating whether ACORN committed voter fraud in its registration efforts, Roll Call reports.

The group, led by leading voting-rights foe Hans Von Spakovsky, wrote:

"We hope that you will assure the American people that your Department intends to investigate and prosecute any and all instances of voter registration and other fraud occurring in the days leading up to the election, and that you will enforce all of the federal voting rights laws that are important to preserving the fairness and security of the election process..."

The other members of the group, according to Roll Call, are Former Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds and former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General Roger Clegg, Michael Carvin and Robert Driscoll.

Earlier this month, sources leaked to the Associated Press that the FBI had launched a naitonwide investigation into ACORN. Since then, few details about the probe have emerged. DOJ has declined to confirm its existence on the record, and ACORN recently said it had not been contacted in connection to the investigation.

Von Spakovsky was nominated for a seat on the Federal Elections Commission last year, but the Democratic Senate refused to confirm him. TPMmuckraker reported in August that he had been given a temporary appointment at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Voting

Conyers To Boehner: Enough With The Voter Fraud!

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 5:51PM

House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has released a statement in response to Republican leader John Boehner's various recent efforts to get the Justice Department to pay more attention to voter fraud, despite scant evidence of such fraud.

Writes Conyers:

This endless campaign to press the Department into pursuing phantom claims of 'voter fraud' must end. So-called "voter fraud" is vanishingly rare and every time this subject is given a careful look it is found to have essentially no concrete impact in our elections. Indeed, according to Justice Department data, out of almost 200 million votes cast in federal elections since October 2002, only 102 individuals have been convicted of federal voter fraud offenses. Thus, Republican agitation on this issue is both unnecessary and costly, as Department resources are needed to combat serious matters of voter suppression. Fliers distributed in Virginia this week using state letterhead to mislead Democrats and Independents about the date of the election and recent reports of violence and intimidation against citizens working to register and turnout voters are real-world problems that directly impact citizens' right to vote. It is also disconcerting to see Members of Congress criticizing career personnel of the Department for their private political activity, which intrudes deeply upon their privacy and appears to have no bearing on their job performance.

Voting

Feingold Weighs in on WI AG's Plans for Prosecutor Poll Watchers

Kate Klonick | October 31, 2008, 5:11PM

Wisconin's junior senator, Russ Feingold, joined the fray over Attorney Gen. J.B. Van Hollen's announcement this week that he would be sending 50 state prosecutors and agents to polls to protect against voter fraud.

"[T]he announcement and execution of your plans may have the effect of discouraging legitimate voters from attempting to cast their votes, and I urge you to reconsider your decision," Feingold wrote in a letter to Van Hollen published by the Capital Times. "I also encourage you to ensure that criminal law enforcement personnel are not deployed at polling stations."

Calling it "widely acknowledged" that law enforcement personnel can lead to intimidated and discouraged voters, Feingold asked for Van Hollen to provide detailed information about how DOJ employees will be deployed.

Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle called Van Hollen's poll watchers an "obvious Republican strategy." Last week, a court threw out a suit by Van Hollen that would have called for additional checks of voter registrations.

But Van Hollen doesn't seem to be fazed by these setbacks and detractors. The GOP AG sent a letter Wednesday asking chief district court judges across the state to alert him on Election Day in case he has to "initiate emergency election-related proceedings."

Michael Mukasey

DOJ's List Of Counties For Election-Day Monitoring Looks On The Level

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 5:01PM

As we noted earlier, the Department of Justice yesterday released a list of counties across the country to which it will send teams of federal observers to monitor polling places, as it does every election year.

Given DOJ's mixed record in recent years in protecting voting rights, and its efforts to push voter fraud cases despite a lack of evidence, we asked some experts whether the list of sites selected seemed appropriate.

Both Gerry Hebert, a former acting head of DOJ's voting-rights section, and Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a leading authority on voting law, said that it did.

Hebert, however, questioned the decision to send monitors to Noxubee and Wilkinson counties in Mississippi.

Hebert noted in an email to TPMmuckraker that in Noxubee, DOJ brought a controversial, though ultimately successful, suit on behalf of white voters in 2006, representing the first time that the Voting Rights Act had been used on behalf of whites.

"What interest would they have in sending federal observers now,?" Hebert asked.

As for Wilkinson county, Hebert wrote: "It's hard to see why DOJ would send poll watchers to a county where the issues seem to be among two factions of black voters and not alleged discrimination by whites."

Still, these concerns aside, it sounds like there's little reason to believe that DOJ's list skews inappropriately toward making hay out of swing-state voter-fraud claims at the expense of a focus on voter intimidation.

The complete list follows after the jump...

Read more »

voter fraud

Another Court Rejects GOP Bid To Shut Down Indiana Early-Voting Sites

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 4:33PM

The Indiana Republican Party just lost what looks like its last chance to shut down early voting centers in three heavily Democratic cities in Lake County.

A state appeals court judge has ruled, as expected, that the centers can stay open -- backing an earlier ruling by a county court.

County Republicans had sued to shut down the centers, arguing that a unanimous vote - rather than a simple majority -- of the county election board was required to open them.

The centers at issue are located in the cities of East Chicago, Gary, and Hammond, all of which are heavily Democratic, and crucial to Barack Obama's hopes of victory in the state.

Early voting has been proceeding at the centers for the last few weeks.

Voting

Boehner: DOJ Politicized ... In Favor of Dems!

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 3:41PM

At last, a high-ranking Republican has admitted what many Democrats and independent observers have maintained since the scandal over the US Attorney firings -- that, under President Bush, the Department of Justice has been inappropriately politicized.

But according to John Boehner, the House GOP leader, that politicization was actually carried out ... by Democrats.

Boehner today released a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he complained about the department's decision no longer to include federal prosecutors in its teams of election observers, as it has done in previous years.

He also cited recent reports that some top officials in the department's voting-rights section had contributed to Barack Obama's campaign.

Writes Boehner:

Frankly, the real motive behind the Department's decision is undeniably suspect given that Obama partisans in key positions at the Department of Justice may well have played a pivotal role in making it.

Earlier this week, DOJ announced that it would decline a request by Boehner -- forwarded by the White House -- to intervene in a voting dispute in Ohio, on behalf of state Republicans.

Yesterday, the department released a list of the polling places to which it will send its team of observers. We'll have more on that shortly.

Boehner's full letter follows after the jump...

Read more »

ACORN

Penn Judge Rejects GOP Suppression Bid

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 9:21AM

Add Pennsylvania to the list of states where GOP voter suppression efforts are going down in flames.

A state judge yesterday declined to support a grab-bag of a lawsuit filed by the party, which had sought to require ACORN both to turn over a list of the 140,000 voters it says it has registered, which could have made it easier for the GOP to challenge voters at the polls.

The suit also sought, among other things, to force ACORN air public-service announcements reminding first-time voters that they must bring identification to the polls, and to compel the state to provide more provisional ballots.

According to the Associated Press, the judge, Robert Simpson Jr., said "he was not convinced that the party and its fellow individual plaintiffs can ultimately prove their allegations that ACORN is fostering voter-registration fraud and that the state's election system lacks the safeguards to stop it."

Another one, apparently, bites the dust.

House Judiciary

Conyers Wants DOJ Action On Virginia Flier

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2008, 5:30PM

The phony flier that surfaced recently in Virginia, instructing Democrats to vote on Wednesday November 5th, has drawn the attention of House Judiciary Chair John Conyers.

As we wrote Monday, the flier, which surfaced in largely African-American areas of the Hampton Roads region, is designed to look like an official communication from the state board of elections, even reproducing the board's logo. It informs readers that becasue of expected high turnout on election day, November 4th, Democrats have been asked to vote November 5th.

Election day, of course, is November 4th for everyone.

Conyers wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to take action. Conyer's letter points out that, because there are legitimate concerns in Virginia about over-crowded polling places, and because the flier is designed to look like it comes from the state election board, it "has enough of a ring of truth to confuse voters and suppress turnout."

The letter goes on to call the effort "an echo of the darkest days of our struggle for civil rights."

Virginia election officials have said that state police are already looking into the flier's provenance.

Voting

WI Gov: AG's Poll Watchers are "Obvious Republican Strategy"

Kate Klonick | October 30, 2008, 4:55PM

Wisconsin's Governor Jim Doyle called out Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's latest attempt at voter suppression as an "obvious Republican strategy."

Earlier this week, Van Hollen -- a Republican -- announced that he would be sending more than 50 state prosecutors and law enforcement agents to monitor polls on Election Day.

From the AP:

Governor Doyle says the attorney general has no authority to supervise elections in Wisconsin and questions what power the special agents would have if they observe a problem.

The governor says the plan is part of an "obvious Republican strategy" to raise questions about the validity of the vote.

Voting

Rogers Denies Breaking Law, But Not Hiring P.I.

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2008, 4:19PM

We're late to this, but Pat Rogers -- the lawyer tied to the New Mexico GOP, who has been accused in a federal lawsuit of being behind a plan to intimidate voters -- has denied that he broke the law.

"I have not violated any law and Mr. Romero has not violated any law," Rogers said yesterday evening when reached by the Associated Press.

Rogers was referring to Al Romero, a private investigator. According to a lawsuit filed earlier this week by MALDEF, a group that advocates for the rights of Hispanics, Romero went to the homes of several Hispanic voters in Albuquerque to question them about their right to vote. The daughter of one of the women has said that Romero told her he was working for Rogers.

The visits were reported last week by TPMmuckraker and others.

Speaking yesterday to the AP, Rogers continued: "The lawsuit contains serious accusations that have no basis in law or fact. The suit is filed and advertised before the upcoming election for obvious purposes." He did not elaborate.

It's noteworthy that Rogers did not deny hiring Romero to contact voters about their eligibility -- as he did not when asked last week by the New Mexico Independent.

Reached this afternoon by TPMmuckraker, Rogers declined to discuss the case, saying he was too busy working on the election.

Voting

GOP Voter Suppression: More Miss than Hit

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2008, 1:10PM

Yesterday we posted a quick round-up of the various voter-suppression schemes being pushed by Republicans in swing states around the country. And after looking at the list, one thing quickly becomes clear: most of the efforts have failed.

There's no one grand unifying theory for why that's true.

In some cases, the courts have rejected GOP efforts to make voting harder:

• In Indiana, for instance, a Superior Court judge declined to support a GOP bid to shut down early voting centers in Democratic-leaning cities in Lake County, and the state Supreme Court chose not to immediately intervene.

• In Wisconsin, a suit brought by Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen -- which he later admitted had been requested by the Republican Party -- seeking to force the state election board to re-confirm all newly registered voters was thrown out by a county court.

• In Michigan, a federal appeals court today blocked the Republican secretary of state, Terri Lynn Land, from throwing 5,500 newly registered voters off the rolls because their registration cards were returned as undeliverable, after voting-rights groups sued.

In other states, Democratic state officials or voting-rights advocates have held the line:

• In Nevada, Secretary of State Ross Miller denied a request from the state GOP to require voters to cast provisional ballots if they fixed mistakes in their voting information at the polls.

• In Colorado, a bid by Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman -- who himself is running for a seat in the U.S. House -- to purge 14,000 voters from the rolls was only partially successful. After voting-rights groups sued, a settlement was reached yesterday allowing the voters to cast provisional ballots. According to the Rocky Mountain News, those ballots would "be presumed to be valid unless state and county officials prove otherwise." A lawyer for the voting-rights groups called the deal "a win-win."

Read more »

Voting

Conservative Group Intimidating Voters in Minnesota?

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2008, 11:05AM

Here's what could be the latest Republican voter intimidation scheme:

Larry Johnson of St. Paul, Minnesota, says that he received a phone call from a woman who claimed to be from the secretary of state's office working on voter fraud, reports the Associated Press. The woman asked about his voting record, said Johnson.

In a sworn affidavit, Johnson said the woman then told him she was working with Jeff Davis, who runs a socially conservative group, Minnesota Majority, that has been stoking fears of voter fraud lately.

Mark Ritchie, the state's Democratic secretary of state, said he has asked county and federal prosecutors to look into the call as possible voter intimidation.

In a statement posted on Minnesota Majority's website, Davis denied the claims of intimidation, but admitted:

Minnesota Majority has been conducting research into what appear to be inconsistencies in Minnesota's voter rolls. Voters with apparent duplicate registration records have been contacted by Minnesota Majority volunteers with a simple request to confirm the accuracy of their voter registration information. We believe these research activities to be in complete compliance with all state and federal laws.

The Department of Justice is currently looking into claims of voter intimidation in New Mexico, allegedly engineered by a lawyer connected to the state Republican Party.

Voting

DOJ, Bucking White House, Won't Intervene in Ohio Voting Case

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2008, 9:09AM

Looks like the most high-profile of the various Republican voter-suppression schemes is faring no better than many of the others.

The New York Times reports that the Department of Justice will not require Ohio's Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, to provide local election officials with lists of new voters who have mismatches in their registration information.

Late last week, in an unusual intervention, the White House had passed on a request by Republican House leader John Boehner that DOJ take action on the issue -- triggering outrage from voting-rights groups. But according to the Times:

The Justice Department has been in contact with Ohio election officials since early October and this week its lawyers determined they would not pursue litigation before the election, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.

Still, the Ohio Republicans are trying to make maximum political hay out of the dispute. They released a radio ad earlier this week accusing Brunner of "concealing evidence."

ACORN

Report: DOJ Lawyer Meets With ACLU On NM Voter Intimidation

Zachary Roth | October 29, 2008, 7:52PM

Earlier this evening, a Justice Department spokesman told TPMmuckraker that the department was looking into claims of voter intimidation in New Mexico, stemming from reports last week by us and other outlets that a lawyer tied to the state GOP had hired a private investigator to question Hispanics about their right to vote.

Now, the New Mexico Independent, which originally reported on the intimidation along with TPMmuckraker, adds some detail to that picture.

The news site reports:

An attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice met with a staff attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico today regarding reports of voter intimidation here, said a spokesperson for ACLU.

Before flying back to Washington, D.C., the attorney, who works in the voting section of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, picked up copies of the press packet handed out by state Republicans on Oct. 16.

That last sentence refers to a press conference held by the state Republican Party, at which it released the names of 10 voters it claimed had voted illegally in a Democratic primary in June. It was later established that the voters were in fact eligible. But relatives of two of those voters told TPMmuckraker and the New Mexico Independent that they had received intimidating visits from a private investigator apparently hired by Republican lawyer Pat Rogers.

ACLU filed suit on Monday against the state party, alleging that it illegally interfered with the individuals' right to vote.

And now it looks like the Justice Department is on the case.

ACORN

Republican Voter Suppression: A Guide

Kate Klonick and Zachary Roth | October 29, 2008, 7:19PM

There are so many Republican gambits designed to make voting more difficult -- specifically for Democrats, of course -- that it can be hard to keep track of them all. So here's a handy -- and by no means comprehensive -- guide to what's happening in some of the key swing states.

Ohio
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month denied a bid by the state GOP to force Democratic secretary of state Jennifer Brunner to provide local election officials with lists of new voters whose registration information did not match that on other government documents. Voting-rights advocates had feared that making Brunner hand over the lists could lead to a slew of GOP challenges, forcing hundreds of thousands of voters to cast provisional ballots. Republican leader (and Ohioan) John Boehner -- with help from the White House -- has asked the Department of Justice to step in, but few observers expect DOJ to take any action so close to the election.

New Mexico
The state GOP earlier this month held a press conference at which it released the names of 10 voters it said had voted fraudulently in a Democratic primary in June. After ACORN helped established that the voters, almost all Hispanic, were in fact legitimate, TPMmuckraker and others reported that GOP lawyer Pat Rogers apparently hired a private investigator, who intimidated some of the voters by going to their homes to question them about their voting status. Rogers, the P.I. and the state party are now being sued for voter intimidation by several voting-rights groups.

Indiana
The Lake County GOP sued to shut down early voting centers set up by the county election board in Democratic-leaning cities in the northern part of the county. A judge declined to shut down the sites, though an appeal is scheduled to be heard later this week. But in the meantime, early voting at the centers has been proceeding. In addition, the Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, has called on law enforcement to prosecute ACORN for submitting 1400 suspicious-looking voter-registration forms in the county.

Nevada
The chair of the state GOP wrote to Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, asking him to require newly registered voters to cast provisional ballots if they correct mismatches in their voter information at the polls. Miller responded with an interpretation of state law that rejected the GOP's request.

Pennsylvania
The state GOP has filed a lawsuit designed to cast doubt on 140,000 voter-registration applications submitted by ACORN in four counties. Among other things, it would require the state to provide additional provisional ballots in the counties at issue. Democratic Secretary of State pedro Cortes has called the "frivolous", saying it's designed to undermine confidence in the system. The court has not yet ruled on the suit.

Montana
The state GOP announced earlier this month that it was formally challenging the eligibility of 6,000 people in Democratic-leaning counties, based in discrepancies in their addresses. After it emerged that among the challenged voters were a World War II veteran who had moved across town that year, and a member of the Army Reserve about to ship out to Kuwait, the move was condemned even by some prominent Republicans in the state. The challenge was withdrawn, and the man behind, it, Jacob Eaton, the party's executive director, quit.

Florida
In early September, Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Republican, instructed election officials to reject voter registration applications that do not pass a computer match test. Voter rights groups say the system can disqualify voters based on nothing more than a missing middle initial on their voter form, and that the late date of the order could cause additional confusion. They fear the move could disenfranchise tens of thousands of legitimate voters. And in a rare case of a Republican making voting easier, Governor Charlie Crist yesterday ordered extended hours for early voting centers, after long lines were reported in many parts of the state.

Wisconsin
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen filed suit against the state's election board, demanding that it confirm the eligibility of tens of thousands of new voters. In a recent interview with CNN, Van Hollen admitted that the GOP "may have asked lawyers in my office to file the lawsuit." A county court threw the suit out, but Van Hollen soon announced the formation of a "voter fraud task force", which would involve stationing 50 state prosecutors and other law-enforcement agents at the polls on election day, a move state Democrats have denounced as an effort to intimidate voters.

Colorado
A voting-rights group, filed a lawsuit against Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman, alleging that over 35,000 voters were purged from the rolls illegally. The suit, which was heard in court today, claims that voters have been removed from the rolls based on a faulty system for identifying illegitimate voters, and within 90 days of the election -- both of which violate the federal Voting Rights Act. Coffman, who is running for the U.S. Congress in this election, denies that any rules were broken.

voter fraud

WI Dems Call AG's Poll Watchers Intimidation

Kate Klonick | October 29, 2008, 5:21PM

Last week, a Wisconsin county court threw out their attorney general's suit against the Government Accountability Board, seeking confirmation on thousands of voter registrations.

But AG J.B. Van Hollen is not going gently into this election night.

Van Hollen announced yesterday that he would be staffing Wisconsin's polls with more than 50 state attorneys and agents to guard against election fraud. He has also "formed a task force with Milwaukee prosecutors to tackle voter fraud cases."

Citing concern over voter fraud, the GOP often sends poll watchers to challenge voters and "gum up the works" at polling places.

Today, Wisconsin Democrats responded to Van Hollen in a statement today, calling him "so desperate to influence the election that he has resorted to sending state prosecutors to intimidate voters at the polls."

Joe Wineke, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, deemed Van Hollen's past actions "hyper-partisan" and charged the AG was pulling " agents away from their real jobs to investigate fabricated stories about widespread voter fraud."

voter fraud

DOJ Responds On N.M. Voter Intimidation Claims

Zachary Roth | October 29, 2008, 4:58PM

Last week, TPMmuckraker and others reported on an apparent voter intimidation effort launched by a lawyer tied to the New Mexico Republican Party -- which included hiring a private investigator to show up at the homes of Hispanics and question them about their right to vote.

On Friday, hours after our story appeared, Gerry Hebert -- a former top voting-rights official at the Department of Justice, who now runs the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center (and is a frequent TPMmuckraker source) -- forwarded the story, via email, to four current members of DOJ's civil-rights division, which enforces voting laws.

Hebert, who served 21 years at DOJ's civil-rights division, including a stint as acting head of the voting-rights section, wrote in his email, which was copied to TPMmuckraker*: "I believe this conduct, if true, violates both the criminal and civil statutes your offices enforce, and thus warrants investigation by DOJ." He asked the four recipients to acknowledge receipt of his email.

But this afternoon, five days later, Hebert told TPMmuckraker that he had received no response whatsoever.

The four officials to whom Hebert addressed his message were:
-Mark Kappelhoff, chief of the division's criminal section.
-Mark Blumberg, a deputy chief of the same section.
-Christopher Coates, chief of the division's voting-rights section.
-James Walsh, an attorney in the division.

Kappelhoff, Blumberg, and Walsh did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Department staff declined to connect TPMmuckraker to Coates directly.

The apparent lack of followup contrasts with DOJ's apparent quick action in launching an investigation into ACORN in connection with voter-fraud, according to an Associated Press report -- attributed to anonymous sources and as yet unconfirmed -- from earlier this month.

Hebert and several other voting experts told TPMmuckraker last week that the activities laid out in our report potentially constitute a violation of federal voting laws.

The ACLU and Project Vote on Monday filed suit against the New Mexico GOP, alleging voter intimidation. The same day, MALDEF, a group that advocates for the rights of Hispanics, filed a similar but separate suit, which names as defendants the GOP lawyer Pat Rogers and the private investigator Al Romero.

Kappelhoff and Walsh, at least, would appear to be unlikely participants in a DOJ scheme to stonewall legitimate voter intimidation complaints. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that both have contributed to Barack Obama's campaign.

Late Update: Scot Montrey, a spokesman for DOJ's civil-rights division, called TPMmuckraker to say: "The department is aware of the allegations and we're looking into them."

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

voter fraud

ACLU: White House Intervention In Ohio Voting Is "Partisan Politics At Its Worst"

Zachary Roth | October 28, 2008, 4:49PM

The ACLU has written to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, urging him not to have the Justice Department intervene in a voting-rights dispute in Ohio.

The move comes in response to fast-moving recent events. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by Ohio Republicans to require Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Democratic secretary of state, to provide local election officials with lists of new voters whose registration information did not match that on other government documents.

That prompted House Republican leader John Boehner to write to Mukasey, asking him to require Brunner to hand over the lists. When Mukasey did not respond, Boehner contacted the White House, which said Friday that it had passed his request on to Mukasey, and asked for action.

Voting-rights advocates fear that making Brunner hand over the lists could lead to a slew of GOP challenges, forcing hundreds of thousands of voters to cast provisional ballots.

They also see the White House's involvement as an inappropriate politicization of DOJ. In its letter to Mukasey, ACLU writes of the White House's move:

With the election one week away, this kind of intrusion represents partisan politics at its worst. In addition, challenging -- or purging -- lawfully registered voters in the days before the election invites chaos and undermines the integrity of the democratic process.

She said her organization would be watching to see whether Mukasey -- who was picked to run DOJ after Alberto Gonzales resigned amid accusations that he had overseen inappropriate politicization of the department and misled Congress -- would respond.

A group of Ohio Democrats, led by Sen. Sherrod Brown, has also written to Mukasey, urging him not to intervene in the case.

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Voting

Indiana Sec of State on Blacks and Dems: "Who's the Master and Who's the Slave?"

Zachary Roth | October 28, 2008, 3:10PM

Todd Rokita -- the Indiana secretary of state who wants ACORN prosecuted for voter fraud -- may be the gift that keeps on giving.

Earlier today, we reported that Rokita, a Republican, has said he's proud that he was part of the team of GOP activists that descended on Florida and pulled out all the stops to block the 2000 recount and put George Bush in the White House.

Now, a reader points us to this 2007 Associated Press story, which reports:

During a speech Thursday at a Republican event, Todd Rokita said 90 percent of blacks vote for Democrats.

"How can that be?" Rokita said. "Ninety to ten. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship? How can that be
healthy?"

So:
- Committed GOP partisan -- check.
- History of racially insensitive comments -- check.

Sounds like just the guy to be running a close election in a year when the first major-party African-American candidate is on the ballot.

ACORN

Indiana GOP Sec of State Helped Stop Florida Recount

Zachary Roth | October 28, 2008, 1:32PM

Yesterday we told you about an effort by Indiana's Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, to press federal and state authorities to prosecute ACORN for voter fraud. Rokita had said a review by his office of forms submitted by ACORN found "multiple criminal violations."

But it turns out that Rokita hardly has a reputation as a non-partisan public official. In October 2002, the South Bend Tribune reported (via nexis):

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

That background as a partisan knife-fighter is worth keeping in mind as Rokita seeks to stoke fears about voter fraud -- and, more generally, as he administers what could be a very close election in Indiana.

Michael Mukasey

Ohio Dems Push Back On White House Call For DOJ Action On Voting

Zachary Roth | October 27, 2008, 6:17PM

Last week, the White House asked the Department of Justice to take action on an effort that could force tens of thousands of new Ohio voters to cast provisional ballots.

Soon afterwards, a group of Ohio Democrats, led by Sen. Sherrod Brown, announced in a press release that they had written to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, urging him not to intervene in the issue.

Wrote the Democrats: "The eyes of the nation are once again on Ohio in this critical election, and there is no room for partisan politics that seek to erode voter confidence in Ohio's election system."

The U.S. Supreme Court had earlier rejected an effort by the GOP to require the Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to provide local election officials with information on newly registered voters whose registration information does not match other government records. Democrats fear that giving that information to local officials could allow Republicans to mount challenges to eligible voters, with the result that many could be forced to cast provisional ballots.

In addition to Brown, the other Democrats signing the letter were Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan, Zack Space, Betty Sutton, and Charles Wilson.

Voting

Phony Virginia Flier Tells Dems To Vote November 5

Zachary Roth | October 27, 2008, 5:04PM

A phony flier, purporting to be from the Virginia Board of Elections, is circulating in the African-American-heavy Hampton Roads region of the state, falsely informing people that, because of expected high turnout, Democrats should vote on November 5th.

The election is November 4th.

State election officials informed the local press of the flier, which was posted on the website of The Virginian-Pilot, and is designed to look like an official announcement. It even uses images of the state board logo and the state seal, both of which are available online.

It reads:

Due to the larger than expected voter turnout in this years [sic] electoral process, An [sic] emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial [sic] precincts and ensure a fair electorial [sic] process.

All Democratic party supporters and independent voters supporting Democratic candidates shall vote on November 5th as adopted by emergency regulation of the Virginia General Assembly.

All Republican party supporters and independent voters supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as precribed [sic] by law.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial [sic] process.

Virginia, where Barack Obama currently leads, is a crucial swing state in the election.

Voting

Penn. GOP Sues Over ACORN

Kate Klonick | October 27, 2008, 2:22PM

The latest in the GOP's actions against ACORN come in Pennsylvania, where Republicans have filed suit amid allegations that the group engaged in widespread voter registration fraud.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The suit asks Commonwealth Court to force Pedro Cortés, Pennsylvania's secretary of state, to ensure that the state database used by county elections officials to approve local registration applications is working properly. GOP officials said that they have had reports that the database is often down, creating a backlog of registrations.

The complaint also asks that the court require the state to provide a significantly larger number of provisional ballots at each polling place so that voters whose registrations have not been processed by Election Day can cast ballots. It also asks the court to order ACORN to provide a complete list of all the applications it has obtained and to fund public-service announcements informing first-time voters that they are required to show proof of identity before casting ballots.

Cortés called the suit frivolous and said the allegations are "aimed at doing nothing other than undermining voters' confidence just 18 days before the election."

"The fact that apparently fraudulent registrations have been identified is a testament to the safeguards we have in place to prevent ineligible voters from casting a ballot," said Cortés, adding that the state has not received any complaints about the database system.

ACORN

Voting-Rights Groups Sue NM GOP, Alleging Voter Intimidation

Zachary Roth | October 27, 2008, 2:19PM

ACORN has announced that it's assisting in two lawsuits filed against the New Mexico Republican GOP, alleging voter intimidation. The ACLU and Project Vote -- a group that's been described as an ACORN affiliate -- are filing suit in state court, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is suing in federal court, according to Matthew Henderson of ACORN's New Mexico office*.

News of the suits comes after the party publicly released the names of ten voters it falsely claimed had voted fraudulently, and after TPMmuckraker and others reported claims that a private investigator, who said he was working with state GOP lawyer Pat Rogers, had questioned two Hispanic voters about their eligibility to vote.

We reported Friday that, according to several voting-rights experts, the activities of the private investigator -- and perhaps those who hired him -- may violate federal law. Voting-rights advocates have forwarded reports of the encounters to DOJ voting officials.

In a press release, ACORN's Dana Gallegos said:

These are all minority voters. Many of them are young, and one is a new citizen. ACORN has worked hard to get these types of new voters involved in the democratic process. We will not tolerate attempts by the Republican Party to suppress the Hispanic vote in New Mexico.

* This paragraph has been edited from an earlier version.

Update: Here's the ACLU/Project Vote suit.

Update II: Here's the MALDEF suit, which names as defendants Pat Rogers and private investigator Al Romero.

John Boehner

White House Wants DOJ Action On Ohio Voting Case

Zachary Roth | October 25, 2008, 5:23PM

Looks like the White House is having trouble getting out of the habit of using the Department of Justice for political purposes.

The Washington Post reports that President Bush has asked DOJ to look into a request by House Republican leader John Boehner that would force Ohio's Secretary of State to provide local election officials with information on 200,000 newly registered voters who have mismatched registration data. That could make it possible for Republicans to issue challenges to many of these voters, perhaps forcing them to cast provisional ballots.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio Republicans, who were seeking to force the Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, to provide the information on mismatches to local officials, did not have standing to bring the case.

Boehner announced yesterday in a press release that he had sent a letter earlier this week to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to take action, but received no response. He then turned to the White House for help -- warning in a letter to President Bush that if no action were taken, "there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino characterized the move as "a routine step that would be taken for any such request from a congressional leader," according to the Post.

But it's worth remembering that much of the politicization of the Department of Justice that was exposed in the U.S. Attorneys scandal centered on voting issues, and specifically on an effort by the White House and DOJ to prioritize voter fraud prosecutions despite scant evidence that such fraud was occurring.

As voting rights groups point out, the mismatches at issue in this case are often nothing more than that the name on a voter's drivers license includes a middle initial, while that on his voter registration form does not.

Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Post: "This is taking the politicization of this to a new level."

We'll be watching this closely.

Voting

Story Not Over On Indiana Early Voting

Zachary Roth | October 24, 2008, 6:59PM

Not so fast.

We reported earlier that the Indiana Supreme Court had declined to approve a Republican bid to halt early voting in three heavily Democratic cities in Lake County.

Based on the view of Rick Hasen, a noted expert on election law, we concluded: "Since the appeals court is unlikely to get involved before November 4th, today's ruling effectively ensures that voting will continue up until election day."

But it now looks like that's not a certainty. The Indiana Law Blog has just posted an order from the Court of Appeals, calling for an expedited briefing schedule and setting oral arguments from October 30th.

Based on that, Hasen now believes it's a "possibility" that the court could step in before election day.

Looks like this bears keeping an eye on.

Voting

Voting-Rights Group Calls For Federal Probe Of New Mexico Voter Intimidation

Zachary Roth | October 24, 2008, 5:11PM

A major voting-rights group has sent a letter to New Mexico U.S. Attorney Gregory Fouratt, calling on him to investigate claims of voter intimidation and suppression.

The letter, from the group Project Vote, comes in the wake of reporting by TPMmuckraker and others about a private investigator -- who said he was working for Pat Rogers, a lawyer connected to the state GOP -- appearing at the homes of Hispanic voters in Albuquerque, and questioning them about their right to vote. In a press release announcing the letter, Project Vote refers directly to these reports.

In its letter, Project Vote -- a non-profit voting-rights group that works to increase voting in low-income and minority communities -- writes:

This form of intimidation and suppression is in direct violation of Section 12 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as Section 2. We feel that the right of all Americans to vote is of the utmost importance, and if there is credible evidence of voter intimidation and suppression of a particular class of voters it should be addressed and promptly persecuted.

Fouratt was appointed U.S. Attorney for the district after the 2006 firing of David Iglesias. According to a recent DOJ report, Iglesias was removed for his failure to prosecute voter fraud cases he believed to be bogus.

Voting

Indiana Supreme Court Won't Stop Early Voting

Zachary Roth | October 24, 2008, 4:20PM

The Indiana Supreme Court has declined to approve a bid by the GOP to shut down early voting centers in Democratic strongholds of a key county.

A lower court had similarly rejected the effort earlier this week. The Supreme Court ruled today that the case had to first be heard by an appeals court, rather than going straight to the state's high court as the Republican plaintiffs wanted.

Since the appeals court is unlikely to get involved before November 4th, today's ruling effectively ensures that voting will continue up until election day.

Voting

PI's Actions May Have Violated Federal Voting Laws, Say Experts

Zachary Roth | October 24, 2008, 1:49PM

Four separate experts on voting rights have confirmed to TPMmuckraker that the behavior of a private investigator apparently hired by a New Mexico Republican party lawyer, that we reported this morning, potentially violates federal voting laws.

Gerry Hebert, a former acting head of the voting rights section of the Department of Justice, told TPMmuckraker that the P.I.'s actions appear to violate the criminal section of the federal Voting Rights Act, which makes it a crime to willfully injure, intimidate, or interfere with a person attempting to vote. Hebert added that a separate statute makes it a crime to conspire to intimidate someone in exercising their right to vote -- a provision that could apply to GOP lawyer Pat Rogers or others in the state party who may have been involved in the scheme.

"A matter like that ought to be reported to the DOJ immediately," said Hebert, adding that he planned to do so.

Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights agreed, and added that the activities detailed in TPMmuckraker's report could violate both criminal and civil voting rights statutes. Greenbaum pointed to a civil provision of the Voting Rights Act which says that it violates the law to intimidate, threaten or coerce someone from voting or not voting.

Greenbaum too said he planned to pass on to the Department of Justice the claims made in our report.

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a noted expert on election law, also said that the behavior potentially violated the Voting Rights Act or other federal civil-rights statutes.

And Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, further confirmed that take.

An Albuquerque woman told TPMmuckraker yesterday that a man identifying himself as a private investigator hired by Rogers came to her mother's house Wednesday asking her mother for personal information and warning her not to vote if she wasn't properly registered. A second woman in the same city provided a simlar report to TPMmuckraker. The voters' names had been publicly released last week by Rogers and others affiliated with the state party, who claimed that 28 mostly Hispanic people had voted fraudulently in June. It was later determined that many of the people whose names had been released were valid voters.

The New Mexico Independent first reported the news of the intimidating visits last night.

ACORN

Did New Mexico GOP Lawyer Hire P.I. To Intimidate Minority Voters?

Zachary Roth | October 24, 2008, 9:20AM

Minority voters in New Mexico report to TPMmuckraker that a private investigator working with Republican party lawyer Pat Rogers has appeared in person at the homes of their family members, intimidating and confusing them about their right to vote in the general election.

Earlier this week, we reported that Rogers -- a lawyer and state committeeman for the GOP, who in previous elections worked closely with the party in pressuring New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to pursue bogus voter fraud cases -- is involved with a new effort to gin up concerns about the issue. Last week the state party falsely claimed that 28 people had voted fraudulently in a local Democratic primary race in June. Rogers, described in an Associated Press report on the allegations as "an attorney who advises the state GOP," told the news wire that the party planned to turn the suspect forms over to law enforcement authorities.

The visits to minority voters by the P.I. appear to be connected to last week's effort.

The story starts last week, when several representatives of the New Mexico Republican party, including Rogers, held a press conference to announce that 28 people had voted fraudulently in a Democratic primary in June in Bernalillo county, which contains Albuquerque. The party released the names of ten of these people -- almost all of whom are Hispanic.

The allegations quickly fell apart. ACORN announced that it had contacted the county clerk's office, who had verified that all of the voters were in fact legitimate. The group now says it has independently contacted 8 of these 10 voters to separately verify their validity.

At that point, the national GOP, which had at first jumped on the story as rare evidence of genuine voter fraud, seemed to quietly back off.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

Guadalupe Bojorquez, who works in law enforcement in Albuquerque, told TPMmuckraker today that her mother, Dora Escobedo, was one of the ten voters whose names were released by the GOP. After this happened, said Bojorquez, her mother had been contacted by the voter registration group ACORN. Bojorquez, with ACORN's help, confirmed with the county clerk that her mother, who does not speak English, is indeed eligible to vote, and had been when she voted in June.

Nonetheless, Bojorquez said that her mother yesterday received a visit from a man who asked for her personal information, including an ID, in reference to her eligibility to vote. Bojorquez told TPMmuckraker that according to her mother, at one point the man asked what she would do if immigration authorities contacted her.

After Bojorquez's mother, frightened, refused to let him in the door, the man waited outside her house. Eventually, Bojorquez's brother arrived at the house, emboldening Bojorquez's mother to go outside, call Bojorquez, and put her on the phone with the man.

Bojorquez said the man told her he wanted to make sure her mother knew that she shouldn't be voting, and continued to ask for her mother's personal information. When Bojorquez said that no information would be handed over unless the man revealed who he was employed by, he said he was a private investigator hired by Pat Rogers. He told Bojorquez his name was Al Romero, and left a number at which Bojorquez could contact him.

Bojorquez added that in fact, her mother has already voted in the general election, by absentee ballot -- which she is eligible for because she has trouble walking -- so Romero's efforts on that front were in vain.

Another Albuquerque woman had a similar experience.

Jenais Griego told TPMmuckraker that yesterday, as she arrived home with her kids, a man in a beige Chevy Silverado pulled up, removed a notebook from his pocket, and said he was looking for Emily Garcia. Garcia is Griego's grandmother -- Griego said Garcia, who works as a home care-giver, lists Griego's address for her mail -- and, like Escobedo, was one of the voters named by the GOP last week as having voted fraudulently in June.

Griego said she allowed the man in, and when she asked him for identification, he pulled out a card that gave his name as Al Romero. She said the man had a redacted copy of Garcia's voter registration form, and asked whether Garcia intended to vote. He said if she intended to do so, she needed to make sure she was properly registered.

As with Bojorquez and Escobedo, Griego said that Garcia had already confirmed after the GOP press conference that she was indeed a valid voter. An ACORN worker had come to her house to explain that the GOP had questioned her registration, and, along with Griego, they had contacted the county clerk to ensure that she could legitimately vote, and had done so in June.

So when Romero asked Griego whether Garcia intended to vote, Griego replied that she did. At that point, said Griego, Romero became "angry" and "upset," and left abruptly.

Rogers did not return several calls from TPMmuckraker seeking comment. But last week he said that the state party had hired a private investigator in connection with vote fraud.

Reached by TPMmuckraker at the phone number he provided to Bojorquez, Romero said he didn't have time to talk about the matter. He did not respond to repeated follow-up calls.

Voting

Court Throws Out WI AG Voting Suit

Kate Klonick | October 23, 2008, 12:30PM

It looks like some of the state and local efforts led by Republicans to stymie voters, aren't panning out.

The latest loss for the GOP comes in Wisconsin. Where the suit filed by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen requesting confirmation on thousands of voter registrations, has been thrown out by a county circuit judge.

From Wisconisn State Journal:

Judge Maryann Sumi said Van Hollen failed to state an adequate claim for bringing the lawsuit and noted that state law has consistently favored protecting citizens' right to vote. Sumi also said that Van Hollen did not have standing to bring the lawsuit.

. . .DOJ spokesman Kevin St. John said the Department of Justice plans to appeal, possibly directly to the state Supreme Court.

Just yesterday, the Nevada Secretary of State rejected a GOP argument that people who corrected incomplete registration information at the polls should be forced to cast provisional ballots. And in Indiana, a judge ruled against Republican efforts to shut down early polling places in Democratic-heavy areas of a key county.

Last week, the Supreme Court sided with Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State, ruling against ruling against a Republican effort to require her to provide infomration on voters with mismatched registration information to county election officials, which could have led to GOP challenges.

Late update: TPMmuckraker caught up with Joe Wineke, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, who called the ruling "very strongly worded."

"It's great to know that the circuit court in Wisconsin understood that the rule of law is more important than partisan political campaigns," Wineke told us. "The really amazing thing to me right now is that the attorney general plans to appeal with 12 day to go till the election."

We should have a copy of the court's decision shortly, so check back soon.

Voting

Nevada Secretary of State Rebuffs Latest GOP Effort To Suppress Vote

Zachary Roth | October 22, 2008, 11:17PM

Yesterday we told you about the latest GOP effort to make voting more difficult -- a letter sent by Nevada GOP chair Sue Lowden to Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, arguing that people should not be able to correct incomplete registrations on the spot when going to vote. Lowden claimed that Nevada law requires voter registration to be closed three weeks before election day, and that in such cases, people should be forced to cast provisional ballots.

Now Miller's office has responded with an interpretation of the law at issue, rejecting Lowden's argument. The key excerpt:

Question: If a county clerk/registrar of voters determines that an application to register to vote is incomplete or incorrect, does Nevada law provide an opportunity for the applicant to submit a corrected application after the close of registration?

Answer: Yes. Nevada law provides the manner in which an in-person and mail-in applicant may update or correct the voter information, and may do so without losing his right to vote.

Miller has already been in the news for voting issues this cycle. Last month, he engineered a high-profile raid on an ACORN office in Las Vegas after fraudulent registration forms were submitted, despite the fact that ACORN claimed it was cooperating with investigators.

ACORN

US Attorney's Office Involved In Voter-Fraud Probe in NM

Zachary Roth | October 22, 2008, 7:20PM

We've got a bit more information on the FBI's investigation into voter fraud that's taking place in New Mexico.

Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that FBI agents had met with Bernalillo County clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, "after she notified authorities about an estimated 1,500 possibly fraudulent voter registration cards."

And speaking today to TPMmuckraker, Toulouse Oliver added a bit of detail to that picture. She said she had passed on redacted copies of the suspicious forms (many of which had badly mismatched information, or listed addresses that did not exist) to the offices of the District Attorney and the US Attorney in the area. When the FBI contacted her, it said it had been asked to follow up by the US Attorney' office. And the meeting between Toulouse Oliver and an FBI agent was also attended by an Assistant US Attorney.

The US Attorney's office didn't return a call seeking comment. But it appears that the office is taking a lead role in the investigation.

It's worth noting that David Iglesias was fired from that very US Attorney's office largely for his reluctance to pursue bogus voter fraud claims.

What's still unclear is how closely the probe is tied to the nationwide investigation into ACORN's voter registration activities that we learned about last week. ACORN is active in Bernalillo County.

Voting

Early Voting To Proceed in Minority-Heavy Indiana Cities

Zachary Roth | October 22, 2008, 2:58PM

It looks like one of the numerous tricks pulled by Republicans to make it harder for black people to vote isn't going to work.

A judge in Lake County, Indiana ruled today against a GOP effort to shut down early voting centers set up in predominantly low-income African-American areas of the county.

As we reported earlier this month, county Republicans had sued to have the centers shut down, on the grounds that the law required a unanimous vote of the county election board to set up early voting centers. (The Lake County board had voted 3-2 to open them.)

Without the early voting centers, which were set up in the northern Lake County cities of Hammond, Gary, and East Chicago, residents of those cities would have had to travel over an hour to vote early in the county seat of Crown Point, which is in the southern part of the county. Barack Obama needs a strong turnout in northern Lake County if he's to have a chance of winning Indiana, a state where he's been running almost even with John McCain.

The centers have already been open for several weeks, and the court ruled that valid votes already cast will count.

From the ruling by Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider, which was obtained by TPMmuckraker from the Lake County Superior Court:

The Lake County Board of Elections and Registration is hereby enjoined from terminating the operation of in person absentee voting currently being conducted in the offices of the Clerk of the Lake Circuit Court in the courthouse buildings in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago and the offices of the Lake County Board of Elections and Registration in Crown Point.

It is further ordered that all ballots that have already been cast at the early voting locations in Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, and Crown Point shall not be invalidated except for instances of voter fraud.

The GOP may yet appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. But for now, early voting continues in the Democratic stronghold of a key county in a key state.

ACORN

Report: ACORN May Have Used Charitable Money For Political Work

Zachary Roth | October 22, 2008, 11:26AM

Here's something sure to provide grist for a thousand new Republican attacks.

ACORN -- the community organizing group that the McCain campaign and the RNC have been working to turn into a short-hand for (unfounded) fears of voter fraud -- may have broken federal laws covering how it can spend money and resources among its many affiliates, according to a story in the New York Times.

The Grey Lady reveals that an internal report written by an ACORN lawyer spells out "concerns about potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things."

The finding in the report with perhaps the most immediate significance to ACORN's prominent role in the campaign concerns the relationship between the group and Project Vote, an affiliated charity that does voter-registration work with ACORN. ACORN, a non-profit corporation, can legally do partisan political work, but Project Vote, a tax-exempt charity, can't.

The report found:

[T]he tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote's money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner. Until the embezzlement scandal broke last summer, Project Vote's board was made up entirely of Acorn staff members and Acorn members.

Here's the argument Republicans will likely use to tie this news to their ongoing attacks on ACORN's voter-registration activities: if the non-partisan group that ACORN partners with on voter registration work is in practice controlled by ACORN proper, which can legally conduct partisan political activities, it's more plausible that the fraudulent registration forms submitted by Project Vote are part of a politically motivated scheme to sway the election -- as the GOP has been claiming, without evidence, all along -- rather than honest mistakes.

The other thing to note is that when Republicans talk about Obama's ties to ACORN, they're often talking about a short period in 1992 when he worked for Project Vote, though the relationship between the two groups appears to have been less close at the time.

So today's news will add fuel to both of those fires. But the crucial point on ACORN as it relates to this election -- that there's still essentially no evidence whatsoever of voter registration fraud actually leading to voter fraud -- is as true today as it was yesterday.

ACORN

Nevada GOP Cracking Down On Urban Voters

Zachary Roth | October 21, 2008, 5:53PM

The GOP effort to suppress the vote has reared its head in Nevada.

Yesterday, Sue Lowden, the state Republican chair, sent a letter to Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, asking him to prevent some from voting, because their registrations are incomplete.

How may peope are we talking about? Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun reports: "I understand that 2,300 forms have been identified in urban counties."

Lowden argues that allowing these people to vote on the spot after fixing the errors violates a law that requires voter registration be closed three weeks before election day. She wants these voters to be made to cast provisional ballots -- which are often tied in legal challenges before being counted.

Miller's office has said it is working on an interpretation of the law.

Last month, Miller engineered a high-profile raid on an ACORN office in Las Vegas after fraudulent registration forms were submitted, despite the fact that ACORN claimed it was cooperating with investigators.

Voting

NM GOP Lawyer Pushing Voter Fraud: It's "Single Greatest Wedge Issue Ever."

Zachary Roth | October 21, 2008, 3:05PM

Yesterday we told you about Pat Rogers, the New Mexico Republican lawyer who, according to reports, is deeply involved in the state party's effort to make an issue out of voter fraud -- despite essentially no evidence that such fraud is occurring. As we noted, Rogers also played a central role a few years ago in pressuring former U.S. attorney David Iglesias to bring politically motivated voter-fraud cases. Iglesias' reluctance to bring such cases led to his firing in 2006.

But it's worth paying a bit more attention to Rogers, to see how the Justice Department's new nationwide investigation into ACORN, in which New Mexico seems to be a crucial focus -- appears to represent the very same politicization of DOJ that was exposed in the scandal over the US attorney firings.

As we noted yesterday, Rogers' role in pressing Iglesias to pursue voter fraud prosecutions was extensive. According to the OIG report on the firings, Rogers set up a lunch meeting with Iglesias, and met with an FBI agent -- among many other activities -- to push the issue.

Perhaps most damagingly, the report contains a September 2004 email sent to Iglesias and several staffers for New Mexico's GOP congressional delegation, in which Rogers admitted that he was interested in the issue in large part for its potential to help the GOP:

I believe the [voter] ID issue should be used (now) at all levels - federal, state legislative races and Heather [Wilson]'s race ... You are not going to find a better wedge issue ... I've got to believe the [voter] ID issue would do Heather more good than another ad talking about how much federal taxpayer money she has put into the (state) education system and social security ... This is the single best wedge issue, ever in NM. We will not have this opportunity again ... Today, we expect to file a new Public Records lawsuit, by 3 Republican legislators, demanding the Bernalillo county clerk locate and produce (before Oct 15) ALL of the registrations signed by the ACORN employee.

But Rogers is no mere local player on the Republican voter fraud team. He was on the board of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), a fake think-tank which was little more than an effort by GOP operatives to offer an intellectual gloss to politically motivated claims of voter fraud -- and which abruptly closed down operations in 2007.

ACVR was run by Mark "Thor" Hearne, who served as national election counsel to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. Jim Dyke -- who was the communications director of the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election, and went on to work for both the White House and for Vice President Cheney -- was also involved.

Writing in Slate last year, election-law expert Rick Hasen described ACVR's modus operandi:

Consisting of little more than a post-office box and some staffers who wrote reports and gave helpful quotes about the pervasive problems of voter fraud to the press, the group identified Democratic cities as hot spots for voter fraud, then pushed the line that "election integrity" required making it harder for people to vote. The group issued reports (PDF) on areas in the country of special concern, areas that coincidentally tended to be presidential battleground states. In many of these places, it now appears the White House was pressuring U.S. attorneys to bring more voter-fraud prosecutions.

Here's Rogers, on behalf of ACVR, telling CNN back in 2004 about the need for "safeguards to make sure that citizens only are voting."

And now this is the guy who's involved in pushing voter fraud claims in connection with an investigation in which the FBI is already involved.

Rogers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It's also worth keeping in mind that New Mexico -- which went for Al Gore in 2000 by just 365 votes, and President Bush in 2004 by around 6000 -- is crucial for John McCain's chances. Today, MSNBC.com quotes an RNC official saying: "[T]he numbers -- public and private -- in the [south west] have swung wildly. We believe the possibility of NV or NM breaking at the last minute is likely and we have our dominos lined up to knock down the win at the last minute."

It looks like one of those dominoes is Rogers' effort to use bogus claims of voter fraud as "the single best wedge issue ever."

ACORN

NM GOP Lawyer Cited In Iglesias Firing Is Back Pushing Bogus Voter Fraud Claims

Zachary Roth | October 20, 2008, 6:41PM

The evidence is growing that the FBI's investigation into ACORN is just the latest iteration of the unprecedented politicization of the Department of Justice that was exposed in the US attorney firings scandal.

Rep. John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, today released a second letter about the FBI probe to Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Conyers
noted that the New Mexico GOP last week held a press conference where it publicly named people it said had voted fraudulently in a Democratic primary in June, as part of an ongoing FBI investigation into voter fraud. (ACORN appears to have subsequently shown that those voters were in fact valid.)

And Conyers goes on to make a great catch. He notes that "New Mexico lawyer Pat Rogers -- described in the local press as 'an attorney who advises the state GOP' -- is apparently playing a key role in pressing these current claims." (Conyers is referring to this Associated Press report.)

Conyers continues:

Mr. Rogers, however, appears repeatedly in the report on the U.S. Attorney firings, prepared by the Department's Office of the Inspector General and Professional Responsibility, which documented his actions making flawed claims of voter fraud and bringing unwarranted pressure to bear on law enforcement officials, including Mr. Iglesias, in 2006.

In other words, one of the very same New Mexico GOP activists who was found in the OIG report to have tried to pressure David Iglesias to bring bogus voter-fraud prosecutions is still on the case, and has now helped to get a new federal investigation launched just weeks before the election.

And remember: the OIG report definitively concluded that Iglesias was fired as New Mexico's US attorney for his reluctance to follow up on politically motivated voter-fraud claims, made by local Republicans including Rogers.

There's a broader point worth making too: It's looking more and more like New Mexico is ground zero for the FBI's new investigation. (Remember that the Wall Streeet Journal had reported back on October 9 -- a good week before the news of a nationwide FBI probe broke -- that the bureau was looking into voter fraud in New Mexico.) And given what we saw happen to Iglesias, the FBI's focus on the state, apparently in response to GOP complaints, is further evidence that what's happening in 2008 has as a lot in common with what happened in 2006.

ACORN

Right-Wing Pundit On Voter Fraud Claim: Never Mind

Zachary Roth | October 20, 2008, 5:37PM

Here's a funny example of how "voter-fraud" hysteria is starting to make some conservatives look kind of foolish.

In a post Friday on the website of the conservative magazine National Review, Jim Geraghty touted the New Mexico GOP's no-longer-operative claim that 28 people had voted fraudulently in a Democratic primary in June.

Then, attacking Adam Serwer of The American Prospect, who in an earlier post had questioned Geraghty's obsession with vote fraud, Geraghty wrote:

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that there is actually a registered voter named "Duran Duran" in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are 'racist' and 'paranoid.'

The person who is "Duran Duran" almost certainly voted under their real name, and thus got two votes in the primary. God knows how many of those 27 others exist; for all we know, one person might have cast all of them. Anybody who voted once had their vote diluted by the guy who cheated to vote two to twenty-seven times.

Geraghty sourced the Duran Duran claim, via link, to a column on the conservative web site Townhall.com, which described an Associated Press report that we weren't able to find. (What appears to be the original AP story on the GOP's claims contained no such detail.)

But it looks like what Geraghty and Townhall thought was a cut-and-dried example of fraudulent voting was no such thing. Some time later, Geraghty, was forced to correct the record, crossing out the quote above and adding the following update below his post:

I am floored by the fact that the white pages for Albuquereque, New Mexico has a listing for "Duran Duran." Mea culpa.

And sure enough.

The larger point is that, as we noted earlier, since Friday, ACORN has produced election officials to confirm that the "fraudulent" voters cited by the GOP were in fact valid.

Looks like both Republicans and conservative pundits might want to be a little more careful before throwing around claims of voter fraud. Not that we're holding our breath.

ACORN

RNC On New Mexico "Voter Fraud": Never Mind

Zachary Roth | October 20, 2008, 4:10PM

As if you needed any more evidence that the Republican effort to tout voter fraud is less about legitimate claims and more about a political agenda, consider this sequence of events:

Last week, as we noted at the time, the New Mexico GOP had publicly claimed that 28 people voted fraudulently in the Democratic primary, held in June, for a local race.

Then this morning, the RNC sent out a press release announcing a 3pm conference call with reporters "on the recent developments in New Mexico regarding ACORN."

But at 11am, ACORN -- the community organizing group that Republicans have been trying lately to turn into a voter fraud boogeyman -- held a conference call of its own, asserting that local election officials had confirmed that the 28 people in question, mostly low-income Latinos, were valid voters.

So here at TPMmuckraker, we wondered what the RNC's response to this would be. And on the 3pm call, we asked party spokesman Danny Diaz.

Diaz dodged the question. He talked about an incident with ACORN in Washington state, then referred us to an October 9th Wall Street Journal story, which did not address the allegation made last week by the state GOP about fraudulent voting in the Democratic primary. (Instead, it reported that the FBI had opened a preliminary investigation into thousands of fraudulent registration forms submitted in an area near an ACORN office.)

When we tried to follow up, Diaz cut us off and shifted the discussion toward a general attack on ACORN for submitting fraudulent registrations.

In other words, it looks like the RNC had scheduled a call to tout evidence of voter fraud -- not voter registration fraud, mind you, but actual voter fraud -- being perpetrated by ACORN in New Mexico. But when ACORN appeared to come up with compelling evidence that no such fraud had occurred, the RNC held the call anyway, simply shifting the focus to other vague allegations against ACORN -- then refused to address the New Mexico situation when asked.

Voting

MI GOP and Obama Camp. Settle Lawsuit

Kate Klonick | October 20, 2008, 1:40PM

The Michigan Messenger, whose article on the Michigan GOP's plans to challenge voters on foreclosure lists sparked a lawsuit from Democrats, reports that the two parties have now reached a settlement.

A judge was supposed to hear arguments from the Obama campaign's lawsuit against the RNC, MI GOP and Macomb County Republican party. At the last minute, parties settled the lawsuit and issued the following statement:

"Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and individual Macomb County residents have alleged that the Republican National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and the Macomb County Republican Party were planning to use foreclosure lists to challenge certain voters on Election Day. The Republicans have denied the allegations and have stated that they never intended to challenge voters based on any such list. To clarify the matter for all voters, all parties are pleased that they agree that the existence of a person's address on a foreclosure list does not provide a reasonable basis for challenging the person's eligibility to vote and that none of these parties will challenge any voter's eligibility on that basis."

We'll have more on this as it develops.

Voting

Ex-DOJ Voting Rights Chief On Bogus Voter Fraud Probe: "There Is No Shame."

Zachary Roth | October 20, 2008, 12:33PM

Since the news was reported last week that the FBI, less than three weeks before the election, is launching a voter-registration-fraud investigation into ACORN, we've seen a number of former top DOJ voting-rights officials --as well as former US attorney David Iglesias -- denounce the probe as an inappropriate politicization of the department.

Add Joe Rich to the list. Rich, who from 1999 until 2005 ran the voting section in the department's civil rights division, and is now at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, told TPMmuckraker this morning that the ACORN investigation is "much worse than what happened in 2006."

Rich was referring to an indictment for voter fraud against four ACORN voter-registration workers, filed by Bradley Schlozman, an interim US attorney in Kansas City, just five days before a close Missouri Senate election. Schlozman later was investigated for possible perjury after testifying to Congress that he was "directed" by main DOJ to pursue the indictment, then filing a "clarification" in which he took "full responsibility" for the prosecution.

Noting that the Bush administration appears to be using the Department of Justice to pursue politically motivated voter-fraud investigations, even after getting caught red-handed doing so in the scandal over the US attorney firings, Rich added: "There is no shame."

Voting

Irony Alert: GOP Political Consultant Arrested For Voter Registration Fraud

Zachary Roth | October 20, 2008, 10:59AM

For all the outraged Republican claims of rampant voter fraud we've seen in the last few weeks, it's worth noting that authorities have had enough evidence to arrest only a tiny number of people in connection with the problem, almost all of whom were street-level canvassers suspected of duping their supervisors with phony registration cards in order to boost their bonuses.

But over the weekend, a professional political consultant, who owns a firm that's been registering hundreds of thousands of voters and gathering petition signatures, was added to the list. The only problem: it's a Republican firm that had contracted with the California GOP.

The LA Times reports:

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California.

This is the second black eye for Jacoby and his firm, Young Political Majors (YPM) in the last few days. Last week, the same paper reported claims by dozens of Californians that they were asked by YPM canvassers to sign a petition to toughen laws against child molesters, then later found they had been duped into registering as Republicans. YPM, which was paid $7-12 for every Californian it signed up for the Republican party, denied the allegations.

The paper adds:

YPM has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics across the country. Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit.

Ironic that, for all the GOP-generated sturm und drang over ACORN in the last few weeks, it looks like it's in fact a Republican firm against whom there's actual evidence of systemic fraud.

David Iglesias

Ex DOJ Voting Rights Chief: "It's Going to Take a Long Time to Cleanse" Department

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 5:34PM

A former top Department of Justice voting rights official -- who once worked with John McCain in defense of the senator's campaign-finance reform bill -- has added his name to the growing chorus that is denouncing the department's investigation of ACORN as a shameful and inappropriate politicization of Justice along the lines of the US attorney firings.

Speaking to TPMmuckraker, Gerry Hebert described the investigation, word of which was leaked off the record to the Associated Press less than three weeks before the election, as "a continuation of injecting DOJ into what has clearly become a political issue."

He continued: "That's really not the proper role for the DOJ, and why their policies counsel otherwise."

To demonstrate that point, Hebert provided TPMmuckraker with a copy of the department's Manual on Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses.

Under a section headlined "Investigative Considerations in Election Fraud Cases", the manual reads:

When investigating election fraud, three considerations that are absent from most criminal investigations must be kept in mind: (1) respect for the primary role of the states in administering the voting process, (2) an awareness of the role of the election in the governmental process, and (3) sensitivity to the exercise of First Amendment rights in the election context. As a result there are limitations on various investigative steps in an election fraud case.

In most cases, election-related documents should not be taken from the custody of local election administrators until the election to which they pertain has been certified, and the time for contesting the election results has expired. This avoids interfering with the governmental processes affected by the election

Another limitation affects voter interviews. Election fraud cases often depend on the testimony of individual voters whose votes were co-opted in one way or another. But in most cases voters should not be interviewed, or other voter-related investigation done, until after the election is over. Such overt investigative steps may chill legitimate voting activities. They are also likely to be perceived by voters and candidates as an intrusion into the election. Indeed, the fact of a federal criminal investigation may itself become an issue in the election.

Although it is unclear whether the FBI has taken information or interviewed voters, Hebert argued that the new ACORN investigation clearly violates the manual's guidelines, both in terms of its timing -- initiated so close to election day -- and in terms of the off-the-record leak by which it was publicized.

Hebert served 21 years at DOJ's civil-rights division, including a stint as acting head of the voting rights section.* He left in 1994 and now heads a public interest legal non-profit. In 2003, he represented McCain and Sen. Russ Feingold, when the campaign-finance reform legislation authored by the two senators was challenged by conservative activist groups.

Hebert, noting that he had been at DOJ during the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, added: "During the twenty-one years I was there, even though there were political appointees who I worked with, never did we inject partisan considerations into our law-enforcement responsibilities. That has clearly not been the case in recent years under this administration. And it's going to take a long time to cleanse the Department of Justice."

The Obama campaign, House Judiciary chair John Conyers, and, in an interview with TPMmuckraker, former US attorney David Iglesias, have all also connected the FBI's ACORN investigation to the kind of politicization exposed in the firings saga.

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

David Iglesias

Obama Camp Connects ACORN Probe to US Attorneys Scandal

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 3:01PM

Add the Obama campaign to the growing list of players who think that DOJ's election-eve investigation into ACORN is a repeat of the politicization of the department that we saw in the US attorney firings scandal.

"With this voter fraud [investigation], we're seeing an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics," Bob Bauer, an elections lawyer with the Obama camp, said on a conference call with reporters just now. Bauer compared the decision to launch the investigation with the US attorneys scandal, in which several US attorneys were fired for their unwillingess to pursue politically charged cases, including voter fraud, with sufficient aggression to satisfy the Bush administration.

Bauer released a letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling on him to have the issue taken on by Nora Dannehy, the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the US attorney firings.

Bauer went on to accuse John McCain of "trying to create a much greater doubt about the electoral process altogether," by alleging that ACORN voter fraud could threaten the fabric of our democracy, as McCain claimed in the debate Wednesday night.

House Judiciary chair John Conyers, as well as David Iglesias -- whose firing as US attorney was a direct result of his reluctance to pursue GOP-pushed claims of voter fraud, according to the recent OIG report -- have also connected the FBI's ACORN investigation to the kind of politicization exposed in the firings saga.

Voting

Ex-DOJ Vet: Under Bush "We Might Have Gotten Away From" Tradition of Independence

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 12:10PM

It's not just David Iglesias who thinks the Bush administration has inappropriately politicized the Department of Justice.

Paul Hancock, a former top official with the DOJ's civil-rights division, told TPMmuckraker that during his tenure, the department responded in an independent and non-partisan manner to outside pressure to bring politically sensitive cases. But "I think we might have gotten away from that in this administration," he said.

Hancock, who left the department in 1997, stressed that, in his view, it's too soon to know whether the FBI's investigation into ACORN is politically driven, and said that such investigations are not unusual. But they usually would not be aggressively carried out so close to an election, for fear of their existence being made public, and thereby affecting the election.

It remains unclear how far along the ACORN investigation is.

Voting

Supreme Court Sides With Dems On Ohio Voting Case

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 11:59AM

In a ruling late this morning, the Supreme Court sided with Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State, who's in a dispute with the state GOP over voting.

Reports the AP:

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

And the McCain campaign has already responded. On a conference call with reporters just now, campaign manager Rick Davis said: "If you look at what the ruling said, it said that the Republican party didn't have standing in order to bring the suit, it didn't make a decision on the merits of the case." Davis added: "I think that the Secretary of State ought to do her job."

Voting

DOJ Split Over ACORN Probe?

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 11:32AM

Are some higher-ups at the FBI, or somewhere else within DOJ, pushing back against the rapidly growing perception that the department has launched a politically-driven nationwide investigation into voter fraud on the eve of an election?

The New York Times reports:

Law enforcement officials sought on Thursday to ratchet down speculation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had begun a broader investigation into the group's activities. Some officials said privately that they were wary of being pulled into a highly partisan controversy so close to Election Day.

The officials said their investigation of Acorn's activities would, for now, focus on reports of voter registration fraud that have surfaced in several states.

Doesn't sound like the FBI has much evidence of that "coordinated national scam" that the AP reported they're looking for.

Voting

Unchastened, NM Republicans Still Pushing Voter Fraud

Zachary Roth | October 17, 2008, 9:28AM

This morning, we noticed an RNC press release in our inbox, breathlessly touting an Associated Press story that reports:

"The New Mexico Republican Party say they believe 28 people voted fraudulently in an Albuquerque state House district in the June Democratic primary."

Of course, as faithful TPMmuckraker readers know, David Iglesias -- who yesterday told us he was "astounded" by the FBI's new investigation of ACORN in connection with nationwide voter fraud -- was fired as U.S. attorney for the district of New Mexico in large part for failing to follow up on voter fraud complaints with sufficient aggressiveness to please the Bush administration. And many of those complaints came also from the New Mexico Republican Party.

According to the recently released report on the firings by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, Allen Weh, the state party chair, continually pressed Iglesias to make voter fraud a priority, and in 2005 sent an email to Karl Rove and others in the White House office in which he asked for Iglesias to be removed, and a replacement appointed "that takes voter fraud seriously."

The report concluded:

complaints from New Mexico Republican politicians and party activists about Iglesias's handling of voter fraud and corruption cases were the reasons for his
removal as U.S. Attorney.

Still, it looks like the party is still out there pushing the issue.

It's not that we were expecting the GOP to act chastened after getting caught pressuring non-partisan law enforcement officials to pursue bogus and politically motivated cases of voter fraud.

But sometimes the cognitive dissonance is too much to let pass.

Voting

Iglesias: "I'm Astounded" By DOJ's ACORN Probe

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 6:50PM

David Iglesias says he's shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election.

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. "Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI's investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a "boogeyman" out of voter fraud.

And he added that it "stands to reason" that the investigation was launched in response to GOP complaints. In recent weeks, national Republican figures -- including John McCain at last night's debate -- have sought to make an issue out of ACORN's voter-registration activities.

As we noted earlier, last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein publicly highlighted changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual, which lowered the bar for voter-fraud prosecutions, and made it easier to bring vote-fraud cases close to the election.

Speaking today to TPMmuckraker, Iglesias called such changes "extremely problematic."

The way in which the news was revealed today -- Associated Press sourced its report to two "senior law enforcement officials" who "spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election" -- is also raising eyebrows.

Both Iglesias and Bud Cummins -- another of the U.S. attorneys who, according to the IG report, was also fired for political reasons -- told TPMmuckraker that DOJ guidelines do allow US attorneys to speak publicly about an investigation, even before bringing an indictment, if it's to allay public concern over an issue.

But that certainly wouldn't cover anonymous leaks. "If you can't say it with your name on it, it's fair to say you should not be saying it," Cummins told TPMmuckraker.

Earlier this afternoon, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) released a letter he sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI director Robert Mueller, which connected today's news to the U.S. attorney firings, and to recent GOP efforts to stoke fears over voter fraud.

Voting

Conyers On FBI ACORN Probe

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 5:22PM

Below is a letter sent by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chair of the House judiciary committee, to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI director Robert Mueller, in reaction to the news that the FBI has launched an investigation into ACORN in connection with its voter-registration activities.

In raising questions about DOJ's motives, Conyers makes the obvious link to the U.S. attorneys scandal, in which several U.S. attorneys were fired for not pursuing voter fraud cases with sufficient aggressiveness. And he makes the point that John McCain had raised the ACORN issue in last night's debate.

Here's the letter:

Dear Mr. Attorney General and Director Mueller:

It is with shock and disappointment that I read today's Associated Press report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened and leaked an investigation into whether ACORN, a longstanding and well regarded organization that fights for the poor and working class, is involved in nationwide voter fraud.

(The rest is after the jump)

Read more »

Voting

What's Behind the Feds' ACORN Probe?

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 4:03PM

It's worth noting, in response to the news that the FBI has launched an investigation into whether ACORN was involved in a nationwide voter-registration fraud scheme, that the launch of the probe comes at a time national Republicans at several different levels have sought to make an issue out of ACORN -- in some cases calling for just such an investigation.

Last week, John McCain told a Florida crowd:

"There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America. They must be investigated." The GOP standard-bearer has continued to sound the alarm over ACORN since then, and brought it up at last night's debate.

GOP House leader John Boehner last week called in a statement for ACORN to be de-funded -- it is currently eligible for federal housing funds -- and charged that over the years, ACORN "has committed fraud on our system of elections, making American voters question the fairness and accuracy of the exercise of their most fundamental right under the Constitution."

Last week the RNC held at least five separate conference calls with reporters to stoke fears of voter fraud connected to ACORN.

And numerous state- and local-level Republicans have also in the last few weeks called publicly for authorities to look into ACORN.

There's something else that's worth keeping in mind as we learn more about what's behind the current investigation.

At a summer 2007 hearing on the U.S. attorney firings, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) questioned then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual.

As TPMmuckraker reported at the time:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions -- no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election. "Two and possibly three of the fired U.S. attorneys were fired because they didn't bring those small cases that might affect an election," [Feinstein] observed. "Something's rotten in Denmark."

The recent inspector general's report on the U.S. attorney firings concluded that the failure to pursue voter fraud allegations as aggressively as the Bush administration wanted was a factor in several of the the firings.

We laid out the details to the changes in the manual at the time of Feinstein's questioning.

Voting

FBI Probing ACORN Nationwide

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 1:53PM

The FBI is looking into whether ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud across the country, the Associated Press reports.

According to the wire service, the Feds are looking at recent raids on ACORN offices for evidence of a coordinated nationwide scheme.

An ACORN office in Las Vegas was raided earlier this month by Nevada state officials.

John McCain

Media Declines To Challenge McCain's Evidence-Free ACORN Charge

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 11:51AM

In last night's debate, John McCain claimed that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

That's quite an allegation against a group that's working to register low-income voters. You'd hope that the media would ask McCain's campaign for some evidence for the claim, or at least note that the candidate himself didn't offer any. Or that moderator Bob Schieffer would have followed up in real time.

You'd be disappointed, of course. Reporters were too distracted by Joe the Plumber to pay much attention to McCain's hyperbolic accusation.

Of course, McCain had essentially no backing whatsoever for his claim. As TPMmuckraker and others have pointed out, there's virtually no evidence that fraudulent registration forms of the type erroneously submitted by ACORN in their thousands in some states ever turn into fraudulent votes.

(Indeed, the whole voter fraud controversy is such baloney that now even Florida's Republican governor Charlie Crist, a big McCain backer in the primaries, felt compelled to throw some water on it, telling reporters yesterday: "I think that there's probably less [fraud] than is being discussed. As we're coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who enjoy chaos.'')

But the media's failure last night is in keeping with its broader failure to explain that key distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud point. We've highlighted some egregious examples of CNN conflating the two. But there are plenty more from other outlets.

Here's a report from ABC's World News Tonight, flagged by Media Matters, which aired Tuesday night, in which correspondent Jake Tapper, keying off claims made by McCain, sounds the alarm about "voter fraud." Rather than stating authoritatively that the fraudulent forms aren't going to lead to fraudulent votes cast, the story goes he-said she-said, leaving it to Barack Obama to say it while talking to reporters about the charges -- as if this were a debatable point, when in fact it's a crucial fact which undermines the essential premise of the story.

Or consider this NBC News "Deep Background" investigative report, which stokes fears of voter fraud by running down ACORN's history of legal disputes over its registration activities, without ever explaining that in not a single one of these cases was there evidence that fraudulent voting took place.

It's thanks largely to this ongoing media failure that the McCain camp is continuing to flog the issue. Already today, Sarah Palin told a crowd in Bangor, Maine that voters face "a choice between a candidate who won't disavow a group committing voter fraud and a leader who will not tolerate the voter fraud."

Given how clueless the reporting on this story has been, it's almost hard to blame them.

Voting

Ohio's Voting-Rights Ruling: What's the Upshot?

Zachary Roth | October 15, 2008, 5:44PM

Initial reports seemed to suggest that last night's ruling by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on voter registration procedures in the critical swing state of Ohio could potentially disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters.

In truth, the story is more complicated than that. It's not clear how many, if any, voters will be dropped from the rolls as a result of the ruling, and the underlying legal dispute is not as cut and dry as in some of the other GOP-led voter suppression efforts we've covered.

We've seen a slew of voting-related litigation in states and counties across the nation. So it's worth taking a moment to understand how this latest development might affect voting in a state that John Kerry lost by around 118,000 votes in 2004 -- and what it says about the where the Republican's voter-suppression strategy is heading.

Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, was being sued by the state Republican party, in what it says is an effort bring the state into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, and state election laws.

The entire 6th Circuit reversed a three-judge appeals panel and sided with the GOP. The court held that HAVA requires Brunner to provide county elections boards with the names of newly registered voters whose voter registration forms don't match DMV records.

Over 600,000 new voters have registered in Ohio this year. But it appears from the ruling that Brunner has already identified the mismatches from that group. The ruling notes that if the Secretary of State's office found a mismatch, it would send the county board of elections a letter saying that the voters' eligibility could not be confirmed. Then, "the Secretary required unconfirmed voter records to be updated and resent to the Secretary for another effort to validate them with the [Bureau of Motor Vehicle] records." But at a certain point, for reasons that are unclear, the communication between the Secretary of State's office and the county election officials appears to have ceased.

The court's decision will require Brunner to provide local elections officials with easily accessible county-by-county lists of mismatched voters for whom there were discrepancies between the information on their registration forms and other government documents.

The court didn't spell out what the counties must do with the information on mismatches. It's illegal for election officials to unilaterally remove voters from the rolls this close to an election, but voting-rights advocates fear that the information could allow some counties to mount challenges to voters whose records don't match up, even if the mismatch is the result of nothing more than a typographical error, and force them to cast a provisional ballot -- "disenfranchised by a typo," as Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, a voting-rights activist group, puts it.

But it appears unlikely that large numbers of challenges will result from the ruling. The Ohio Secretary of State has the power to set a uniform standard for what counties should do when confronted with a mismatch, according to Carrie Davis, a lawyer with the ACLU. And Brunner -- like officials in 46 other states, say experts -- has consistently said that a simple mismatch is not grounds for knocking voters off the rolls.

Could some GOP county election officials try to ignore that directive, and impose a harsher standard? Possibly, but every challenge would be voted on by the board, made up of two Republicans and two Democrats. Brunner herself would cast the tie-breaking vote.

So at this point, it's far from clear how many eligible voters will be removed from the rolls thanks to the court's decision last night.

Part of the concern among voting-rights advocates has to do with the timing of the decision. They say that, with only three weeks until election day, there's little time for election officials to clear up the mismatches, creating potential confusion and delays on election day if, in the end, significant numbers of voters are challenged. In addition, the court makes clear that any voter registered in the last year -- over 600,000 -- must be verified.

By contrast, in Florida, where courts ruled earlier this year that a similar "no-match, no vote" standard can obtain, it applied only to voters registered in the last few months. And because the court made its ruling earlier in the cycle, there's been more time for election officials to sort out discrepancies.

Still, in a sense, this is really the result of an earlier legislative win for the GOP. Thanks largely to the efforts of congressional Republican "vote-fraud" hawks like Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Kit Bond, HAVA, the sweeping federal voting law enacted in the wake of the Florida 2000 fiasco, imposed a more restrictive standard in terms of verifying new voters' information. Arguing in the courts for that law to be strictly upheld is hardly an underhanded strategy, even if there are good arguments for a more liberal interpretation of the law.

So the GOP's voter suppression efforts have simply become more sophisticated. Instead of -- or really, in addition to -- ground-level efforts to use misinformation to intimidate and confuse voters at the polls -- they've gotten the courts to uphold a newly restrictive standard on verifying voters' eligibility.

Or, put more simply: Republican voter suppression has gone legit.

Voting

Montana GOP Official Out After Failed Bid To Challenge Voters

Zachary Roth | October 15, 2008, 1:00PM

Sometimes there's justice in the world.

Earlier this month, Montana Republicans decided to challenge thousands of voters in predominantly Democratic areas, based on discrepancies in their addresses.

The GOP hastily withdrew the challenge after it sparked an outcry.

But now, the party's executive director has resigned, just three weeks before the election.

No one's saying on the record that Adam Eaton's departure is a result of the challenge fiasco. But the Missoulian reports: "Last week, rumors were running rampant in political circles that Eaton would be pushed out because of the much-criticized effort to challenge voter registrations."

The challenges appeared to win the party no friends in the state. After it was revealed that among the challenged voters was a member of the Army Reserve about to deploy to Kuwait, and an 86-year old Second World War hero, even some local Republicans denounced the gambit.

Democrats in the state had gone to court to block the challenges. The Republicans withdrew them before a ruling was made, but not before the judge issued an order charging: "The timing of these challenges is so transparent that it defies common sense to believe the purpose is anything but political chicanery."

Eaton told the paper he's going to work for an equity consulting form based in Madison, Wisconsin.

He'll be replaced by former state representative Larry Grinde of Lewiston.

Voting

CNN Leads Media Failure on ACORN Story

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 6:26PM

Another day, another effort by the McCain camp to seize the political advantage over the bogus issue of ACORN and voter fraud.

This morning, the campaign trotted out former Missouri Republican senator John Danforth -- playing on his reputation for bipartisanship -- to call on Barack Obama to "rein in ACORN."

Said Danforth:

We think that this is really serious, and it goes beyond who ends up winning this election, it goes to the whole integrity of the election, and it goes to confidence in the election, and it goes to whether the American people will have sufficient confidence to be willing to put the election behind us and move forward as one country once the election is over. We are concerned about it.

Of course, as TPM has been making clear, the allegations of vote fraud are essentially a crock.

That's not because ACORN hasn't submitted hundreds or even thousands of fraudulent registration forms in several crucial swing states. They have -- though it's worth noting again that in many states, they're required by law to submit any forms their canvassers collect.

But to reiterate the main point: according to experts, fraudulent registration forms almost never lead to lead to fraudulent voting. If ACORN submits a form with the name Mickey Mouse, Mickey is unlikely to show up to vote on election day.

In other words, there's a crucial distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud -- and there's essentially no evidence whatsoever of the latter.

But the Republican bamboozlement is crucially abetted by the fact that a lot of the reporting on this story -- much of it prompted by the GOP's strenuous effort to tout the issue -- utterly fails to make this key distinction, and often implies the opposite. And (leaving Fox aside, of course) CNN has been the worst offender.

Consider this CNN report from yesterday, gleefully sent out by the RNC. After reporter Drew Griffin lays out the details on fraudulent forms submitted by ACORN in one (heavily minority) in Indiana county, anchor Kieran Chetry and Griffin have the following exchange:

CHETRY: You know what, not only is it not funny, but it's such a waste of time. If you look at what we went through in previous elections, from hanging chads to voter irregularities, I mean we're talking about our country right now, dealing with an economic crisis, a war in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan. You know, for people to do this, it's just a shame. It just wastes more time and you wonder if the process, if your vote will count.

GRIFFIN: Certainly, the credibility has dropped in this system, no matter which way Lake County votes. Lake County, heavily Democratic by the way, which way it votes, either side, they're going to have ammunition to say -- oh there's probably voter fraud.

Which is exactly why the GOP is pursuing this tactic. But it would have less "ammunition" to allege vote fraud in the event of a loss if the news media would report the story properly.

Lou Dobbs has also fastened onto the issue, breathlessly reporting Sunday night:

New evidence tonight that the so-called community left-wing activist group, ACORN, is involved in widespread voter registration fraud. And point of fact, ACORN is a left-wing special interest group that's been under investigation for literally years in various parts of the country for voter fraud and embezzlement.

Later, Dobbs asked Griffin:

We're seeing it from Vegas to Ohio, to Pennsylvania, and to Indiana, all over the country, and these investigations are opening up. How can there be any doubt about what's at work here?

The media's failure to grasp this crucial distinction -- exemplified by CNN -- has encouraged the GOP and the McCain campaign to believe that they can gain a political advantage by continuing to hammer on this bogus story.

In one sense, it's easy to understand the Republicans' motivation, as sleazy as the tactic might be: they're trying to win an election, or at least lay the groundwork to make a post-hoc argument that their loss was unfair.

But media outlets like CNN have no such excuse.

Voting

New Hampshire Phone-Jamming: The History

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 1:33PM

Given the news that James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with their investigation into the GOP plot to jam Democratic phones on Election Day 2002, it's worth stepping back a bit to recap how we got to this point.

In 2002, Republican John Sununu and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen were in a tight race for an open Senate seat. On Election Day, over 800 computerized hang-up calls jammed phone lines set up by the Democratic party and the Manchester firefighters' union for get-out-the-vote activities on behalf of Shaheen and other Democratic candidates. Sununu won the race by about 20,00 votes.

At the time, Tobin was the regional director, overseeing New Hampshire, for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

In 2004, Charles McGee, the head of the New Hampshire GOP at the time of the incident, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the scheme. Allen Raymond, a Republican consultant whose firm was hired by McGee to carry out the plan, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Both have served jail time for their roles in the affair.

As for Tobin, his legal proceedings have been more complicated. He was convicted of putting McGee and Raymond in touch, and sentenced to jail time. But he never served time -- the conviction was overturned on appeal in March 2007, with a court ruling that the government had not shown that Tobin intended to harass. It remanded the case to a U.S. District Court in Concord, where a judge acquitted Tobin in February of this year, saying his ruling had been "constrained" by the appeals court ruling. In March, the government appealed that decision. That appeal was making its way through the courts when last week's indictment for making false statements was filed.

From the start, there has been evidence tying senior White House and Republican party figures to the case. The Republican National Committee has admitted to paying Tobin's legal bills during that case, totaling nearly $3 million.*

And phone records released in the case show that Tobin made two dozen calls to the office of then-White House political director Ken Mehlman within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

* This paragraph has been edited from a previous version.

Voting

Ex-GOP Operative in New Hampshire Indicted

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 11:48AM

Former Republican operative James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the bureau's investigation of a phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire in 2002, according to court filings examined by TPMmuckraker.

Details to follow...

Update: Here's the indictment. It contains two counts, both related to making false statements to the FBI during its investigation into the New Hampshire GOP's effort to jam the phones of the Democratic Party on Election Day 2002.

It charges, in part:

"Tobin stated that when he first called Allen Raymond to discuss the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond and Charles McGee had already spoken with each other about the plans. In fact, as Tobin well knew, Tobin spoke with Raymond before Raymond was contacted by McGee, and Tobin requested that Raymond assist McGee with the plan."

McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, and Raymond, a GOP consultant, both were convicted and served jail time in connection with the scheme.

But Tobin's own 2005 conviction relating to the scheme was thrown out on appeal in 2007*.

Dane Butswinkas of the Washington law firm Williams and Connolly, who is representing Tobin, declined to comment when reached by TPMmuckraker. The Republican National Committee has in the past paid for Williams and Connolly's defense of Tobin.

And phone records released in Tobin's 2005 trial show that he made two dozen calls to the office of Ken Mehlman, then the White House's political director, within a three-day period around Election Day 2002. Mehlman has said none of the calls involved the phone-jamming incident.

According to a court document, each count is a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

*This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Voting

Indiana and Ohio Spar Locally with ACORN

Kate Klonick | October 13, 2008, 4:02PM

As the Republican furor over ACORN and voter fraud continues to heat up nationally, there are two local developments in Democratic counties in swing states that are worth noting.

In Lake County, Indiana, where the GOP has already tried to prevent the opening of early voting sites in minority areas, the secretary of state has now asked the state attorney general and federal prosecutors to investigate ACORN for voter fraud.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita wrote a letter to fellow Republican, AG Steve Carter on Friday, stating that he had received "secured credible evidence" of voter fraud perpetuated by ACORN, the AP reports.

"There looks to be some felonious actions taken here," Rokita said to reporters. "I think the message to the voters and taxpayers of this state is that we're watching, and we're not going to tolerate the kind of behavior in the state."

ACORN responded on Friday saying that they themselves had "identified approximately 2,100 cards in Lake County that we believe were problematic."

"We are the victim here because we have identified the problem, and now certain interests are turning that information against us," Brian Kettenring, a spokesman for ACORN said.

And Lake County isn't the only Democratic stronghold in a swing state to be targeted with voter fraud accusations. The bipartisan Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, a county which contains Cleveland, held hearings today and voted unanimously to ask the county prosecutor to investigate multiple registrations of individuals registered by ACORN, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Four people were subpoenaed in front of the board this morning, testifying that they had been asked to register multiple times by ACORN solicitors.

Katy Gall, the ACORN director for Ohio, said that they had cooperated with the investigation and would terminate the employment of anyone found soliciting multiple registrations.

No charges have been filed against ACORN in either state and in Indiana, the attorney general has yet to respond to Rokita's request Friday for an investigation.

Voting

A Dose of Reality on the ACORN Hysteria

Zachary Roth | October 13, 2008, 1:09PM

It's worth taking a moment to step back from the slew of charges leveled over the last week at ACORN, the community-organizing group that Republicans and the McCain campaign have been trying to turn into a bogeyman for fears about vote fraud (and, of course, tie to Barack Obama).

The GOP has accused ACORN of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms numbering in the hundreds or thousands, in battleground states including Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, and Missouri.

But the most important point that's getting lost in the Fox-generated hysteria is that, according to voting experts, even when fraudulent voter registration forms are submitted, they virtually never lead to fraudulent votes being cast. Richard Hasen, a law professor at Loyola and an authority on voting law, wrote in a 2007 op-ed published last year in the Dallas Morning News and noted recently by TPM, that "the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible," because of the sheer logistical challenges it would require to carry out on a large scale.

In many states, ACORN is required by law to turn in all the forms it collects, though the law differs from state to law, according to experts.

ACORN has consistently said that it flags suspicious forms for election officials. Indeed, in Nevada where last week an ACORN office was raided in an investigation headed by the Secretary of State, ACORN was already cooperating with authorities.

According to a statement from the group which has not been disputed by state officials, in July, ACORN set up a meeting with county elections officials and the Secretary of State's office to urge them to take action on information ACORN had provided. Since then, "ACORN has provided officials with copies and--in some cases--second copies of many of the personnel records and the 'problem card packages' and cover sheets with which we originally identified the problem cards."

It's also worth noting that similar allegations were made against ACORN in the last few election cycles, and several investigations were conducted, none of which found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Many of these were conducted by US attorneys, who were pressured by GOP political figures to investigate the issue, then fired after they failed to come up with sufficient evidence.

So as the GOP campaign to make an issue out of ACORN continues -- and we'll be keeping you posted as it does -- remember that the number of fraudulent votes that will be cast in November as a result of the group's voter-registration activities is close to zero. But the number of valid voters who could potentially have obstacles placed in their way of voting, as a result of the Republican campaign, is far larger.

Voting

McCain Camp Tying Obama To ACORN

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 5:39PM

The McCain campaign is stepping up its efforts to make an issue out of ACORN's voter registration activities -- and one of its new moves is to tie Barack Obama to the beleaguered community organizing group.

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis raised the specter of massive voter fraud enabling an Obama victory November 4th.

"We don't want to see battleground states turn on ACORN," he said. "We want to make sure not one of these states are (sic) stolen."

Davis continued: "You don't file fake registrations if you're not going to use them to cast fake ballots."

There's little backing to support that contention. According to experts, false registrations almost never result in fraudulent votes, but rather are the result of canvassers artificially juicing their numbers in order to earn a bigger bonus. Tony Romo, for instance, is highly unlikely to try to show up to vote in Las Vegas.

So it bears repeating: despite reports in several swing states that ACORN has submitted fraudulent registration forms in the hundreds, and even perhaps the thousands, there's scant evidence that the group's lapses could significantly affect the integrity of the vote.

But for the McCain campaign, the point of touting the ACORN story is in part to tag Obama as tied to a supposedly radical, lawless community organization that works on behalf of minorities.

Davis noted that Obama had acted as a lawyer for ACORN, and had taught classes to ACORN community organizers. He also asserted that the Obama campaign had paid $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary to canvass voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas during the primary.

Those claims are all technically true, though they deliberately exaggerate the closeness of the relationship between Obama and ACORN.

Davis also pointed reporters to a website, obamaacorntree.com, detailing the connections between the two.

Voting

Double and Triple Checking in Swing States Could Lead to Voters Blocked from Polls

Kate Klonick | October 10, 2008, 4:01PM

As state officials scramble to rebut claims of voter purging and blocked registrations made in a recent report, they're also revealing their missteps. Officials in two swing states have admitted that they are double -- and sometimes triple -- checking new voter registrations, which could lead to eligible voters voters being turned away from polls.

In North Carolina, one of the states fingered in the New York Times investigation published yesterday, Gary Bartlett, director of the Board of Elections defended his state's handling of new voter registrations, claiming the BOE was verifying both drivers license numbers and social security numbers if new voters provide both on their application.

In Indiana, a swing state that has also had a large uptick in requests to the SSA for voter registration verifications, Matt Tusing, the deputy secretary of state and a Republican, told the Indianapolis Star that Indiana officials have been verifying the Social Security number on every card, as wells as running checks with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Correction and death records.

"Some states don't check against all those sources," he told the paper.

In both cases, that's far more verification than is required under federal law, and the superfluous checking of both numbers could lead to eligible vote registrations not being verified -- something that could disproportionately affect Democrats, who have registered in higher numbers this year.

According to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, states must exhaust checks in their own identification databases -- like drivers licenses and ID cards -- before turning to the often unreliable federal database with the Social Security Administration. Yesterday's Times report alleges that states like Colorado have been improperly relying on the SSA to verify voter registrations.

Voting

Big GOP Pollster Behind Oregon Calls

Zachary Roth | October 10, 2008, 2:31PM

So yesterday we reported on a possible push poll being conducted in Oregon by a company called Western Wats. A caller told one Oregon woman we spoke to about tax increases being supported by Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, then asked whether the information made her less likely to support Merkley -- who's in a tight race with Republican incumbent Gordon Smith.

Western Wats had told us yesterday that its client was NMB Research, who did not return our call. But today, Stacey Jenkins of Western Wats called back to say that, after speaking again with their client, Western Wats had been authorized to tell us that the client is in fact Public Opinion Strategies (POS), a well-known GOP polling firm. POS, Jenkins said, had asked Western Wats yesterday to give us the name NMB Research as the client.

Jenkins could not answer why POS had directed Western Wats to give what appears to be misleading or incomplete information to a news organization.

A representative for POS did not immediately make available to TPMmuckraker anyone who could provide more information, or clarify the relationship between POS and NMB Research, but pledged to do so.

POS is a major GOP polling firm, founded by respected veteran pollsters Bill McInturff, Glen Bolger, and Neil Newhouse. Its involvement may indicate that the call was not part of a push poll, but rather an effort to test negative messages with a sample group of voters, for research purposes -- a possibility we suggested yesterday.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more.

Late Update: Public Opinion Strategies sent the following statement to TPMmuckraker this afternoon:

NMB Research is a separate legal entity with a separate office set up by the members of Public Opinion Strategies. It was established to comply with coordination rules of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. NMB is retained by a number of clients involved in public policy research, issue advocacy, and independent expenditure campaigns. The establishment of NMB ensures compliance with the coordination rules of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

Neither Public Opinion Strategies nor NMB Research engages in push polling, voter ID, or GOTV programs.

We've contacted Neil Newhouse, a founder and senior pollster with the firm, to ask specifically about the Oregon call we reported on yesterday, and as always, will keep you posted.

Later Update: Neil Newhouse emails to say: "The poll was done by NMB and included more than 20 questions, including some message testing regarding Jeff Merkley."

He adds: "It was not a push poll, but a standard message-testing survey."

In other words, the call was designed to test which negative message about Merkley voting for tax increases would be most effective with Oregon voters.

Voting

States Deny Problems with Voter Registration

Kate Klonick | October 10, 2008, 11:29AM

States reached out to reassure voters yesterday, after a story in the New York Times said that tens of thousands of voters were being blocked from registering or purged from state rolls.

Colorado, one of the states named in the story, has said they will review the process that has removed an estimated 37,000 voters from the state registry, but denied that the number was accurate.

"I have no idea where they got the numbers from," Colorado's Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican, told the Denver Post.

Other states expressed confusion over the report and denied that they had widespread problems with their procedures.

Nevada's Secretary of State, a Democrat, assured Nevadans that, "any suggestion that eligible voters will be denied their right to participate in this election on Nov. 4 is false."

Michigan elections director Chris Thomas has said that only 11,000 voters were removed from Michigan rolls, a figure dramatically different than the 33,000 estimate in the Times report.

But it's important to note that both Michigan and Colorado repeatedly declined the Times request to make voter purge files public so they could be compared to the Times research compiled from state records. Both states also failed to respond to requests for comment on the story, days before it was published, but then provided their own sets of numbers on Thursday.

Voting

Anti-Dem Push-Polling In Oregon Senate Race?

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 5:07PM

Is Gordon Smith, Oregon's Republican senator who's in a tight reelection race, using push polls to turn voters against his Democratic opponent?

Kay Phillips, of Cottage Grove, Oregon told TPMmuckraker that last night she received a call about the race. After responding to some standard polling questions, including how she intended to vote in the Senate race and the presidential race, Phillips says she was then asked whether her opinion of Jeff Merkley, Smith's Democratic opponent, would change if she knew about tax increases he had supported. The caller then read six instances of tax increases, asking after each one whether she would change her opinion. The call lasted about 5-6 minutes, Phillips said.

At the start of the conversation, Phillips said, the caller told her she was calling with Western Wats. When, at the end of the call, Phillips the caller to repeat her affiliation, the caller spelled out the name, according to Phillips.

It's worth noting that political campaigns sometimes make similar calls to test negative messages, rather than to deceptively sway the opinions of large numbers of voters. Message testing calls are typically -- though not necessarily -- longer than 5-6 minutes, and conducted on a far smaller scale than push polls, since they seek only to target a representative sample of the electorate.

A spokesman for Western Wats, a Utah-based market research firm, confirmed to TPMmuckraker that his firm was conducting calls on the Oregon Senate race, and named NMB Research as the client, would not give additional information, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Western Wats may ring a bell for TPM readers. Last fall, the New Hampshire Attorney General launched an investigation after voters in that state and Iowa reported receiving calls from the firm, informing them of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, and praising John McCain's military record. As of August, the investigation was still ongoing.

NMB Research did not immediately return a call for comment. According to campaign disclosure records, the Virginia-based firm was paid $13,000 by the National Republican Campaign Committee to conduct "generic survey" in January.

Calls by TPMmuckraker to Smith's campaign, and to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which also conducts polling on Senate races, were not immediately returned.

Voting

Missteps Lead to Blocked Voters in Swing States

Kate Klonick | October 9, 2008, 5:05PM

On Monday, the Social Security Administration sent out a curious press release asking six states -- four of which, Ohio, Indiana, Nevada and North Carolina, are swing states -- to review their voter registration verification procedure.

When TPMmuckraker called to see what was behind the out-of-character notification, Mark Lassiter, the SSA's press officer told us that those states had been requesting an inordinately high number of checks for voter's registrations from the SSA. For instance, the relatively large state of California only requested 410,000 verifications of voter's registrations based on social security numbers, while the significantly less populous Georgia requested almost 2 million.

The discrepancies seem to be a result of different states interpretation of a new federal law: the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002. HAVA says that states must exhaust checks in their own identification databases -- like drivers licenses and ID cards -- before turning to the often unreliable federal database with the Social Security Administration. Instead, states like those mentioned above have been improperly relying on the SSA to verify voter registrations.

The apparent violations of HAVA aren't necessarily nefarious. Nevada's uptick in SSA checks was apparently due to county clerks entering social security numbers and driver's license number in the wrong fields, state officials told the New York Times , whose inquiries into federal voter registration verification numbers directly preceded the SSA's press release.

The Times investigation also mentioned two more swing states where voters are being affected due to the bending of federal law.

In Michigan and Colorado, they have purged eligible voters from rolls within 90 days of the election -- which is only allowed if voters die, move out of the state or are declared unfit to vote.

According to the voter purge estimates, 37,000 voters were removed from Colorado's voter registration database in just three weeks this summer -- a number that seems inexplicable give only 2,400 deaths and 5,100 out of state moves in that time period. Similar questions have been raised in Michigan, where 33,00 voters re removed in August, though there had only been 7,100 deaths and 4,400 out of state moves.

The misapplication of federal law could lead to massive problems on Election Day and disproportionally affect Democrats, who have been registering in higher numbers this year. The thought of widespread confusion and disenfranchisement on Nov. 4 has spurred many to action and put the spotlight on the storied battle between Democrats and the GOP over the existence of voter fraud.

In Ohio, the Secretary of State (a Democrat) and the Ohio GOP are battling in federal court over the release of a list of voter registrations verified by the SSA, according to the Times. The GOP seeks to force voters who don't resolve discrepancies in their registration to vote via provisional ballot -- which are notorious for not being counted because they need extra verification.

Voting

McCain Camp's Anti-ACORN Campaign Goes Nationwide

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 3:54PM

It looks like the effort by the McCain campaign and the Republican party to make an issue out of ACORN's voter registration activities has gone national.

We've seen reports from several states in recent days that the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, has submitted flawed or fraudulent voter registration forms -- though it's by no means clear how widespread the problem is.

But that's not stopping the McCain team. At a town-hall meeting in Wisconsin today, when supporters began to chant the group's name in derision, the Arizona senator seized the moment to go on the attack.

"You've seen the allegations, the multiple registrations under the same name, the more registered voters than the population, these are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth, so Americans will not -- will not -- be deprived of a fair process in this election.

And this morning, Fox News interviewed a Domino's Pizza employee in Ohio, who said that he had been asked by an ACORN canvasser to fill out multiple registration forms. The story appeared on the front page of the New York Post this morning.

The Republican effort to raise the specter of voter fraud, with ACORN at the center, is being carried out on the local level as well. After Nevada investigators raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, Nevada's Republican senator, John Ensign immediately called on the Bush administration to close a loophole through which the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, is eligible to receive federal housing funds through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

No one has been charged in the raid, which was part of an investigation apparently being led by Democratic secretary of state, Ross Miller. But there are suggestions that it was prompted in part by GOP complaints. Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for Ensign, quickly ended a call without responding, after being asked by TPMmuckraker whether Ensign's office had complained to state authorities about potential voter fraud by ACORN in advance of the raid. And as we reported this morning, the head of the state Republican party told TPMmuckraker that the state party had indeed expressed concerns about the issue to Miller's office over the summer. Miller's office has said that the raid was prompted by evidence that ACORN has submitted fraudulent voter registration forms.

Meanwhile, Missouri Republicans, led by former senator Jack Danforth, yesterday accused ACORN of filing thousands of false forms with election officials in the Show Me state. Danforth, who garnered a reputation as a bipartisan statesman during his tenure the Senate, is helping to lead a nationwide effort by the McCain campaign to raise concerns about voter fraud. On a September conference call with reporters, Danforth highlighted reports of faulty registration forms in Michigan, Colorado, and other states, and tried to link ACORN to Barack Obama, pointing out that the group's political action committee affiliated had endorsed the Demcrat.

And in New Mexico -- where David Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney in 2006 in large part for failing to respond with sufficient alacrity to complaints about voter fraud lodged by GOP elected officials -- the FBI has opened a preliminary investigation into 1400 potentially fraudulent registration forms filed at a county election office in Albuquerque. ACORN is active in the area. A Republican state legislator told the Wall Street Journal that even if fraud is rare, "every fraudulent vote cast cancels out a legitimate one."

ACORN may have been lax, at best, in its procedures for gathering registration forms. But aside from the GOP's continuing inability to pinpoint the scale of the problem, it's also worth noting that, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "a fake registration doesn't necessarily mean an ineligible vote is tallied. Officials say canvassers sometimes make up registered names to impress bosses or earn bonuses, but that doesn't result in anyone ineligible casting a vote."

But by shrieking about voter fraud, the McCain camp hopes to make voting officials more willing to place restrictions in the path of voters on election day, potentially causing delays and confusion at the polls, and reducing overall turnout. And it seeks to discredit any Obama victory by raising the suggestion that it was aided by the votes of ineligible voters.

Voting

Nevada GOP Contacted State About ACORN Before Raid

Zachary Roth | October 9, 2008, 11:26AM

The Nevada Republican Party raised concerns with the Secretary of State's office about potential voter fraud in ACORN's voter registration efforts before Tuesday's raid by state authorities on ACORN's Las Vegas office, according to the party's executive director.

Zachary Moyle told TPMmuckraker that the state party has long seen ACORN's voter registration work as a "red flag," and that the contact with the
office of Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, which took the lead in ordering the raid, occurred over the summer. Moyle stressed that it's far from unusual for the GOP to raise concerns over voter fraud, and said that it has also been working closely with the Clark County registrar of voters on the issue.

The Secretary of State's office has said in an affidavit that the raid was triggered by evidence that ACORN has filed fraudulent registration forms, though it has not yet said how widespread the problem is.

Voting

What's Behind The ACORN Raid?

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 6:29PM

Yesterday, we told you about the raid conducted by Nevada state authorities on the Las Vegas office of ACORN.

The office of Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller has been telling reporters that the raid was prompted by complaints by Clark County officials about fraudulent voting forms being submitted by the group, which works to register low-income voters. An affidavit released by the state today described forms being received with the same name, as well as with fraudulent addresses and with personal information that did not match state records.

But the state has still not said how many such forms were submitted. Bob Walsh, a spokesman for the Secretary of State, told TPMmuckraker that the office is working to answer that question.

In a statement released yesterday, ACORN called the raid a "bogus attack" and asserted that it has "BENT OVER BACKWARDS to identify fraud and to encourage the Board of Elections to prosecute fraud."

But we're still puzzled by something: Republicans have a long history of clashing with ACORN, whose mission to register low-income and minority voters serves the cause of Democrats. So it's not clear what, beyond the immediate allegations, prompted Miller, a Democrat, to launch a high-profile raid of a major voter registration organization four weeks before election day.

According to Walsh, Miller, who has a background as a prosecutor, has always made law and order a priority. And ACORN does have a history of being less than fastidious about preventing small-scale fraud by canvassers who are paid per registration form they bring in. So perhaps this is nothing more than a state official being vigilant in upholding the law.

As more facts become clear, we'll keep you posted.

Voting

Montana GOP Backs Off Voter Challenges

Zachary Roth | October 8, 2008, 3:10PM

Score one for democracy.

The Montana GOP announced last night that it's backing off its challenge to the legitimacy of thousands of voter registrations filed in predominantly Democratic areas of the state, which we told you about earlier this week.

In a letter to the head of the elections office of Missoula county -- the county with the largest number of challenged voters -- which was released to reporters last night, GOP chair Jacob Eaton wrote that the challenges were made in "good faith" but added:

"As a disabled combat veteran who has fought Al Queada (sic) to defend this country and our democracy and who has voted absentee en route to a war zone, I regret that my actions have been perceived as such."

A spokesman for the secretary of state's office told The Missoulian that no one has ever complained to the secretary's office of widespread voter fraud based on inaccurate voter addresses.

Voting

State Official: "Tony Romo Is Not Registered To Vote in the State of Nevada."

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 5:42PM

We're starting to get a little more information about the raid on ACORN's Las Vegas offices conducted by Nevada authorities earlier today.

FoxNews.com reports that, according to Bob Walsh, a spokesman with the Nevada Secretary of State's office, the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints that ACORN, which works to register low income voters, was submitting registrations with erroneous information, including non-existent and false names, and duplicates.

But it's still unclear how many of these fraudulent forms were submitted.

Secretary of State Ross Miller told Fox that the flawed registrations included the names of Dallas Cowboys football players. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said.

Miller added that no ACORN employees or canvassers have been arrested or charged in connection with the raid.

A month ago, state and federal authorities launched a joint task force to investigate voter-fraud complaints.

Voting

GOP County Chair v. Michigan Messenger: The Complaint

Kate Klonick | October 7, 2008, 5:27PM

Last week, the chair of the Macomb County Republican Party in Michigan filed a defamation suit against the Michigan Messenger, over a story in which he is quoted as stating his party plans to challenge voters whose names and addresses appear on foreclosure lists.

We got our hands on a copy of the suit, and we invite you to take a look. We'll be continuing to bring you updates on this story as it develops.

Voting

Nevada ACORN Office Raided By State Authorities

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2008, 2:03PM

Nevada investigators today raided the offices of ACORN -- a group that works to register minorities and low-income people to vote -- looking for evidence of voter fraud, reports the Associated Press.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN) is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names, according to a spokesman at the office of Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat.

Two months ago, state and federal authorities formed a joint task force to pursue charges of election fraud in Nevada.

We're looking into the question of how much credible evidence exists of ACORN's involvement in significant voting fraud, and will keep you posted.

Voting

Wisc. AG's Office Denies Voter Reg. Suit is Political

Kate Klonick | October 7, 2008, 12:58PM

The Wisconsin attorney general's office is standing firmly by its claim that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's suit against the Government Accountability Board is not political -- despite an audio recording discovered yesterday of Van Hollen promising action on voter fraud to a Republican audience, weeks before he filed suit.

"It's a very good and compelling speech that reiterates what he's been talking about for two years," Kevin St. John, a spokesman from the AG's office told WisPolitics.com, the site that originally discovered the audio of Van Hollen's speech at the Republican National Convention on Sept. 4.

"You'll be hearing much more from the Department of Justice in the coming months about doing what we can to make sure that those people who have illegally and illegitimately registered to vote, don't have the opportunity on election day to show up and take away your vote by casting one that is not legal," Van Hollen says in the audio recording from the RNC.

St. John pointed to a letter (pdf) Van Hollen sent to the GAB -- which oversees state elections -- on August 27, which states that he will be pushing for the board to meet HAVA compliances in demanding that they verify all of the voter registrations filed since January 2006.

"The Attorney General has given many public statements about the right to vote and to enforce the law," St. John said to WisPolitics.com. "Illegal voting is wrong and the Attorney General's office should work within the powers of the office to enforce the law and protect the right to vote."

Voting

Montana GOP Targets WWII Hero in Voter Challenge

Zachary Roth | October 6, 2008, 6:10PM

Last week, we noted the announcement by the Montana Republican party that it's challenging the voter registrations of over 6000 voters, mostly in Democratic-leaning counties.

The GOP has presented the move as an effort to combat fraud. For all the challenged voters, says the party, there were discrepancies between the address under which they registered to vote, and a U.S. postal service address database.

But two registered Montana voters, along with the state Democratic party, this morning filed suit with a federal court to stop the challenges, calling the GOP move "a transparent and very likely unsuccessful attempt" to discourage voters from turning out.

It's already clear that the list of challenged voters includes a good number of people who are hardly prime suspects for voter fraud.

In an opinion piece published yesterday in the Montana Standard, the state's GOP lieutenant governor, John Bohlinger, noted that one voter who's being challenged is Frank St. Pierre, a World War II veteran who helped save thousands of Allied troops in Dunkirk, and happened to move across town recently*. Bohlinger called the effort to challenge St. Pierre "an utter disgrace."

And as we told you earlier today, the list also includes Kevin Furey, a former Democratic state representative who's an army reserve officer about to deploy to Kuwait. (The GOP has since backed down on that one.)

Also appearing on the list are Matt Gouras of the Associated Press, who has been covering the presidential race in Montana, and Alden Downing, a former reporter for the local NBC affiliate who's now serving as communications director for GOP gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown. That's according to Matt Singer, who heads Forward Montana, a progressive activist group based in Missoula that obtained a copy of challenged voters in Missoula county -- and appears on it himself. (This afternoon, the group unveiled a website that allows users to search the lists of challenged voters from Missoula and Lewis and Clark counties. Additional counties will be added as the information becomes available, said Singer.)

On Saturday, John Brueggeman, a Republican state legislator, spoke out against the challenges, telling the Great Falls Tribune: "I can't think we'll do anything but irreparable harm to our party" with independent voters who may be targeted.

But that same day, the state GOP chair informed a local paper that the voter-challenge party is just getting started. "These counties are the beginning, not the end," Jake Eaton told the Billings Gazette. "We're looking at this across the state."

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Voting

Audio Recordings Reveal WI AG Promised Action Over Fraud at RNC

Kate Klonick | October 6, 2008, 2:07PM

New audio uncovered by the Wisconsin news site Wispolitics.com, reveals that during a speech at the Republican National Convention, Wisconsin's attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen promised action on voter fraud.

At the time of the statement, Van Hollen hadn't filed suit against the Government Accountability Board -- which oversees state elections -- demanding that they verify all of the voter registrations filed since January 2006. As a result, his statement at the RNC stands in sharp contrast to his claims that the suit is not politically motivated.

"There was no discussion with anybody involved in leadership with the Republican Party (or the McCain campaign) about this lawsuit before it was brought," Van Hollen said earlier last month.

"We're out there fighting to make sure that within the context of 'little-L,' liberal voter registration law that we have in the state of Wisconsin, that even though in the context of that law we can't prevent everybody from voting who isn't entitled to vote and preserve the right for everybody who is entitled to vote, to vote, but we are going to do our best, as the lawyers for the state of Wisconsin, as the defenders and protectors of the law of the state of Wisconsin, of the people who are there to defend your right to have your vote matter," Van Hollen said on September 4th at the RNC.

"We are out there front and center everyday and you'll be hearing much more from the Department of Justice in the coming months about doing what we can to make sure that those people who have illegally and illegitimately registered to vote, don't have the opportunity on election day to show up and take away your vote by casting one that is not legal," he continued.

Joe Wineke, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was distressed at the audio of Van Hollen's statements.

"If JB Van Hollen is claiming this lawsuit isn't political, then why did he discuss it with the RPW Chair at a partisan political convention and then send signals to fellow Republicans that he was mobilizing the Department of Justice to take action?," said Wineke in a press release.

Listen to a portion of the audio of Van Hollen's speech here.

Voting

Indiana Republicans Making Voting Harder for Blacks

Zachary Roth | October 6, 2008, 1:56PM

Indiana is one of the key red states that Barack Obama has unexpectedly put in play this year. So it's not surprising that the GOP is pulling out all the stops to keep it in their column -- including, predictably, launching an effort to make it much harder for African-Americans to vote.

In a nutshell, here's what's happened so far. The details get a little intricate, but stay with us here:

To win Indiana, Obama would likely need a big turnout from three low-income, heavily African-American cities, in the northern part of Lake County, near Chicago. Those three cities -- Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago -- together comprise more than 40 percent of the county's population. But under Indiana law, early voting can take place only in the county clerk's main office, which for Lake County is in Crown Point, more than an hour's drive from those cities.

As a result, on September 23, the county board of elections, on a 3-2 party-line vote, approved the opening of satellite early-voting centers in the the three cities. (State law specifically gives elections boards the authority to approve satellite voting centers, and early voting occurred at the centers in advance of the Democratic primary in May.)

But Republicans argue that the decision is unfair to voters in other parts of the state, many of whom would still need to travel to their county seat to vote early. Last week, the county GOP challenged the move, arguing that the centers can only be approved through a unanimous vote of the election board, and asking for a restraining order on early voting. Superior Court Judge Calvin Hawkins -- a recent appointee of the state's GOP governor, Mitch Daniels -- issued the order Friday.

Within hours, a federal judge had vacated that decision, and announced a hearing this Thursday to resolve the issue.

Democrats had hoped to open the satellite voting stations today, but have agreed to hold off until the issue is resolved. They have said that if the restraining order is not upheld on Thursday, they plan to open the centers the following day. But whatever happens, almost a week of easier access to the polls for many of the county's low-income residents has been lost.

Lake County has been in the news already this year in the context of voting. On primary night, the mayor of Gary, an Obama supporter, said publicly that his city had "delivered" for Obama, and did not release vote totals until unusually late in the night, leading to suspicions that the results were deliberately delayed to deny Hillary Clinton the chance to claim victory that night.

But it's worth pointing out that this may not be the only tactic in the Indiana Republicans' bag of vote-suppression tricks. The party chair in Marion County -- which contains Indianapolis, the state's other Democratic stronghold -- last week refused to rule out using foreclosure records as a basis for challenging voters. A GOP official in Michigan last month was quoted by an online news site saying that similar plans were in the works for one key county in that state, though he later back-tracked amid the ensuing furor, and is now suing the site for libel.

Of course, in recent weeks we've seen a range of other possible Republican vote-suppression tactics. Among other examples, in Montana, the state GOP last week used discrepancies in listed addresses to challenge the eligibility of more than 6000 voters, mostly in Democratic-leaning areas -- including at least one member of the military who's about to deploy to Kuwait. The party has now said it plans to issue more challenges.

And a flyer circulating in African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia last week, whose authorship is unknown, falsely asserted that voters with outstanding warrants or unpaid parking tickets could be arrested at the polls.

Voting

Who's Paying the Lawyer for the Michigan GOP Official?

Kate Klonick | October 3, 2008, 12:56PM

Matt Davis, the attorney for the plaintiff in the defamation suit filed against the Michigan Messenger was quite talkative about the particulars of the suit when TPMmuckraker called him this morning, but declined to say who was paying his legal fees.

"I don't comment on my clients," Davis said in answer to inquiries about who was employing him, but directed us to the spokesman for the Michigan Republican party for further questions.

Davis said his client's suit claims both negligent and malicious defamation and criticized the Messenger for possibly violating their non-profit status by engaging in political speech.

"They call themselves a non-profit," Davis said, citing a letter he received from an attorney who at the time, claimed to represent the Messenger and its parent company the Center for Independent Media.

"You can't go out and engage in political speech as a non-profit," Davis continued. "They risk heavily their 501c3 status. . . I'm in the midst of asking them for their 1033 1090 and also their certification letter from the IRS."

A call to the GOP spokesman for Michigan was not immediately returned.

Voting

MI GOP Official Sues News Website Over 'Lose Your Home Lose Your Vote' Story

Kate Klonick | October 3, 2008, 11:18AM

A Republican official in Michigan has filed a defamation suit against an independent news site, over a story in which he is quoted as stating his party plans to challenge voters whose names and addresses appear on foreclosure lists.

"We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses," James Carabelli, the chairman of the Macomb County Republican Party is quoted as saying in the Michigan Messenger in an article published September 10.

Just a few days after the article was published, Carabelli back-tracked on his statement, telling the Macomb Daily that the party has "no plans to do anything." Later, he issued a full-throated denial, calling the original article "not true."

The Michigan Messenger is an independent news site that is part of the Center for Independent Media (CIM).

CIM president and CEO David Bennahum told TPMmuckraker this morning that they had not yet received a copy of the suit, but said that CIM stands by the story and the reporter.

"We've stood by this story since day one and we continue to stand by it," he said. "I think this is a use of defamation to stifle free speech, and it ain't gonna work. . . Just because the truth is inconvenient you can't sue it away."

Voting

Flyers Aim To Keep Black Philadelphians From Polls

Zachary Roth | October 2, 2008, 7:32PM

Another election year, another apparent example of shady, under-handed efforts to discourage black people from voting.

The Philadelphia Daily News reported today that flyers have been making the rounds in some of the city's African-American neighborhoods, falsely claiming that voters who face outstanding arrest warrants and even unpaid parking tickets may be arrested at the polls.

The flyers could prove particularly effective at scaring people away from voting, because they attribute the falsehood to "an Obama supporter." They begin:

Recently, at school, an Obama supporter approached me during a rock the vote assembly. He informed me that on the day of the election there will be undercover officers to execute warrants on those who come to vote based on the anticipated turnout. He advised me if I had any outstanding warrants or traffic offenses I should clear them up prior to voting.

"We're watching, we're being very vigilant," Everett Gillison, the city's deputy mayor for public safety, told TPMmuckraker. "We're not gonna let anybody intimidate anybody into not voting."

Democrats, of course, are counting on a large African-American turnout in Philadelphia this November to help Barack Obama carry Pennsylvania, a key swing state.

Voting

Montana GOP Challenges Thousands of Voters in Blue Counties

Zachary Roth | October 2, 2008, 4:22PM

Montana Republicans appear to be pulling one of the oldest tricks in the book to keep Democrats away from the polls this November.

The state party is challenging the eligibility of 6000 registered voters -- or almost one percent of registered voters in the state -- claiming that these voters are registered under incorrect addresses, reports the Missoulian. And many of the counties in which the challenges are occurring represent pockets of Democratic strength in the largely red state.

The state GOP appears to have gone to some lengths to actively identify these voters. It obtained a commercial software system used by direct marketers that contains a nationwide list of people who have changed their addresses. Then it compared that list to a new statewide voter database, in order to find people who are living somewhere other than where they're registered to vote. It says it then issued challenges with election officials against these people.

But the challenges were made in only seven counties, most of which turned out to be Democratic-leaning. In 2004, only six of Montana's 56 counties voted for John Kerry over George Bush. Four of those counties are among the seven in which the GOP is challenging voters.

As a pretext for the move, Jacob Eaton, the state party's executive director, cited recent comments by Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer. In July, Schweitzer told a meeting of trial lawyers that he helped "turn some dials" to get fellow Democrat Jon Tester elected to the Senate in 2006, saying that he helped remove GOP poll-watchers from Indian reservations, and pressed the Associated Press to call the race for Tester. Schweitzer has since said his comments were intended to be humorous. But Eaton told the Missoulian that the remarks "brought everyone in the state to a new level of suspicion and awareness of the integrity of our elections."

The stakes could be high. Polls over the summer showed Barack Obama running close with John McCain in the presidential race -- though recently McCain appears to have widened his lead.