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Zachary Roth

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.

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Topics: ACORN, David Iglesias, Gerry Hebert, Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, David Iglesias, John Conyers, Michael Mukasey, Voting

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.

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Topics: David Iglesias, Voting

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.

The ruling could make it easier to vote for thousands of Ohioans whose voter registration information did not match up with other government records.

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."

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Topics: Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, Voting

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.

And it left no doubt that the Bush administration's decision to act on these complaints represented inappropriate politicization of the Department of Justice.

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.

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Topics: David Iglesias, Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, David Iglesias, John Conyers, Voting

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)

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Topics: ACORN, John Conyers, Michael Mukasey, Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, John Boehner, John McCain, U.S. Attorneys, Voting, voter fraud

Rick Renzi

Renzi: Gov't Listened to GOP Leadership Meetings Through Wiretap

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 3:07PM

Lawyers for Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) have alleged in new court filings that the FBI "recorded dozens of sensitive conversations concerning House leadership races" after the 2006 elections, reports The Hill.

Days after the Democrats won control of Congress, say Renzi's lawyers, the bureau recorded part of a conference call involving the entire House Republican Conference.

"Through the discovery process, Renzi's lawyers have been informed that, a couple weeks before the 2006 election, a 30-day wiretap order was granted on the cell phone used by Renzi," The Hill reports.

According to court documents filed by Renzi's lawyers, the governement also recorded more than than 50 privileged phone calls between Renzi and his attorneys and many conversations between Renzi and his wife, violating attorney-client and spousal privilege.

In light of these violations, Renzi's attorneys called today for a U.S. District Court Judge in Arizona to dismiss the charges against the Congressman.

Renzi has been charged with conspiracy and other criminal counts in connection with his support for support for legislation concerning a land deal that allegedly netted him more than $700,000.

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Topics: Rick Renzi

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.

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Topics: ACORN, Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Voting, voter fraud

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.

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Topics: Jennifer Brunner, Voting, voter fraud

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.

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Topics: Voting

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.

(Here's Obama's response from later in the day.)

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?

Never did Dobbs explain to viewers the crucial difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud.

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.

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Topics: ACORN, Voting, voter fraud

John McCain

Testimony: Timmons Knew Lobbyists Met With Saddam

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 3:56PM

As we just noted, Murray Waas is reporting that William Timmons, the head of John McCain's transition team, was involved in a lobbying effort on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government in the early 1990s.

At TPMmuckraker, we've acquired a copy of the court documents from the 2006 trial of Tongsun Park, one of the lobbyists involved, on which Waas' report was in part based.

And they shed some crucial light on a key point about Timmons' involvement in the scheme.

As Waas notes:

Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they collaborated.

But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as well as other information uncovered during a United Nations investigation, suggest just the opposite.

For instance, court records examined by TPMmuckraker show that Samir Vincent, the other lobbyist involved in the scheme, testified at Park's trial about a trip he took to Iraq during which he met with Saddam personally, and listened as the Iraqi dictator expressed his desire to have sanctions lifted and normal relations with the U.S. restored.

The prosecutor then asked Vincent: "When you returned to the U.S., did you tell anyone about your visit with Saddam Hussein?"

Vincent replied: "I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park."

Prosecutor: "Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?"

Vincent: "To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access, and assure him that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi (sic) and Tariq Aziz [a top Saddam aide] and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq."

Late Update: As we should have noted, this exchange appears in Waas' report.

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Topics: John McCain, Lobbyists

John McCain

Report: McCain Transition Head Helped Saddam's Lobbying Effort

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 3:30PM

Wiliam Timmons, the veteran Washington lobbyist tapped to lead John McCain's transition team was involved in an effort on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government to ease international sanctions against Iraq, according to a report by Murray Waas in The Huffington Post.

The two lobbyists with whom Timmons teamed in the early 90s, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, both either pleaded guilty to, or were convicted of, charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam's government.

Park has a long history of involvement with covert schemes to influence international events. In 1976, he was charged with attempting to bribe members of Congress to win their support for keeping U.S. troops in Vietnam.

This isn't the first time that Timmons has had his name in the news for the wrong reasons since being announced as McCain's transition chief. Last month, Bloomberg reported that he had lobbied on behalf of Freddie Mac, a company that McCain has blamed for helping to cause the current financial crisis.

Timmons' Washington lobby firm, Timmons and Co., founded in the 1970's, helped develop the model on which today's lobbying culture is based.

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Topics: John McCain, Lobbyists

Alaska

Second Trooper-Gate Probe Expanding

Zachary Roth | October 14, 2008, 2:15PM

There's further evidence that the investigation into Trooper-Gate being conducted by the state Personnel Board could have real teeth.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that the probe has broadened to include other ethics complaints against Sarah Palin, and actions by other state employees.

That's according to the investigator hired by the board, Timothy Petumenos, who conveyed the information in two recent letters sent to an Anchorage attorney who had threated a lawsuit over Palin's effort to waive confidentiality in the matter.

Petumenos, a Democrat with a reputation for aggressive prosecutions, plans to sit down with the governor, who is cooperating with his investigation, next week.

It's not clear which other ethics complaints about the governor Petumenos is now looking into, but two have been previously reported. One relates somewhat to Trooper-Gate: the state troopers' union alleges that state officials illegally examined the personnel file of Mike Wooten, seeking damaging information on him. Wooten's feud with the Palin family was at the center of Trooper-Gate.

In addition, a good-government activist has alleged that Palin circumvented state hiring practices in giving a job to a supporter.

Petumenos has also requested a copy of the Branchflower report, released Friday.

Many observers have questioned the ability of the personnel board to come to independent conclusions on Trooper-Gate, largely because its three members are appointed by the governor, and it conducts its deliberations largely in secret.

It's unclear when Petumenos' investigation will wrap up, but the ADN also reports that the personnel board has meetings scheduled for Oct. 20 and Nov. 3. Adds the paper: "The agendas for those meetings mention confidential ethics matters to be handled in executive session."

Separately, ADN reports that Walt Monegan, the former public safety commissioner whose firing by Palin is at the heart of Trooper-Gate, has asked the personnel board to hold a hearing, then issue public findings, on whether he was a "rogue" employee and demonstrated "insubordination", as the Palin camp has publicly alleged in an effort to discredit him.

Palin has given several apparently contradictory explanations for why she fired Monegan. Branchflower's report concluded that Monegan's reluctance to fire Wooten was a contributing factor in his own dismissal.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

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.

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Topics: James Tobin, New Hampshire Phone Jamming, Voting

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.

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Topics: James Tobin, New Hampshire Phone Jamming, Voting

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.

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Topics: ACORN, John McCain, Voting

Alaska

Trooper-Gate: Where Do We Go From Here?

Zachary Roth | October 13, 2008, 11:22AM

The Trooper-Gate report found that Sarah Palin violated a state ethics law and abused her power by pressuring subordinates in trying to get Mike Wooten fired. So what happens next?

In terms of official actions, maybe nothing, at least in the three weeks between now and November 4th.

If Palin were to be prosecuted for violating state law, the state attorney general would likely take the lead. But Attorney General Talis Colberg -- who until Palin plucked him from obscurity to make him the state's top lawyer was a Matanuska Valley assemblyman and private-practice lawyer -- has been criticized for appearing to represent the governor's interests in Trooper-Gate, rather than the public interest. So a prosecution led by the AG's office seems unlikely.

Of course, the state personnel board is continuing its own probe of the affair, with which Palin has been cooperating. The board has the authority to impose fines or even recommend impeachment for violations of the ethics act. But the board's members are appointed by the governor, calling into question its ability to draw independent conclusions.

Still, it has hired Timothy Petumenos -- an aggressive Anchorage lawyer, and a Democrat -- to investigate. Newsweek reports that Palin is scheduled to sit down with Petumenos next week, and his findings could be released soon after. "We took a gamble when we went to the ethics board," a McCain aide told the magazine.

Before the report was released, the idea had been floated that the legislature could institute impeachment proceedings. But since Friday night, that possibility appears to have receded. According to a TPM source who attended Friday's session of the legislative council, State Senate President Lyda Green, an outspoken Palin critic, replied with a flat 'no' when asked, after the report's release, whether impeachment was being considered.

And Green told the Christian Science Monitor over the weekend that even a censure motion is unlikely, since the legislature is not currently in session.

Walt Monegan, whose firing as public safety commissioner was at the center of the affair, declined to say whether he was considering filing suit against the administration, when asked this morning on NBC's The Today Show. But the report concluded that Palin was within her rights in firing him, since, as governor, she can fire any executive branch official for any reason.

So it may be that whatever impact Trooper-Gate has on the presidential race will be based on the findings released Friday. If nothing else, the fact that Palin was found by a legislative investigation to have broken a state ethics law will only further complicate the McCain campaign's flagging effort to present her as reform-minded advocate for a more open, honest approach to governing.

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Topics: Alaska, Sarah Palin, Trooper-Gate

Alaska

Palin Falsely Claimed Report Cleared Her of Legal Wrong-Doing

Zachary Roth | October 13, 2008, 9:08AM

It's fair to say that Trooper-Gate hasn't exactly burnished Sarah Palin's reputation for honesty. And in a conference call she gave Saturday to respond to the legislature's report on the affair released Friday night, that reputation took another hit.

Palin opened her remarks by declaring:

I'm very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

But of course, it's simply untrue that the report cleared Palin of legal wrongdoing or unethical activity.

Steve Branchflower did conclude that Palin was within her rights to fire Walt Monegan -- since, as governor, she can fire any executive branch official for any reason.

But he also concluded, just as definitively, that Palin pressured and intimidated subordinates in trying to force the firing of Mike Wooten. In doing so, Branchflower wrote, she violated a state ethics law which says that "any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action" is a violation of the public trust.

When an Anchorage Daily News reporter followed up by reminding the governor of this finding, she did not respond directly.

(Below is the audio from the call, preceded by some video footage from over the weekend of Palin calling the Trooper-Gate inquiry "a partisan kind of process.")

In the call, Palin also asserted that the inquiry "did turn into a partisan circus" -- perhaps forgetting that it had been launched through a unanimous vote of the bipartisan legislative council, and that the council voted unanimously again on Friday to release the report to the public.

And asked how she felt about having called Walt Monegan, a widely respected public servant, a "rogue", she replied: "'Rogue' isn't a negative term."