Election Protection News

1. The big news is that the Supreme Court delivered a quick rebuke to the wingnutty 6th Circuit, overruling their decision to order the Ohio Secretary of State to have to "review" 600,000 new voter registrations against driver's license and social security databases. This prevents disenfranchisement by typo, whereby perfectly qualified voters are denied the right to vote because a letter in their name was entered incorrectly (that would have made Joe Sam the Plumber ineligible, as his name is Wurzelbacher, but the registrar has him listed as Worzelbacher).

[It must be noted that the decision, while good in protecting voting rights on the eve of this election, denies the GOP a private right of action to enforce the statute. That means that only government action can enforce that law. That is a bad principle in civil rights cases when you have a virulently anti-civil-rights administration like the Bush Administration, who allow civil rights violations to proliferate by not bringing such action. Good decision on this narrow case, made on a terrible basis for many future cases.]

2. David Iglesias, the New Mexico Assistant Attorney General who was fired for failing to bring bogus election fraud cases the Bush Administration was pushing in 2006, says the hysteria about ACORN being whipped up by the Republicans is equally bogus. [And whenever I mention David Igleasias, I have to mention that his actions in the JAG Corps were the basis for the Tom Cruise character in A Few Good Men. "You can't handle the truth!" indeed.]

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.

3. The AP (the AP!) factchecks the McCain campaign's allegations about ACORN and rejects them.

[I]n alleging voter fraud, McCain goes too far. To commit fraud, a person would have to show up on Election Day with identification bearing the fake name.

4. In perhaps the best news, the Obama campaign is aggressively tying the bogus ACORN investigation and the U.S. Attorney Scandal, including conducting a telephone conference with the media today:

The General Counsel of the Obama campaign is currently holding a media conference call to "Announce Major Action Taken Today To Address Illegal Conduct and Improprieties in the Sham "Anti-Fraud" Campaign Orchestrated By McCain-Palin and the RNC."

Check out this letter from the Obama campaign to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking for an investigation into ties between Bush's Justice Department and the McCain campaign's "systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud." I.e., don't try ginning up voter fraud prosecutions from the Justice Department in this election, my friends. This Democrat won't be caught napping.

Barack Obama is a fighting Democrat, and it's been a long time since we have seen a Democrat wage such a tough, disciplined fight.

What Is Voter Caging?

Cage him for stealing elections.

What the heck was Maniacal Goodling talking about when she testified about voter caging? It was a very confusing moment in her testimony. The Congresscritters seemed flummoxed. She said it was a direct mail term. That made no sense to me. Tonight I stumbled upon the answer.

Here's how reporter Greg Palast describes voter caging:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

Palast has 500 emails -- many of them Karl Rove's emails that the White House now claims are lost -- because they were sent accidentally to whitehouse.org, a domain that is owned by a friend of Palast. (They meant to send them to whitehouse.com -- Doh!)

So our soldiers registered to vote, then went to Iraq. The Republican party sends mail to their official address, but it is returned as undeliverable, because the soldier is in Iraq. So when that soldier's absentee ballot comes in, and the elections personnel go to count that ballot, they find that the ballot has been challenged as being from a phony address. Because the soldier was overseas in George W. Bush's war for democracy. And the guy who led this effort was Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's protege, who is now the USAttorney for the District of Arkansas. The chicken now guards the henhouse.

Some of the emails (SUBJECT: caging) are in the middle of this post on Palast's research.

I highly recommend watching all three Youtube clips, below, in which Palast lays out the caging scheme and how it related to the US Attorney scandal. These are felonies and impeachable offenses.


Part 1 (8:18)


Part 2 (4:58)


Part 3 (9:07)

Another Modest Proposal

DOJ Barbie: I don't know nothing 'bout vote caging!
In Re Monical Goodling's testimony yesterday (Monical is a typo, but I'm inclined to let it stay) I must apologize for my aborted attempt at liveblogging. I think I was distracted by the prospect of the Champions League final in the afternoon, and didn't want to get tied down to the computer.

But I did listen to much of the testimony, and it struck me once again that most members of Congress couldn't cross examine their way out of a paper bag. Watching the rows and rows of Congresscritters lined up to question DOJ Barbie reminded me of the Watergate hearings, back in the day. Remember when the committee investigating the breakin used staff to do the questioning? Remember attorney Sam Dash, who was appointed committee counsel by Senator Sam Ervin? It was Sam Dash doing the questioning the day Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system.

I wish the Congressional committees questioning these witnesses would appoint a professional to assist them. Now, who is both qualified and has the time? How about recently fired New Mexico USAG David Iglesias? He's not working and he certainly knows the issues here. He's handsome and telegenic. There may be complaints that he's partisan, but he's a Republican. Besides, this isn't a criminal trial. It's a political hearing, and both sides are allowed to be as political as they want.

John Conyers, hire David Iglesias. Let him question. Would there be any
better showdown ever, than to watch Iglesias question Karl Rove? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (A Few Good Men was based on a case tried by Iglesias.)