Republicanists Using Their Politicized Big Government Tools to Fight Against Democracy in America
Voter Roll Purges Ordered for 2008 by DoJ in 10 Key States...
By Brad Friedman on 9/14/2007, 8:35am PT  

Gonzalez and Schlozman and Griffin may be gone, but the long-term politicization and damage at the DoJ was done and institutionalized long ago. The usual suspects --- Thor Hearne, Hans von Spakovsky, Joe Tanner, et al. --- are still plying their insidious anti-democracy trade with all of the tools of big Republican government at their disposal.

If you Dems think "nothing could possibly go wrong in 2008," you'd better think again. As Steve Rosenfeld at AlterNet reports, the Republicans aren't taking '08 lying down. Not by a long shot.

Earlier this year, the DoJ sent another round of threatening letters to 10 key battleground states, threatening to sue them if they do not purge their voter rolls. Yes, the Republicanists have found a "legal" way to use the DoJ to do the illegal vote-caging work the party and their phony well-funded "grass-roots" used to have to do. No wonder Thor's American Center for Voting Rights was able to go "out of business."

The DoJ is the new ACVR.

"They want more people showing up on Election Day and not finding their names," former DoJ Voting Section attorney David Becker, now of People for the American Way (PFAW), tells Rosenfeld. "They want people not voting."

If you don't haven time to read Rosenfeld's entire in-depth investigative report (which should have been on the front page of the NY Times) here are a few of the key grafs...

The Department of Justice's Voting Section is pressuring 10 states to purge voter rolls before the 2008 election based on statistics that former Voting Section attorneys and other experts say are flawed and do not confirm that those states have more voter registrations than eligible voters, as the department alleges.
...
"That data does not say what they purport it says," said David Becker, People for the American Way Foundation's senior voting rights counsel and a former Voting Section senior trial attorney, after reviewing the letters and statistics used to call for the purges. "They are saying the data shows the 10 worst voter rolls. They have a lot of explaining to do."

"You are basically seeing them grasping at whatever straws are possible to make their point," said Kim Brace, a consultant who helped the U.S. Election Assistance Commission prepare its 2004 National Voter Registration Act report, which contains the data tables cited by the Voting Section letter to identify the errant states.

The Justice Department would not comment for this report, despite repeated requests.
...
The voter roll purges are part of an unprecedented effort at the Justice Department to eliminate "voter fraud," which, as defined by Republican activists, is an assumption that Democratic political operatives or sympathetic political organizations have filed fake voter registrations or encouraged supporters to vote more than once to win elections. These claims have been investigated by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and academics and found to be without merit.
...
Looking toward the 2008 election, it appears the purges could be a new and legal way to accomplish a controversial longstanding Republican Party electoral tactic --- thinning the ranks of likely Democratic voters in states where there may be close races.
...
"To me, it's a very clear view of the Republican agenda," said Joe Rich, who resigned as Voting Section Chief in 2005 after 35 years in the Justice Department, speaking of the voter purge initiative. "The GOP agenda is to make it harder to vote. You purge voters. You don't register voters. This is ripe for partisan decision making. You pick the states where you go after Democrats."

"This stuff disenfranchises voters," said Becker. "There are eligible voters who will be removed. There is no evidence that rolls need to be cleaned up to this degree. This will make things more chaotic on Election Day. People will be given provisional ballots that won't get counted."
...
"This is a real problem," said PFAW's David Becker. "The Department of Justice is the nuclear bomb of voting enforcement. If the DOJ sends a letter, the counties listen, even if they do not have a strong basis to force them to act."
...
"I think it is impossible to claim that this should be a trigger to require a NVRA list maintenance purge," Becker said. "This is a short but sloppy way to figure out and justify something that goes beyond the data. They want more people showing up on Election Day and not finding their names. They want people not voting."

Share article...