There is a lot of material here. I've posted a lot of the text from the links below so people don't have to read through every link but it makes for an overly lengthy post. It's even almost too long for me to re-read to edit it.
Here is the summary:
No one has said voter fraud doesn't occur. Blunt found a small number of confirmed cases and a larger number of potential cases because the registration roles were cluttered with errors and deceased voters. Subsequent investigations from a couple different reporters found there were more registration errors than illegal votes.
Exaggerating the problem, Blunt got state voter ID legislation passed by a very small margin. It was overturned by the state supreme court who found the amount of fraud was small and the ID reqs amounted to a poll tax. There was one dissenting judge and I posted his opinion as well as the majority's below.
This is the same thing that is turning up in all these cases. There are a small number of illegal votes. (No surprise) The Republicans are using those to go around campaigning for voter ID reqs. The allegations continue to be found to be greatly exaggerated and there is a considerable number of people who are convinced the voter ID amounts to a move to disenfranchise a large number of voters, especially in key states.
But oh what a tangled web they weave...
Turns out Blunt was helped in his Secretary of State campaign by the RNC just before he made the public cries about voter fraud and pushing for voter ID laws. And the firing of Attorney Cummins in the same state to make way for Griffin ties in nicely if one is looking at Karl Rove's advance planning to disenfranchise a large number of voters in key states in the 2008 election. Not only is Missouri evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, there is a key Senate race coming up in Missouri that is likely to be a close call.
This just adds a ton to the credence to my conspiracy claim. The attorney scandal includes firing Bud Cummins from Missouri and replacing him with Griffin, from Rove's inner circle who had no qualms directing the well documented Fl. caging incident. (Reminder: the caging list existed, the RNC admitted so with an absurd excuse for its existence, Goodling testified under oath the caging incident occurred and Griffin was involved, and Griffin resigned because of it.) Clearly Rove has a hand in elections and attorneys in Missouri for a reason.
Looking at the Wiki entry on Blunt and this article which outlines the claims Blunt made about voter fraud and the subsequent events surrounding state legislation enacting voter ID, we have a microcosm of things to come.
There is a curious connection to the voter disenfranchisement plot. Blunt went investigating voter fraud in Missouri shortly after being elected to Sec. of State.
From Wiki:
Quote:
Election as Secretary of State
Blunt received considerable fundraising support from his father's supporters and from out-of-state Republicans in his 2000 Secretary of State bid. Senior political strategist Karl Rove appeared at an April 21, 2000 fundraiser in Springfield.[2] The state Republican Party contributed $160,000 to Blunt's campaign, having received $100,000 in donations from Rep. Roy Blunt's PAC[3], and the 7th District Congressional Republican Committee - a fundraising group affiliated with the senior Blunt - donated $40,000.[4]. Contributions from 84 of Rep. Blunt's colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives totalled over $65,000.[5][6] Matt Blunt defeated his Democrat opponent Steve Gaw with 51.4% of the vote, to Gaw's 45.1%.[7]
Seems Blunt then went on to run for governor and won. Again we have evidence he is close with the big guys in the RNC and not above taking advantages in a race when the opportunity arises.
It seems some of his campaign money for the governor's race was tainted with the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff illegal dealings via Blunt Sr's manipulations. After all, ethics are taught at home.
Quote:
When it all ended, DeLay's private charity, along with the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son, Matt, who now is the state's governor, all ended up with a piece of the pie, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also appeared in the picture.
The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state political candidates.
The government's former chief election enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money was concealed.
And we have this little jewel:For someone concerned about voting practices as Blunt claims to be, this was a bit hipocritical. Voting Rights: Missouri Compromised
Quote:
John Hickey is the executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition. He said today: ... As we witnessed in 2000, the secretary of state plays a very crucial role in the electoral process. It's essential that this person runs fair and impartial elections and does not misuse the office for partisan gain. Unfortunately, recent events in Missouri show serious problems can arise from partisan use of this key public office. Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt has spent almost $48,000 in public money on statewide newspaper advertising that included his name and picture, urging voters to turn out for the August 3 primary -- where he was running on that same ballot as a Republican gubernatorial candidate! Adding to the irony is the fact that the funds Blunt used for what amounted to a publicly-paid campaign ad were from federal appropriations to Missouri from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was enacted in 2002 as a response to the events in Florida. That money is supposed to be used for purposes such as recruiting and training election judges, buying voting machines that disabled people can use, and improving maintenance of voter lists. It's outrageous that a secretary of state used HAVA money as a personal political slush fund."
Hickey added: "Matt Blunt is the son of Roy Blunt, the current Republican Majority Whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, a very powerful position. Roy Blunt has already raised money for his son's previous campaigns, and the Matt Blunt bid is a priority for the Republican National Committee."
No wonder! Missouri's race for governor was neck and neck (Blunt won 51 to 49%) as was the 2000 election where the Blunt's claims of voter fraud surfaced. And voter ID law was passed by a slim margin. If you were Karl Rove planning your 2008 strategy of voter disenfranchisement in key states, Missouri would clearly be a candidate. Send in one of the 'team', Griffin, and make sure to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as the opportunity allows. And you have already helped get your man, Blunt, in as governor after he did your bidding looking for voter fraud. Not to mention there will be a close race for a Senate seat in 2008 as well as the vote for President which could change the power in the House.
Also from Wiki:
Quote:
United States Attorney Controversy -
In April 2006 it was reported that United States Attorney Bud Cummins "is handling an investigation into how the license fee offices were awarded to political supporters of the Blunt administration."[26] On October 4, 2006, Cummins announced "that he has concluded an inquiry into alleged wrongdoings involving the awarding of contracts for Missouri fee offices with no indictments sought or returned." Cummins elaborated: "First, the matter has been closed with no indictments sought or returned. Second, at no time was Governor Blunt a target, subject, or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegation being investigated. Any allegations or inferences to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous." [27] Cummins has since become embroiled in the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy: in December 2006, Cummins resigned from his post in favor of Tim Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove. Cummins acknowledges that he "served at the pleasure of the president," and that Attorney General Gonzales "doesn't owe me an apology." [28] Cummins concluded his investigation of the Blunt Administration two months before he resigned.
Here is the account of the events from 2000 on. It is long, but this whole affair has that much crap in it.
Quote:
Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved. Before last fall's election:
-Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.
-The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House's help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.
-Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat.
-Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election.
-In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he'd just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who "are well aware of" the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had "a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene" to keep the election clean.
Missouri Republicans have railed about alleged voter fraud ever since President Bush narrowly won the White House in the chaotic 2000 election and Missouri Republican Sen. John Ashcroft lost to a dead man, the late Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name stayed on the ballot weeks after he died in a plane crash.
Joining the push to contain "voter fraud" were Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who charged that votes by dogs and dead people had defeated Ashcroft, Missouri Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, whose stinging allegations of fraud were later debunked, and St. Louis lawyer Mark "Thor" Hearne, national counsel to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, who set up a nonprofit group to publicize allegations of voter fraud.
Many Democrats contend that the efforts amount to a voter-suppression campaign.
"The real problem has never been vote fraud," said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo. "It's access to the polls. In the last 50 years, no one in Missouri has been prosecuted for impersonating someone else at the polls. But thousands of eligible voters have been denied their constitutional rights. . . . It's sickening."
However, Jessica Robinson, a spokeswoman for Blunt, said a report he'd authored in 2001 as secretary of state "documented credible instances of fraud." She said Blunt wanted the legislature to take another shot at passing a photo ID bill as "a reasonable step . . . to help stamp out" such abuse.
The Republican-dominated legislature is considering the bill again this year, along with a resolution asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment so the measure can withstand court challenges.
In a separate assessment of alleged voter fraud in Missouri, Lorraine Minnite, a Barnard College professor, found scant evidence of it. The study was undertaken for the nonpartisan policy-research group Demos, which despite its name isn't affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Minnite, who's writing a book on the issue of voter fraud, said successful drives to register poor people and minorities in recent years had threatened to "tip the balance of power" to Democrats, so it was understandable that the Republican Party would seek restrictions that "disproportionately hinder the opposition."
It's difficult to capture the emotional debate over the issue of voter fraud in Missouri without considering the Election Day tumult in St. Louis on Nov. 7, 2000. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of voters were turned away because their names weren't on official lists, and many of them converged on the city's election board seeking assistance.
Responding to the bedlam, Democrats won an emergency court order that kept some polls open beyond their scheduled 7 p.m. closings. That outraged Republicans, and Hearne, the Bush campaign lawyer, in turn won an emergency appeals-court ruling that shut the polls within an hour.
In the ensuing days, Bond blamed Ashcroft's defeat on "a criminal enterprise."
The following summer, then-Secretary of State Blunt alleged in a 47-page investigative report that the use of affidavits to allow more than 1,000 "improper ballots . . . compels the conclusion that there was in St. Louis an organized and successful effort to generate improper votes in large numbers."
But an investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, launched before Ashcroft settled in as U.S. attorney general in 2001, found the reverse. In a 2002 court settlement with the department's Voting Rights Section, St. Louis election officials acknowledged that they'd improperly purged some 50,000 names from voter lists before the 2000 elections and had failed as required by federal law to notify those people properly that they'd been placed on inactive status. No one knows how many eligible voters were denied their right to cast ballots.
Missouri's Rep. Clay charged in a recent interview that Blunt's report was an attempt "to violate the voting rights of certain Missourians."
Things didn't heat up again until 2005, when Schlozman authorized a Justice Department suit naming the newly elected Missouri secretary of state - the daughter of the late governor - as the defendant. It alleged that her office had failed to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible people from local voter-registration rolls.
A federal judge dismissed the suit last month, saying the government had provided no evidence of fraud.
Speaking on behalf of Schlozman, who's now with the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, agency spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are disappointed with the court ruling." [Surprise, more ties to the US Attorneys scandal]
Separately, Hearne helped establish the nonprofit American Center for Voting Rights in February 2005, which issued lengthy reports alleging voter fraud in states across the country, including Missouri. One director of the supposedly nonpartisan group was Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee who switched his allegiance in 2000 and headed Democrats for Bush in 2004.
Barnard's Minnite said the center's summary on Missouri consisted of "a litany of overblown allegations of fraud appearing in newspapers, most of which turn out to be minor problems or no problem at all."
Republican state Sen. Delbert Scott of Lowry, Mo., chief sponsor of the photo-ID bill last year, said Hearne had helped draft it and served as a key adviser.
Hearne didn't respond to several requests for comment. His organization closed down its Internet site in March and has disappeared from view.
Last fall, with Missouri's new voter-ID law thrown out by the court, allegations of fraud arose over registration drives among Democratic-leaning minorities in St. Louis and Kansas City by the Democratic-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN).
Brian Mellor, a Boston lawyer for ACORN, said many of the accusations surrounded the submission of duplicate or multiple registration forms for the same voters. Such duplication would be caught by election officials and wouldn't enable anyone to vote twice, he said.
But officials at St. Louis' Board of Elections took the unusual step of alerting the FBI to those and other irregularities, Mellor said, and he wound up turning over copies of 40,000 St. Louis-area registration forms to bureau agents.
Facing the FBI scrutiny, Mellor said, ACORN reviewed its forms in Kansas City and found several with similar handwriting, suggesting that they were bogus. He said the group turned over evidence involving four workers to a county prosecutor in mid-October.
That same month, at the initiative of a Republican appointee, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters warning 5,000 people who'd registered through ACORN that their voting status was in question. They were given one week to return signed copies of the letter and confirm personal identifying information or they'd lose their registration status.
ACORN attorneys charged that the notice "appears to be an unlawful attempt to suppress and intimidate voters of color." The board sent another mailing withdrawing the threat.
Meanwhile, the evidence against the four ACORN workers ended up with the FBI.
Five days before the election, U.S. Attorney Schlozman got another voter-fraud headline, announcing the indictments of the four workers. The indictments charged that six applications that ACORN had submitted were fraudulent.
"ACORN abhors fraud," Mellor said. He said the timing of the indictments seemed to be aimed at hurting Democrats.
Justice Department spokesman Boyd said the policy that prosecutors "refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election" didn't bar pre-election indictments and was intended to ensure that investigators didn't intimidate voters during an election. Boyd said officials in the department’s Public Integrity Section approved the indictments.
But Joseph Rich, who headed the department's Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, said the timing of the indictments "flies in the face of long-standing policy. . . . There was no need to bring cases on the eve of the election."
Reporters from the Kansas City Star investigated the voter fraud supposedly found by Blunt.
Quote:
The Star's investigation uncovered more double voters, and records suggest there could be more than 300 statewide. The exact number is impossible to determine because many counties have shredded their poll books, as allowed under state law, and state computer files are rife with data errors.
Of the more than 300 potential cases of vote fraud in 2000 and 2002, The Star found about 150 in St. Louis or St. Louis County, 60 in the Kansas City area — including three dozen in Kansas City itself — and the rest scattered across the state.
The total number of cases could be even higher.
Anyone registered under a slightly different name or date of birth in two places would escape detection in the newspaper's analysis of voter registration databases in Missouri and Kansas. The study only flagged people registered in two places under exactly the same names and dates of birth.
The figure may be smaller, on the other hand, because the state computer files contain many errors that show people voting who did not actually vote.
Information for the St. Louis area in the state computer file, however, is especially corrupt. For example, nearly 15,000 voter names appear with no date of birth or dates before 1880. With so many errors, many of the voters listed as having voted in two places in the St. Louis area may actually have voted in only one.
A state audit in May found 24,063 persons registered in St. Louis who were dead, registered somewhere else, convicted of a felony or listed as living at a vacant lot.
Local election officials said they don't think the problem of double-voting is widespread. Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, which provides nonpartisan information about election reform, said fraudulent absentee ballots seem much more common.
The State Supreme Court ruling on the voter ID law:
October 17, 2006; Missouri State Supreme Court Affirms Order Barring Implementation of State Voter ID System
Quote:
The court's opinion is here. Though this is decided on state constitutional grounds (which insulates it to a great extent from U.S. Supreme Court review), the court's decision has the same structure of those other court decisions that have struck down similar laws in other jurisdictions. (1) These laws impose too great a burden on the right to vote, and indeed can constitute a poll tax to the extent that the state does not pay the expenses associated with obtaining the documentation necessary to get the i.d. and (2) the state has not shown a sufficient interest in the law as a means of fraud prevention, given the paucity of evidence that such laws would meaningfully prevent "impersonation" voter fraud.
One state court justice dissented, and pointed to this evidence of impersonation voter fraud in the record:
According to the majority, there has been no fraud in the polling places; thus no need to prevent it. But the evidence, in part, is this: In an investigative report issued after the 2000 presidential election by outgoing Secretary of State Rebecca McDowell Cook, and introduced in evidence in this case, "135 people who were not registered to vote were permitted to vote at a polling place without a court order and without apparent authorization from [an election] Board Official." A subsequent report from then Secretary of State Matt Blunt noted, as even the plaintiffs have acknowledged here, that 79 voters registered from vacant lots, 45 people voted twice, and 14 votes were cast by the "dead." Further, as part of a federal investigation in the aftermath of the 2000 election, the United States Department of Justice found a stunningly large number of duplicate and ineligible voter registrations throughout the state. According to that report,...
And if, as in the DOJ report, there are more voters registered to vote than persons eligible to vote, the requirement to present a photo ID will at least eliminate those who attempt to vote in the place of others and those who attempt to vote more than once. It must be said, too, that even if there were no substantial evidence of existing voter impersonation fraud, legislatures are permitted to respond to the potential for such fraud, and they may do so "with foresight" rather than "reactively." Munro v. Socialist Workers Party, 479 U.S. 189 (1986). In any event, as the Carter-Baker Commission recently concluded, "there is no doubt that [in-person voter fraud] occurs" and that such fraud "could offset the outcome of close elections"
[Article commentary]Why else would registration fraud occur? Because there is sometimes a bounty paid for each registration turned into election officials. The more important question is whether these number, assuming they are accurate (they may not be) would justify an onerous voter identification law. Spencer Overton's recent book [Stealing Democracy, the New Politics of Voter Suppression] and forthcoming article [Voter Identification; SPENCER A. OVERTON; George Washington University - Law School] explore this question very nicely.
More commentary from Bob Bauer [Voter ID: The Missouri Supreme Court Evaluates Legislative "Foresight"].
October 18, 2006; More on Fraud Allegations in Missouri Supreme Court Voter ID Dissent
Quote:
Judge Limbaugh's characterization was itself inaccurate, and incorrectly bolsters a report often cited as proof that fraud occurs.
In the snippet that was disseminated, the dissent claims that "A subsequent report from then Secretary of State Matt Blunt noted, as even the plaintiffs have acknowledged here, that 79 voters registered from vacant lots, 45 people voted twice, and 14 votes were cast by the 'dead.'"
On page 9 of the report itself (
http://bond.senate.gov/mandate.pdf), Secretary Blunt was more precise:
"Based on information provided by the City and County Boards of Election Commissioners (the "City Board" and "County Board", respectively), it is highly probable that twenty-three (23) people voted more than once in the November 7 election, and it is likely that an additional forty-five (45) persons voted twice.
"Based on information provided by the Missouri Department of Health, fourteen (14) persons in St. Louis City and County who were reported as deceased before the November 7 election nevertheless are recorded as having voted in the election.
"Based on information provided by the City Board, it appears that seventy-nine (79) voters who were registered from vacant lots in St. Louis City voted in the November 7 election."
(emphasis added).
Later in the report, Secretary Blunt revealed the basis for these three assessments. The first two do not necessarily reveal fraud. And the last has been conclusively disproved.
For the double-voters, investigators used voting history entries in St. Louis City and County computer databases to determine whether individuals were listed as voting twice. 23 voters who were apparently listed in both databases as voting in the same election matched name, date of birth, and social security number; 45 voters matched names and date of birth. Although I do not have ready access to the actual list of compared names, if the names are even relatively common, it would not be surprising to find 45 pairs of distinct voters whose name and date of birth match, out of more than 613,000 votes cast in St. Louis City and County in 2000. And though it is, of course, possible that the voters whose name, date of birth, and social security number were actually double voters, before determining that such a conclusion is "highly probable," I'd want some rough approximation of the rate of clerical errors -- which have been mistaken for double votes before. (See, e.g.,
http://www.jsonline.com/story/?id=350183)
For the deceased voters, investigators compared a list of individuals who died in St. Louis City and County from 1990-2000 against the same voter databases, and found 14 voters with the same names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. Again, it is possible that these votes were fraudulent. But before so concluding, in addition to examining the clerical error rate, it would be useful to double-check to see whether any of the voters on the deceased list actually died after the election. (See, e.g., Marcia Myers, Election Theft Ruled Out, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 24, 1995, at 1A.)
Finally, for the 79 voters apparently registered from vacant lots, the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners provided a report of addresses "verified to be vacant by the Board" and the names and voting history of individuals registered to vote at those addresses. Exemplary follow-up investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that the supposedly vacant lots were, in fact, not vacant; indeed, some apparently contained buildings more than 50 years old. As a Demos report by Lori Minnite and David Callahan reported, "Errors in the city's property records and methods for classifying vacant a multi-parcel address if only one of the parcels at the address is vacant" apparently accounted for the errors. (See, e.g.,
http://www.demos.org/pubs/EDR_-_Securing_the_Vote.pdf at 49 & n.88).
Finally, this abstract from voter ID article above sums up the reason for not implementing the voter ID regs:
Quote:
In the wake of closely contested elections, calls for laws that require voters to present photo identification as a condition to cast a ballot have become pervasive. Advocates tend to rely on two rhetorical devices: (1) anecdotes about a couple of elections tainted by voter fraud; and (2) common sense arguments that voters should produce photo identification because the cards are required to board airplanes, buy alcohol, and engage in other activities. This Article explains the analytical shortcomings of anecdote, analogy, and intuition, and applies a cost-benefit approach generally overlooked in election law scholarship. Rather than rushing to impose a photo identification requirement for voting, policymakers should instead examine empirical data to weigh the costs and benefits of such a requirement. Existing data suggests that the number of legitimate voters who would fail to bring photo identification to the polls is several times higher than the number of fraudulent voters, and that a photo identification requirement would produce political outcomes that are less reflective of the electorate as a whole. Policymakers should await better empirical studies before imposing potentially antidemocratic measures. Judges, in turn, should demand statistical data to ensure that voter identification procedures are appropriately tailored to deter fraudulent voters rather than legitimate ones and do not disproportionately exclude protected classes of voters.
That leaves the question about why are the Republicans pushing so hard for this action? Very little evidence the ID reqs would do anything except cost money. Hmmm, now why would they want to spend money on something to prevent a few illegal votes that very little evidence suggest matter? Could it be they hope it will prevent a lot of legal votes that will matter?
