(2007-04-12) Attorneygate Voter Fraud Focus

Josh Marshall thinks the real motivation behind Attorney Gate may have been Voter Fraud games. Since President Bush came into office, the Justice Department has made "voter fraud" prosecutions a high priority. Yet, not for lack of effort, they've barely been able to find any examples of it... Past Justice Department policy was not to indict in cases where there was no clear intent to tamper with an election. But the Bush administration did away with that policy leading to serious time for hardened vote criminals like Ms. Prude... Most of the examples, like these, are genuinely disgusting - non-malicious errors for which people get serious punishment because federal prosecutors are under immense pressure to find someone to indict for voter fraud. But it's also easy to get lost in or distracted by the individual stories. The bigger picture is what you need to focus on. And the picture looks like this:

Republican Party officials and elected officials use bogus claims of vote fraud to do three things: 1) to stymie voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in poor and minority neighborhoods, 2) purge voter rolls of legitimate voters and 3) institute voter ID laws aimed at making it harder for low-income and minority voters to vote.