The Voter Fraud All-Stars

Bradley Schlozman is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon. Schlozman shows up everywhere in the US Attorney scandal. He ended up being the US Attorney for Missouri, after key Republican operatives complained about his predecessor, Todd Graves, who wasn't prosecuting bogus voter fraud cases diligently enough. Schlozman more than made up for that. In fact, he may have AUTHORIZED Graves' firing and his own new hiring.

There's an additional fact which makes this case even more suspicious. Graves was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, a former senior political appointee at the Civil Rights Division who oversaw the voting rights section. According to Waas, Hearne brought his complaints about Graves to "senior officials in Justice’s Civil Rights Division." These were complaints about voting cases, which means the complaints most likely went to Schlozman himself -- or his right hand Hans Von Spakovsky. After Schlozman was installed in Graves' place, he brought an indictment against four ACORN workers days before the election in 2006. So it looks a lot like Hearne got his wish.

Schlozman also turns up in the case of the US Attorney for Minnesota, Thomas Heffelfinger, who was apparently fired for objecting to a new voter ID law within the state. He raised these concerns with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Schlozman ran that.

In response, he said, Bradley Schlozman, a political appointee in the department, told Rich "not to do anything without his approval" because of the "special sensitivity of this matter."

Rich responded by suggesting that more information be gathered from voting officials in the Twin Cities area, which includes Minnesota's two most populous counties.

A message came back from another Republican official in the department, Hans von Spakovsky, saying Rich should not contact the county officials but should instead deal only with the secretary of state's office.

Von Spakovsky indicated, Rich said, that working with Kiffmeyer's office reduced the likelihood of a leak to the news media.

The orders from Schlozman and Von Spakovsky, who wielded unusual power in the civil rights division, effectively ended any department inquiry, Rich said.

They shut down any objection to a Republican Secretary of State's voter ID law, designed to suppress the Native American vote in Minnesota, and then later they orchestrated the ouster of Heffelfinger from his post as US Attorney.

Then, of course, there's the pervasive talk about voter fraud in New Mexico, which may have been a factor in David Iglesias' firing. That word "voter fraud" keeps popping up across the country.

One theme keeps reappearing in the DOJ scandal: The Bush Administration wanted U.S. Attorneys who would push frivolous voting fraud claims that would discourage likely Democratic voters in close races. This is the big story behind the DOJ scandal; it's what the media should focus on.

During Watergate we were told to follow the money. In this scandal, you should follow the voter suppression schemes.

Of course, Schlozman and Von Spakowsky and the others in the Civil Rights Division were just implementing a policy that issued out of the White House. I expect Schlozman to evade and cover for the little cherub named Rove today. But there's a lot of smoke here for the Senate Judiciary Committee to take a look at.

UPDATE: McClatchy:

Saying it was out to combat widespread voter fraud, the Justice Department in recent years has stepped up enforcement of election laws to ease the purging of ineligible voters from state registration rolls.

Since 2005, department civil rights lawyers have sued election officials in seven states - Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey and New York - and sent threatening letters to others, in some cases demanding copies of voter registration data.

Former lawyers in the Civil Rights Division, however, said the voter fraud campaign is a partisan effort to disqualify legitimate voters, as occurred in Florida before the 2000 presidential election.

There appears to be an actual method within the Voting Rights Section for doing this:

Joseph Rich, a former chief of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section, said that Hans von Spakovsky, a former division counsel, directed him in early 2005 to start what Rich called "an initiative" to enforce the provision requiring states to maintain accurate registration lists.

Department spokeswoman Magnuson said "there was no initiative" and that the agency was merely enforcing the law.

Rich said the department changed priorities under the motor voter law "from expanding registration opportunities - the primary purpose of the statute - to unnecessarily forcing jurisdictions to remove voters from their voter rolls."

Notice the focus on the Justice Department suing Secretaries of State who didn't follow their processes for purging the rolls. One was the Secretary of State of Alabama, and we've also heard that Karl Rove himself may have been involved in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D). Look how this played out:

In Worley's case, the department took the extraordinary step of persuading a federal judge nominated by President Bush to relieve her of her authority to oversee the 2006 election and to give Republican Gov. Bob Riley that authority as a "special master" of the court.

Worley called the suit "incredibly political," noting that it was filed shortly before she was due to face Democratic primary voters in a re-election bid and blaming it for her defeat.

Wow. This is the story of the day.