Not Just An Old Election Problem

A lot of people are talking about these allegations about Karl Rove's role in stealing Ohio in 2004. Certainly worth paying attention to and following up. It's just as important to note that the right is not only continuing these tactics, but mainstreaming them.

At a little remarked-upon hearing this week, Rep. Keith Ellison grilled liberal blogdom's favorite punching bag Hans von Spakovsky over the voter ID laws he championed which led to disenfranchisement a couple months ago in Indiana:

ELLISON: Now here's something that happened on the May 7th Indiana election. A dozen nuns and another unknown number of students were turned away from the polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the United State Supreme Court. Mr. von Spakovsky, you wanna stop nuns from voting?

VON SPAKOVSKY: [silence]

ELLISON: Why don't you want nuns to vote, Mr. von Spakovsky?

VON SPAKOVSKY: Congressman Ellison, uh-

ELLISON: I'm just curious to know.

VON SPAKOVSKY: Those individuals, uh, were told, were- knew that they had to get an ID, they could have easily done so. They could have voted, uh, by absentee ballot- uh, nursing homes under the law are able to get-

ELLISON: ...Mr. von Spakovsky, are you aware that a 98-year old nun was turned away from the polls by a-

VON SPAKOVSKY: They all had passports-

ELLISON: Excuse me.

VON SPAKOVSKY: They had expired passports which meant that they could have gotten-

ELLISON: Mr. von Spakovsky, do you know a 98-year old nun was turned away from the polls by a sister who's in her order and who knew her, but had to turn her away because she didn't have a government-issued ID? That's okay with you?

VON SPAKOVSKY: Yes...

Okay with him? It's his most fervent dreams realized!

Ellison didn't let up there. He asked von Spakovsky pointedly about the greatest hits of US Attorney/voter fraud cases in Minnesota (where US Atty Thomas Heffelfinger was fired for ignoring voter fraud claims) and Missouri (the infamous Bradley Schlozman prosecution over a separate voter fraud case involving ACORN). Ellison basically accused him of lying to the committee and von Spakovsky became indignant. This guy was on the Federal Election Commission, just to let you know how far these completely bogus charges have progressed into the mainstream.

This voting stuff isn't going away, and if anything it's going to get more intense as Republicans get more desperate. I can't believe that this article didn't get more attention when it came out a few weeks ago. There's no question that this will became an enormous issue literally out of nowhere this fall.

Election officials worry that the state's home foreclosure problem will pose a problem this November for voters still registered at their former address, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Voters in pivotal Ohio with outdated addresses face possible pre-election challenges and trips to multiple polling places. They also are more likely to cast provisional ballots that might not be counted.

"It's a real issue," said Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in elections. He wonders whether foreclosures might explain the increasing percentages of provisional votes cast between 2004 and Ohio's latest election, the presidential primary in March.

Ohio provided President Bush with an 118,000-vote victory in 2004, giving him the electoral votes he needed to win the election.

All of a sudden you're going to hear that these families forced out of their homes and relocated across the country are actually fraudsters trying to steal the election for Obama. The very fact of vacancy at the addresses where these people are registered makes hundreds of thousands of people prime suspects for voter caging. And you can be sure that re-registering isn't paramount on their minds, either. In battleground states like Nevada, one out of every 120 or so homes is in foreclosure right now. This seems like a huge under-the-radar issue that is receiving literally no attention.

And there's a nexus here between these potential minefields and the voter ID laws conservatives are pushing.

Ohio's requirement that voters show identification at the polls makes it more important that they keep their registration information current, said Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's elections chief.

In 2004, the Ohio Republican Party challenged more than 31,000 newly registered voters statewide after letters it mailed out came back as undeliverable. The challenges failed, but Brunner said a new state law requiring counties to mail their own notices to all registered voters could lead to another round of pre-election challenges.

There may be plenty of illegal disenfranchisement, but is anybody paying attention to the legal version?