This Week In Voter Suppression

A lot to cover here. Let's bullet-point it!

• In Michigan, the state GOP, which at first denied they would seek to use foreclosure reports to deny the vote to Michiganders because their address cannot be determined, basically admitted it in a lawsuit settlement yesterday.

The settlement acknowledges the existence of an illegal scheme by the Republicans to use mortgage foreclosure lists to deny foreclosure victims their right to vote. This settlement has the force of law behind it and ensures that Republicans cannot disenfranchise families facing foreclosure.

The Obama campaign moved sharply to put a stop to this once it became public, which presages well for the next two weeks. They've been just as strong in questioning the DoJ for enabling the McCain campaign's ACORN fever dreams.

• In New Mexico, the state GOP had been yelling about 28 cases of voter fraud from the state primary. Problem is, there was no fraud at all, as credible evidence was presented showing that to be the case. But the RNC already had a phone call set up and everything, so they... winged it:

So here at TPMmuckraker, we wondered what the RNC's response to this would be. And on the 3pm call, we asked party spokesman Danny Diaz.

Diaz dodged the question. He talked about an incident with ACORN in Washington state, then referred us to an October 9th Wall Street Journal story, which did not address the allegation made last week by the state GOP about fraudulent voting in the Democratic primary. (Instead, it reported that the FBI had opened a preliminary investigation into thousands of fraudulent registration forms submitted in an area near an ACORN office.)

When we tried to follow up, Diaz cut us off and shifted the discussion toward a general attack on ACORN for submitting fraudulent registrations.

In other words, it looks like the RNC had scheduled a call to tout evidence of voter fraud -- not voter registration fraud, mind you, but actual voter fraud -- being perpetrated by ACORN in New Mexico. But when ACORN appeared to come up with compelling evidence that no such fraud had occurred, the RNC held the call anyway, simply shifting the focus to other vague allegations against ACORN -- then refused to address the New Mexico situation when asked.

This is what they do - year after year, they allege some nefarious fraud scheme - they even put on the same discussion panels - and the hard evidence is always lacking. But the threat of fraud is enough to cause serious voter suppression.

• For example, in Indiana:

CROWN POINT -- Ethel Graves just wants to vote.

But like thousands of other would-be voters in Lake County, Graves has gotten swept up in a nationwide controversy over alleged voter fraud by the community organization ACORN.

After moving to Gary from Chicago in July, Graves was approached outside the city's Bureau of Motor Vehicles office by an ACORN canvasser who asked if she wanted to register to vote in the November general election.

"I said, 'Oh, good, you're saving me a trip (to the voter office in Crown Point),' " Graves recalled.

But nearly three months -- and a trip to Crown Point -- later, Graves still was waiting to receive her voter registration card last week.

That's because election officials stopped processing the applications submitted by ACORN amid accusations that information was falsified on hundreds of the forms.

This isn't about those couple thousand fraudulent voter forms - it's about holding up Graves' perfectly legal one.

• As for the actual voter registration fraud here in California, well, John McCain hired the same people to get voters registered.

According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.

In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law."

• And in Ohio, where GOP attorneys are chasing down early voters and trying to disqualify them, some Republicans are being very explicit about what kind of fraud they'd like to see:

After I noted that Greene County's Republican attorneys were chasing down voting information on those who recently registered and requested an absentee ballot in that county, klynn found evidence of a "Young Republican" in that county laying out a plan to encourage vote fraud (in case that post disappears, I took this screen shot at around 1:38PM). The post claims that,

I've called all my friends in Georgia and Alaska (states that are clearly leaning Republican) and had them register to vote (using the local YMCA's address) and to apply for an absentee ballot so the ballot will be sent to their homes in GA and AK.

This is the ADMISSION of voter fraud. I'm sure Republicans will immediately start to denounce this guy.