Change Comes From Bill Richardson

Not only do I like Gov. Richardson's conclusion, I appreciate his deliberative thought process. A two-term governor has spent time with victim's families, no question. He has witnessed the grief and the anger and the frustration. But in the end, he went with his own moral precepts.

Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation Wednesday to repeal New Mexico's death penalty, calling it the "most difficult decision in my political life."

The legislation replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe," the Democratic governor said at a news conference in the Capitol.

New Mexicans will be safer with the punishment of life in prison without parole because the worst criminals "will never get out of prison," he said.

The language of "safety" remains prevalent, but I admire the recognition that life in prison without the possibility of parole is a sufficient deterrent, rather than using the power of the state to roll the dice on killing a potentially innocent human being.

15 states now have no death penalty, but New Mexico is just the 2nd to ban the practice since the Supreme Court's reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. New Jersey did the same in 2007, suggesting that the issue is somewhat less politically charged. It remains a very tough move, however, and nobody really knew what Richardson would do after the legislature voted to repeal. He sought guidance from the people who elected him, a novel idea:

In preparing for his decision, the governor solicited input over the weekend from state residents. According to his office, he got more than 9,000 responses by e-mail and in person.

"In a society which values individual life and liberty above all else, where justice and not vengeance is the singular guiding principle of our system of criminal law, the potential for wrongful conviction and, God forbid, execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings," Richardson said in prepared remarks. "That is why I'm signing this bill into law."

As a practical matter, the consequences are relatively small: New Mexico has executed but one prisoner in the last 49 years. As a moral matter, inching this country closer to the international consensus that state-sponsored killing does not comply with modern civilization, speaks volumes.

Today In Election Fraud

There's been something of a pattern in recent GOP voter suppression schemes - Republican officials press their claims, and the courts smack them down. This was true when the Supreme Court backed up the Secretary of State of Ohio a week ago, saying she didn't need to match 220,000 new voter registration forms to a federal document. It's happened in Wisconsin, where a similar scheme to verify forms, pushed by the Republican Attorney General (and McCain campaign co-chair), has been tossed out. And it's happened in Indiana as well.

The Indiana Supreme Court has declined to approve a bid by the GOP to shut down early voting centers in Democratic strongholds of a key county.

A lower court had similarly rejected the effort earlier this week. The Supreme Court ruled today that the case had to first be heard by an appeals court, rather than going straight to the state's high court as the Republican plaintiffs wanted.

The appeals court may yet get involved in this, but I think we'll see early voting sites remain open there. Now we have to worry about the people counting the votes:

FRANKLIN, Ind. (AP) -- A Republican county election clerk said Friday she has apologized to two employees for distributing copies of Internet blog posting referring to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as a "young, black Adolf Hitler."

The employees, who had voted for Obama in Indiana's Democratic primary, discovered the printouts at their desks after returning from Labor Day weekend, sheriff's Deputy Doug Cox said in a police report made public this week. One of the workers complained, and surveillance video showed Johnson County Clerk Jill Jackson placing an item on one worker's desk at 5:27 p.m. on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Cox said.

"She admitted to being responsible for the letter, but only did it as a joke," Cox said. Jackson told Cox she had intended to speak with the workers upon returning to work but forgot.

I know that if I was in Indiana, I'd feel safe knowing my vote was in her hands.

Elsewhere, it's amazing to me that we still deal with faulty ballot design in this day and age, but that's what's happening in North Carolina, where their "straight-party voting" option does NOT generate a vote for President. Why the heck would that be? And this isn't a new flaw, but was in place in 2004 as well, and 3% of voters cast no ballot for President. That's absurd.

And finally, we have your good old-fashioned voter intimidation.

Minority voters in New Mexico report to TPMmuckraker that a private investigator working with Republican party lawyer Pat Rogers has appeared in person at the homes of their family members, intimidating and confusing them about their right to vote in the general election [...]

Guadalupe Bojorquez, who works in law enforcement in Albuquerque, told TPMmuckraker today that her mother, Dora Escobedo, was one of the ten voters whose names were released by the GOP. After this happened, said Bojorquez, her mother had been contacted by the voter registration group ACORN. Bojorquez, with ACORN's help, confirmed with the county clerk that her mother, who does not speak English, is indeed eligible to vote, and had been when she voted in June.

Nonetheless, Bojorquez said that her mother yesterday received a visit from a man who asked for her personal information, including an ID, in reference to her eligibility to vote. Bojorquez told TPMmuckraker that according to her mother, at one point the man asked what she would do if immigration authorities contacted her.

Read the whole thing. But if you don't, suffice to say that the GOP preys upon weakness and fear to stop people from voting.

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.

Delegitimization Project

The polls are surging, the fundamentals of the election are in the favor of the Democrats, and time is running out. That's why today, the Republicans kicked their ground game into high gear.

Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote.

A Nevada secretary of state's office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.

ACORN, which is going to supplant the ACLU as the organization conservatives blame for all the world's ills, routinely flags suspicious voter registration applications for election officials generated by their registration drives. This does not sound like the work of an organization dedicated to stealing elections - the whole "we turn ourselves in" part works against that. This is from ACORN's statement today:

Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers.

On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19^th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29.

Today's raid by the Secretary of State's Office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls."

So you have 46 bad applications out of 80,000 new voters registered in Clark County. And of course the thing about bad voter registrations is that they are easily flagged and almost by definition cannot result in a fraudulent vote. If someone submits a registration form with the names of the Dallas Cowboys on them, that won't result in the Dallas Cowboys voting in Nevada. The same with duplicate voter registrations. It would be the most time-consuming and least likely to be successful vote stealing effort in history.

But that's hardly the point. The Bush Administration sought to make this a priority months ago by creating joint task forces to investigate voter fraud. The Attorney General of Wisconsin, in a bid to become the next Katherine Harris or Ken Blackwell, openly boasted about taking action - with the Justice Department - over this non-existent problem at the RNC (how nonpartisan of him):

"We are out there front and center everyday and you'll be hearing much more from the Department of Justice in the coming months about doing what we can to make sure that those people who have illegally and illegitimately registered to vote, don't have the opportunity on election day to show up and take away your vote by casting one that is not legal," he continued.

This isn't about stopping the scourge of voter fraud. It's about using that as a crutch to stop people from voting, to put up obstructions and increase the burden among Democratic communities. They put fliers in black neighborhoods warning of prosecution if black people vote, and they distribute false information designed to get students to be afraid to vote at their colleges. Voter fraud is the hook on which they hang this cloak of suppression.

Here's Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A recently unearthed e-mail from a Republican strategist in New Mexico shows the unbridled cynicism that underlies claims about fraudulent voting. Patrick Rogers, former lawyer for the New Mexico Republican Party, was among the party hacks pushing for criminal investigations into alleged voter fraud. He clearly was hoping that the threat of legal sanctions would intimidate Democrats and aid Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who was in a tight race for re-election. According to a new report from the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general, Rogers wrote in September 2004:

“I believe the [voter] ID issue should be used at all levels — federal, state legislative races and Heather’s race. … You are not going to find a better wedge issue. … This is the single best wedge issue, ever in [New Mexico].”

The McCain campaign is doing the same thing with this perverse charge that Barack Obama's contributions are "shadowy" and "suspect." Because donors under $200 don't have to be itemized on FEC reports, they are essentially attacking the strength of Obama's small-donor base in much the same way that these bogus fraud allegations attack the strength of Democratic voter turnout.

This may not be enough to turn the tide of the election, but will certainly be enough of a seed of doubt for the right wing noise machine to cultivate for years, delegitimizing an Obama victory and setting the stage for another wave of backlash politics. If you thought the right had a persecution complex while in the majority, wait until you see it in the minority.

NM-SEN: Missed Opportunity?

It's pretty clear that Bill Richardson or Tom Udall would walk to victory over whoever the Republicans put up in the now-vacated Senate seat in New Mexico, but neither of them want the job. Richardson still thinks he can be President, so that's understandable. But Udall simply wants to gain seniority in the House and is looking this gift horse in the mouth. It's troubling that a decent progressive wouldn't step up when even the DSCC would consider him a prize recruit. So now the remaining options are Martin Chavez, the mayor of Albuquerque (who I guess is more of a centrist), and Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish, who sounds like she would make a great candidate but is being very measured about taking the plunge.

“The compelling argument is this: The country is in a mess and what we need is really good candidates to step forward,” Denish said today in an interview. “If the country wasn’t in a crisis, I think I would not blink an eye (in deciding against running for Senate), but I think building a stronger majority in the Senate is a real priority at this time.”

Denish, a Democrat, told me several months ago that she had no interest in leaving New Mexico for Washington. She told me today that she’s still not certain she does have such interest because she loves New Mexico. But a lot of people are arguing that she is the Democrat who can defeat a Republican in a Senate race next year.

And Democrats in Washington are trying to convince Denish that such potential candidates must step forward, for the good of their country.

Denish said she hopes to make a decision later this week.

“This should be about getting the best candidates who can run strong races and win the Senate seat for New Mexico, so we can be part of the change that’s going to happen in 2009,” she said. “It’s a very personal decision, and I’m not an instant decision-maker about life changes like this.”

Businessman Don Wiviott, who attended Yearly Kos, is also out there. I think that with as push to up the name ID, any Democrat has a shot in this race. But Udall was a clear first choice.

Iglesiasgate

There is the makings of a major scandal in New Mexico, something that may have national significance like no other story since perhaps the outing of Valerie Plame. It comes out of the Justice Department's purge of 7 federal prosecutors. The Bush Administration has already taken a lot of flack and received a lot of attention from the US Senate from this brazen act. But today things got a little more interesting.

David Iglesias, US Attorney for New Mexico, stepped down today, and he did not go quietly. In a bombshell article by McClatchy, Iglesias claimed that he was fired for expressly political reasons. This has been alleged in most of the other firings, but what's different here is that we have the personal involvement of members of Congress.

The controversy flared up early Wednesday afternoon after David Iglesias, the departing U.S. attorney from New Mexico, told McClatchy Newspapers that he believes he was forced out because he refused to speed up an indictment of local Democrats a month before November's congressional elections.

Iglesias said that two members of Congress called separately in mid-October to inquire about the timing of a federal probe of a kickback scheme. They appeared eager, he said, for an indictment to be issued before the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because, he said, he feared retaliation.

Two months later, on Dec. 7, Iglesias became one of six U.S. attorneys who've been ordered to step down for what administration officials have called "performance-related issues." Two other U.S. attorneys also were asked to resign.

Iglesias, however, had received a positive performance review before he was fired and said that he suspected he was forced out because he resisted the pressure and didn't indict anyone before the election.

"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," Iglesias, who stepped down Wednesday, told McClatchy.

Iglesias is being a little coy. There are only three Republican members of Congress in the New Mexico delegation; Rep, Steve Pearce, Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson. One would wonder why anyone outside the state (except perhaps those involved with the Republican campaign committee) would care. Pearce has officially denied contact with Iglesias; Domenici and Wilson haven't.

And there is certainly motive for Wilson. She was involved in a very difficult race in her district this past election with former state Attorney General Patricia Madrid. The allegations that Iglesias was asked to investigate and prosecute quickly involved a kickback scheme with a former state senator. Madrid spent the previous number of years in Santa Fe, and a big issue in the campaign for her was how she "ignor(ed) corruption in the state despite her being the top law enforcement official there." An indictment before Election Day would have been a crucial blow to Madrid's hopes to beat the incumbent Wilson. And it only STARTS with Wilson. As Josh Marshall writes:

If you're a nervous member of Congress in a tight election and you're pissed you can't get any action out of Iglesias, you probably don't call the DOJ. You call the White House, specifically the political office. So who at the White House got called? And what did they do?

So this involves most of the Republican New Mexico delegation in Congress, the White House's political team, and the Justice Department who eventually meted out the punishment.

This is one of those stories that is moments away from becoming a full-fledged feeding frenzy. The Senate Judiciary Committee exploded today, particularly Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Linda Sanchez, demanding more information from the DoJ and vowing to subpoena the fired US Attorneys for more information. There will be votes in the Senate and the House as early as tomorrow. You'll recall that earlier this month, deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified to Congress that the attorneys were all fired for cause. Subsequent releases of records showed that their personnel evaluations were all positive. So you can add lying to Congress to the list of charges. Along with members of Congress tampering with federal investigations.

This will be on A10 of the WaPo tomorrow. It could hit the front page within days.