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.

Maybe More Than The Frontrunner

Jane Hamsher breaks down the math.

Chuck Todd on MSNBC gave a portrait of how dire the situation is after tonight for the Clinton campaign. According to his tallies, she needs 58% of the remaining pledged delegates just to get the lead. If you concede Mississippi, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, North Carolina and Vermont to Obama (which is a conservative estimate), she needs 65% of the remaining pledged delegates in order to simply get ahead of him.

Obama, on the other hand, will need 65% of the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2025 which will give him the nomination. If you add in all the committed superdelegates, he needs less than 50% of the remaining pledged delegates to hit that total.

And polls indicate that Obama has it to within single digits already in Ohio and Texas, with two weeks to go. He's eating into her core voter bases. And we all know about the peculiar delegate favorability in Texas. And the big win in Wisconsin probably netted him superdelegates Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.

Out in the world beyond the Internets, this has been a good race (inside the Internets it's been a different story, which has cost many their credibility). It's been largely clean; while tactically the Clinton campaign has occasionally tried to discount the role of actual voters, and to be fair so has Obama, most of the controversies were manufactured (I can't believe Hillary is still trying to use the present votes issue when she didn't show up at all for any of the FISA votes, essentially voting "present" on the issue even though she was in DC at the time). Clinton didn't go negative until the last week in Wisconsin, and it obviously didn't help, although one of her senior staffers reportedly said if we didn't she'd have lost by 25. And even the negative "attacks" were kind of patty-cake. What was far more damaging where the attacks whipped up by the Clinton-supporting liberal blogosphere that made their way into the hands of the GOP (this Michelle Obama ridiculousness is an example. Why wasn't she proud of her country!?!?!?!?). She may come out negative at the debate on Thursday night, but it doesn't seem to me that will be rewarded by voters.

Hillary Clinton ran a campaign that would have been good enough in practically any other year, including 2004. She was a compelling figure and impressive in her knowledge of issues. I think as a candidate she outshone her campaign staff by a wide margin; her best idea would have been to put everybody else but her into the background. But Obama outworked her almost everywhere, paid attention to the particular rules of the states and played by them, and used that ineffable characteristic called momentum to power through February. I said on February 6 that Ohio and Texas were likely to be decisive. If Clinton doesn't win both big, they will be.

And then we can go to the DNC and change some of these ridiculous rules so that nobody hyperventilates in future years the way they did this year.

On Wisconsin

Obama is projected with a lead in the exit polls, but there has yet to be an immediate projection. McCain has been declared the winner on the Republican side, but you knew that.

I would suggest that the exit polls are right, because Hillary Clinton is apparently going to speak very early tonight. It sounds like the lead is big enough that the networks could project if they wanted to, but they're holding back to see some numbers.

Wisconsin is a predominantly white state, with substantial numbers of blue-collar voters. Obama is gaining in many respects in Clinton's core base.

One big number I'm seeing in the exit polls is that 54% of the electorate feel that Clinton attacked Obama unfairly. If she can't go negative, it's going to be a long night for Clinton supporters.

...it's been called now. Obama lost women by just 51-49 and took men by a substantial margin, so even though women made up 57% of the electorate (yay, go women!), he still took it. And there's this nugget:

The economy and trade were key issues in the race, and seven in 10 voters said international trade has resulted in lost jobs in Wisconsin. Fewer than one in five said trade has created more jobs than it has lost.

Ergo all the populist rhetoric you heard from both campaigns.

Clearly this means that Wisconsin is too small a state to matter, it's a red state, it was a caucus even though it looked like a primary, and all residents of the Badger State are cheesehead-wearing cultists. /taylormarsh>

UPDATE: This is a very astute post from Thers. It's about the delegate screw-ups by the Clinton campaign in Texas and Pennsylvania, but it can also apply to Clinton not preparing for really anything beyond Super Tuesday, and thusly blowing a winnable opportunity in Wisconsin:

Which reminds me that one of my complaints about Bill Clinton was that for all his political skills, he didn't do nearly enough to build up the D party from the bottom up. And after Reagan/Bush, well that was something that needed to happen. Granted, he was busy fending off what really did amount to a coup attempt. But still.

It strikes me therefore as a bit ironic that HRC is in her present straits. Suppose there had been the concerted effort at party organizing that didn't really happen in the 1990s. That infrastructure would have been there, now, right when she needs it. She would not have had to build it.

Don't get me wrong: I like HRC and think shed be a great president -- on her merits and not just as an alternative to McCain, who is nuts. But you know, if she does lose, I think one of the lessons that we should take from it is about the grassroots (& netroots) & rebuilding the party from the ground up. No more Penns, no more high-level advising. We'll win in the trenches, as they say, by giving 110%.

The "too many chiefs, not enough Indians" theory applies. This is why, while I find the two candidates quite similar, I ultimately pulled the lever for Obama, because he has inspired that grassroots movement that has the potential to hold him accountable as well as elect lots of people to help get the agenda passed.

...Really, what the hell does this mean?

Clinton says Obama relies on 'words'

Clinton said the primary campaign "is about picking a president who relies not just on words but on work — on hard work to get America back to work."

She told the crowd that the "best words in the world are not enough" unless they're matched with action.

Yes, he relies on "words," words that translate into voters agreeing with his ideas, and voting for him, so he can implement his policies.

Stupid words!

I'm shocked that Clinton relied on words to make that attack about Obama relying on words. She should have used smoke signals. That would have shown her commitment to work.

Subpoena Power

Democrats in the House and Senate have requested additional documents about the US Attorney activities. Did I say requested? I mean demanded. Not only do they want redacted and withheld documents related to the purge, but they want to hear more about the strange case in Wisconsin, where an aide to Gov. Jim Doyle was jailed by the US Attorney in the region right before the 2006 Election, and subsequently hastily dismissed on the basis of "very thin" evidence. Here's part of Leahy and Schumer's letter:

We are concerned whether or not politics may have played a role in a case brought by Stephen Biskupic, the United States attorney based in Milwaukee, against Georgia Thompson, formerly an official in the administration of Wisconsin's Democratic governor. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was reportedly so troubled by the insufficiency of the evidence against Ms. Thompson that it made the unusual decision to issue an order reversing Ms. Thompson's conviction and releasing her from custody immediately after oral arguments in her appeal.

They also go into the fact that Wisconsin voter fraud cases suddenly shot up right after the counselor to the President claimed that Bush himself complained about a lack of voter fraud cases in the state. The whole myth of voter fraud is well-documented; it's a phantom that allows Republicans to push political cases (by the way, the wheels of this are greased by those fatalists on the Left who believe that every election is doomed because Karl Rove can flip a switch and change the voting outcomes from a master command center. What suffers is electoral confidence, which allows Republicans to make these bullshit claims which have little or no evidentiary basis).

I find it interesting that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are already looking into the Biskupic situation. It shows that they understand how the real scandal in this case may be the US Attorneys who have NOT been fired, rather than the ones who have (although they shouldn't be neglected either). Indeed, do you know who Alberto Gonzales picked just today to be his new chief of staff? The US Attorney for Connecticut.

It appears that the Justice Department is going to fight the release of these documents. I don't know who'll be doing the fighting, as Gonzales is deeply immersed in "Cover-Yer-Ass-Lie-Telling School" somewhere in a Washington gym, where he's hitting the heavy bag with a picture of Patrick Leahy taped up to the mirror. But you knew that, at some point, the White House would have to stonewall. Something out there is too incriminating. They've been skewering federal law enforcement for years. It's only catching up with them now because of an excess of "D's" on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Henry Waxman's going to hold hearings on the disinformation campaigns by the miltary over Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch.

Isn't the majority just DIFFERENT?

You Go To Court With The Loyal Bushies You Have

Steve Benen finds more evidence that the real scandal with the fired US Attorneys were the ones who were allowed to stay.

Federal judges Thursday ruled that former state purchasing supervisor Georgia L. Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle’s re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison.

The three-judge panel in Chicago acted with unusual speed, ruling after oral arguments by Thompson’s attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office.

During 26 minutes of oral arguments, all three judges assailed the government’s case, with Judge Diane Wood saying at one point that “the evidence is beyond thin.”

During a news conference later Thursday, Doyle, a former state attorney general, said the three judges did an “extraordinary thing” by entering an order finding Thompson innocent and ordering her immediate release.(emphasis added)

The man who wrongly convicted Ms. Thompson on the basis of such thin evidence was U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic. This indictment of Thompson occurred a few days after Jim Doyle's unsuccessful Republican opponent Mark Green jumped into the race and won the GOP nomination. Here's Benen's summary of the case:

I’ll spare you the minutiae of the case, but here’s the story in a nutshell: Thompson, who was originally hired under Doyle’s Republican predecessor, awarded a state contract to Adelman Travel, which became controversial because two of the company’s officers had donated the state maximum to Doyle’s re-election campaign.

There was no evidence that Thompson personally profited from the contract and nothing to suggest she approved the contract for political reasons. Biskupic brought charges anyway and managed to win a conviction, which was thrown out swiftly yesterday.

Steven Biskupic is obviously not the only sitting US Attorney with a cloud over him. We know that New Jersey's USA Chris Christie has investigated Democrats at a rate 3-4 times higher than Republicans, and that he stepped into the Menendez-Kean Senate race last year to push investigations into Sen. Menendez that were dubious. And today we hear about US Attorney for Minnesota Rachel Paulose, four of whose staff voluntarily quit:

It’s a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.
Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

Paulose was appointed before the 8 U.S. Attorneys were given their pink slips, but she has deep connections to the scandal.

She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling – the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.

Add to the suspicions the fact that Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger stepped down just as the White House was developing its hit list.

And Steve Benen mentions a few more cases that are more than a little odd:

* In New Hampshire, Democrats want Congress to investigate whether prosecution of a Republican phone-jamming scheme on Election Day 2002 was intentionally delayed until after the presidential election two years later.

* Did the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania intentionally target Bob Casey allies to undermine his Senate campaign against Rick Santorum?

* Why was the career U.S. Attorney in Guam removed in 2002 after he started investigating disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff?

* Why has Western Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan, spent a disproportionate amount of her time launching public-corruption investigations against Democrats, while overlooking Republicans?

* In July 2005, the U.S. Attorney in Denver decided not to pursue a matter in which bouncers at a Bush event impersonated Secret Service agents to throw out three law-abiding ticket-holders because of their bumper sticker (the Denver Three controversy). Did politics dictate the decision?

I would add the case of Debra Wong Yang, who, after opening an investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis, was bought out for $1.5 million dollars and hired by... the law firm representing Rep. Lewis.

Now, Alberto Gonzales is hemhorraging support on Capitol Hill, and his initial testimony to clear his name has been delayed to twist the knife even more and give the Senate Judiciary Committee more time to investigate all these threads.
But the real result of this scandal is that it has irreparably damaged the credibility of the Justice Department and its field offices, both in the public eye and potentially in court cases. Nobody can look at US Attorney indictments without a jaundiced eye; this latest case in Wisconsin proves it. And a record is now being built of politically motivated corruption cases, so that when an actual corrupt Democrat comes before a court, his lawyers can credibly argue that this was a political witch hunt and as a result the case should be dropped.

This is a cancer to the legal system that will be difficult to wash out, even with a Democrat in the White House and the Justice Department. You know that you can see freshly-scrubbed Federalist Society lawyers arguing in court that all corruption cases they defend are political witch hunts. Of course, we see that already. But now there's evidence that this was the case. Having politics creep into the administration of justice is terribly damaging for the future of the country.