The Daily Background

One thing that’s been bugging me, and I suspect some others as well, about the US Attorney firings scandal (and it truly can be called a “scandal” now), is the White House’s claims that several of the eight prosecutors who were fired in December were fired because they didn’t follow up on “voter fraud.”

The White House claimed that, although 7 of the 8 US Attorneys had positive job reviews ranging from “good” to “outstanding,” they had gotten reports from people in their districts that complained that they were ignoring their duty to investigate “voter fraud.” Now, when I think about problems with voting, my instinct is to think about voter supression, and the types of dirty techniques that Republican operatives consistently use to try and stop people from voting.

You know, like slashing tires of Democratic Get Out The Vote (GOTV) vans used to ferry voters to polling places, distributing fliers in minority neighborhoods saying that election day is the day after the real election day, or of course the infamous instance in 2002 where Republicans illegally jammed Democratic and firefighters’ GOTV phone lines in order to try and supress the Democratic-leaning vote.

So for the Administration to be annoyed with prosecutors for not following up on allegations of “voter fraud” to me just didn’t seem quite right. Then there was John Edwards remark on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer earlier this week:

“The U.S. attorneys serve at the — at the pleasure of the president of the United States. But what he did is wrong. And what they did is, they have fired a group of U.S. attorneys for what appear to be blatantly political reasons, particularly because they, Republicans, were complaining they weren’t raising enough issues or prosecuting enough people for voter fraud, which, by the way, the subtext of that language, voter fraud, is voter suppression, which is what — what we sometimes see from — from the other side in these kind of occasions.”

Turns out, I didn’t understand what was actually meant by “voter fraud,” and I think a lot of other people were somewhat thrown off by this as well. Thankfully BradBlog, an internet expert on elections and the problems that occur in elections, explained it today:

As you might expect, there is much more to the “voter fraud” angle in the U.S. Attorneys Purge scandal than initially meets the eye. As you might also expect, we’ve taken keen notice as we’ve long been following and reporting on the insidious machinations behind the GOP/White House/Rove scheme to (rather successfully) invent the cynical notion of a “voter fraud” epidemic in America for purely political purposes.

First… Allow me to set the stage for the unenlightened by referring you to an amazingly wonderful new report on the manufactured myth of American “voter fraud” as released by ProjectVote.org and authored by Lorraine C. Minnite, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Among the report’s key findings:

* Voter fraud is extremely rare.
* Most voter fraud allegations turn out to be something other than fraud.
* There is a long history in America of elites using voter fraud allegations to restrict and shape the electorate.
* The historically disenfranchised are often the target of voter fraud allegations.

Finally, an academician thoroughly debunks — nay, eviscerates — the long-worked, well-moneyed and invidious GOP plot to create the illusion of an American “voter fraud” epidemic (as distinct from very real election fraud concerns). The point behind the effort is solely to push for disenfranchising laws and restrictions in an effort to keep legitimate voters away from the polls in our democracy. If you read only one page of this report, “The Politics of Voter Fraud”, it will be well worth your time!

In other words, “voter fraud” is a key phrase that Republicans like to bandy around in order to justify pushing new legislation and regulations that make it tougher for minority and other Democratic-leaning citizens to vote, by placing a higher bar for the voters to reach that historically hasn’t been there. Stuff like requiring multiple types of photo identification, and so forth.

The common use of the phrase “voter fraud” is an intensely political and loaded term, with all sorts of implications. Hopefully this clears up any confusion about what the White House meant when they said they were firing these prosecutors for failing to look into voter fraud. I think in general it’s a pretty bunk claim since these allegations of incompetence only come from Republican political figures around the country and since these fired US Attorneys had favorable job approval ratings conducted by the DoJ that said nothing of these concerns.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog