If you can't win 'em over, chase 'em away

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Dec 03, 2009 at 14:35:21 PM MST

Dominic Holden:

Republicans want cops to patrol polling places where minorities vote, take photos of those voters, and use lists to challenge their voter registrations. The RNC argued that, now that a black man is in the White House and black people have been elected to numerous offices, those tactics couldn't amount to voter intimidation. They said that scrutinizing minority voters-in the name of stopping widespread voter fraud calculatedly perpetrated by lower-income minority groups-should be unbridled.

Federal judge Dickinson Debevoise (from the NYTimes link):

"It does not appear that the R.N.C.'s incentive to suppress minority votes has changed since 1982," Judge Debevoise wrote, citing statistics showing that most minority voters support Democrats. "It appears that the R.N.C. has been largely unsuccessful in its efforts to attract minority voters. Until it is able to do so, it will have an incentive to engage in the type of voter suppression that it allegedly committed in the actions that led to the enactment and modification of the consent decree."

The judge dismissed arguments by Republican advocates that voter fraud is a growing problem, and said suppression of minority voters was a more serious issue.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you're familiar with the amount of posts we've written on the GOP's efforts to intimidate Democratic voters from the ballot box, evoking the myth of voter fraud. In short, Republicans want to discourage poor and minority voters - traditionally Democratic supporters - from going to the ballot box. But voter fraud is not a problem. The Bush administration made voter fraud a top priority for the Department of Justice - including pressuring US attorneys to pursue bogus fraud cases during election season - and found little or no actual cases of fraud. Most of the successful cases prosecuted by the Bush DoJ involved registration cards "mistakenly filled out" or voters misunderstanding their eligibility. Little or no deliberate criminal intent was discovered.

The bad news in this story is that the RNC is likely to appeal Debevois' decision. I say "bad," because the conservative justices on the SCOTUS seem to want to put Republican electoral victories ahead of voter rights, if previous decisions on voter ID are any indication. It's quite conceivable Roberts and Scalia will agree with the RNC's argument and allow authorities to photograph and interrogate voters on their way to the polls...

Bigfoot seen in NY23!

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Nov 19, 2009 at 09:13:06 AM MST

With his prospect of winning the 23rd Congressional District race now almost zero, Conservative Party candidate Douglas L. Hoffman suggested Wednesday in a letter that "ACORN, the unions and the Democratic Party" "tampered" with results to deny him victory.

You've got to read the letter to believe it.

What caused the fuss? Some problems with poll workers reporting results from Oswego county - Hoffman's stronghold. Only elections officials halted the reporting, recanvassed the votes, and came up with an accurate total. In short, there's absolutely no evidence of tampering or fraud or any election impropriety. The reverse is true. From the report, it's obvious that elections officials worked carefully to ensure that all votes were counted correctly.

The Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner "told the Watertown Daily Times that Hoffman's allegations were 'absolutely false.'"

Only Hoffman thinks otherwise. According to his letter, the reporting errors were "a tactic right from the ACORN playbook."

Uh...does Hoffman actually know what ACORN does? They register voters in low-income urban areas. They weren't anywhere near NY-23. But yeah, as brooklynite writes, "who else but urban community organizers could take on a 90% white,99% rural election district?"

Not that reason will have sway, of course. Hoffman's accusations evoke a pair of conservative bugbears: ACORN and voter fraud. Just the mention of these things gets folks salivating, like the staff at righty blog Townhall, who are calling for an investigation into Hoffman's allegations.

You be the judge. Is Hoffman raising the specter of voter fraud and ACORN because he's crazy? Or because he's trolling for attention and money? After all, teh crazy worked for Palin. Me? I think he should go a notch further. Wasn't Bigfoot seen near some election returns?

RNC fouls up get-out-the-vote effort for GA-SEN runoff

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Nov 24, 2008 at 13:30:44 PM MST

A Republican-generated effort to get out the vote for the Dec. 2 runoff election [for the Georgia Senate race] has hit a snag as thousands of requests for absentee ballots have been denied because the applications were not signed....

Many of the unsigned requests came in the form of cards printed by the Republican National Committee and mailed to voters. Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss is in a tight battle to retain his seat by beating Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

The signature line on the RNC cards is easy to miss since it appears after an entry asking voters to enter an address different from their permanent one. Georgia doesn't require voters to give a reason for voting by absentee ballot.

Maybe if the Republican party had spent more time registering voters and getting out the vote instead of trying to suppress Democratic voters...

By the way...am I seeing this right? Is the RNC encouraging voters to request an absentee ballot for a second address so they can get an absentee ballot? Not that I care - it's more important that people vote -- but it seems the organization is, I dunno, encouraging people to falsify their residential addresses so they can vote early. Isn't that, you know, voter faud?

Why the McCain campaign has stopped (kind of) their allegations of voter fraud against ACORN

by: Bob Gentry

Wed Oct 22, 2008 at 10:15:25 AM MST

The McCain Campaign and GOP has funded 2 voter registration firms, both of which are embroiled in real charges of disenfranchising real voters.

Mark Jacoby was arrested Sat night in California on 2 counts of perjury and 2 counts of vote fraud.  He registered to vote in California at a fake address so he would be eligible to register other voters in the state (a requirement of federal law).  His company is YPM (Young Political Majors).  Prosecutors in LA, Ventura and San Bernadino Counties are investigating Jacoby's company after dozens of voters accused YPM of "slamming," which is registering them as republicans without their knowledge.  LA Times found that YPM registered more than 80% of their new republicans either without their knowledge or by misleading them.  YPM makes money by registering only republican voters specifically, working not only as a subcontractor for the California Republican Party but also, according to the Ventura County Star, for the voter registration "bounties" offered by Steve Poizner, who offered YPM a bounty of $5 for every new republican registered.

Poizner is also the California co-chairman of the McCain campaign.  The McCain campaign cannot claim ignorance of YPM's track record as Jacoby is based in Arizona, where a number of ballot initiatives may not be on the ballot this year after YPM gathered signatures for them, and some of those signatures failed to pass muster for local election officials.  YPM was publicly accused of vote slamming before in 2004, in both Florida and Massachusetts.

Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Republican Party, is also in the voter registration business and a serial denier of whistle blowers who not only accuse him of slamming voters into the republican party, but also claim he has torn up democratic registrations in Oregon, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.  Real registrations of real voters, real Americans who thought they were registered to vote, and may very well have been denied their right to vote in the real elections of 2004.  HuffPo reports this year that a joint committee, including the GOP and the McCain campaign paid $175,000 for "registering voters" to the Lincoln Strategy Group, the voter registration organization headed by Nathan Sproul.

So why isn't anybody investigating Nathan Sproul?  Since the days of John Ashcroft, democratic members of Congress have been asking the Justice Department to investigate real voter suppression.  Congressman John Conyers specifically including Sproul in one of his follow-ups last year.  The stonewalling, in stark contract to the response time of the Justice Department in responding to republican claims of voter fraud last week, its leaking word of the ACORN investigation the day after McCain pointed his finger at ACORN, the previous pressuring of prosecutors to pursue republican claims of voter fraud, and the 2006 firing of federal prosecutors who refused to do so, including NM federal prosecutor David Iglesias, who later revealed the Justice Department knew those claims in 2004, were bogus.  TPM reporting that some of the same republican operatives pushing voter fraud claims this year were at the heart of those bogus claims.  

I believe the [voter] ID issue should be used at all levels.  You are not going to find a better wedge issue."  Republican attorney Pat Rogers' email to state republicans (source:  DOJ "Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006."  September 2008)

The Need to Adequately Fund Election Administration

by: Matt Singer

Mon Oct 20, 2008 at 08:40:09 AM MST

If there is a year that even more than 2000 and 2004 makes the case for increased funding for election administration in America, it will be this one.

Just note the numbers:

A number of key swing states around the country are reporting significant increases in voter registrations, an early indicator of how many people are likely to vote come Election Day. Among battleground states with the biggest gains in voter registration are Nevada, up 30 percent, Virginia, up 11 percent and North Carolina, up 9 percent.

[...]

Ohio's Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland and its suburbs that has a history of election problems, has seen a 10 percent increase in registered voters compared to 2004 and St. Louis, Missouri is seeing the highest registration levels in a quarter century.

Overall, 13 battleground states have already received 3.4 million new registrations as of Oct. 14, compared to 1.8 million new registrations in 2004, according to Laura Quinn, chief executive of Catalist, which tracks voter registration for progressive organizations.

This was one of the major problems with the scurrilous voter challenges from the Montana GOP that caused a number of local Republicans who have some understanding of election administration upset -- they know that these hard-working county officials are already deluged and that dumping new work on their plates for ridiculous reasons was just mean in its effect if not in intent.

So here's the question -- why can't we effectively fund election administration in this country? It's  a line item that not a ton of groups fight to increase, but after seeing these sorts of problems election after election, surely we can agree that funding upfront to avoid the problems later is worth it.

Consider it this way, both liberals and conservatives by their own arguments have pretty good reasons to support increased funding of election administration:

• For conservatives who worry about both voter fraud and voter registration fraud, increased administrative capacity increases the chances of oddities being caught. That includes everything from Mickey Mouse being registered to vote to having time to make sure individuals' former election jurisdictions are notified when they move their registrations. At this point, many of these problems are capacity problems.

  It's also no amazing feat of logic to think through the fact that election fraud of any sort is the sort of thing we're better off preventing than responding to. Some things, like larceny, can be handled just fine with reactive measures to provide restitution to victims and penalties to criminals. But with election fraud, you want to prevent the act from ever taking place because you can't provide restitution in almost any case. Additionally, a heightened chance of getting caught is a better disincentive to committing a crime than is a stiffer penalty, according to sociology research. So the focus should be on catching perpetrators, not simply on extending jail sentences.

  Note: I write all of this believing both that voter registration fraud is very rare and that out-and-out voter fraud is exceptionally rare in this country.

• For liberals the key concerns with voting right now is that sometimes counties just can't process the deluge of information. If a county can't process your voter registration by Election Day, you can't vote in many states. If your polling location gets short changed on voting machines and turnout surges, you get to wait in line for an extra hour. You want to increase election participation? Increase election appropriations.

Montana GOP's efforts to suppress the vote part of a national trend

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Oct 14, 2008 at 10:06:28 AM MST

For one, the McCain campaign is now taking credit for the first, failed vote on the bailout bill. Never mind that McCain actually supported the first bill, and that if he had a hand in its demise, it's because he failed to provide leadership on the issue either way; the campaign is claiming "blew it up" over funding for ACORN, a group that registers low-income voters.

Now, I've been over this territory before on the blog, and Josh Marshall has an excellent and in-depth discussion of how Republicans have used ACORN to whip up its hysteria on voter fraud, but the shorter version is this: the partisan appointees in Bush's Department of Justice rushed indictments against ACORN members right before the 2006 elections, which were subsequently thrown out of court for being bogus. There have been successful prosecutions against ACORN workers for turning in forged registration forms; but they were paid registration gatherers who defrauded, and were turned in by, ACORN itself. In any case, those fake registration forms could not have been used to fradulently cast votes.

Got that? Regitration fraud was perpetrated against ACORN and would not lead to fraud at the ballot box.

So...the right whips up false fears about voter fraud, and the Republican party uses those manufactured fears to erase voters from the rolls. The New York Times:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

(Brad Friedman posted the video of CBS' two-minute report on the issue.)

What's worse is that this kind of purging of the rolls aren't just to get eligible voters off the rolls, they're also intended to scare voters still on the rolls away from voting-day polling places.

Johnson's 15 seconds of fame on Fox News

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 06:44:09 AM MST

Where's the crime? If the joke was about murder, there'd be no body. There'd be nobody missing. Mike McGrath: "the accusations contain no allegation supported by fact." Those who are demanding for investigation need to do one thing: find someone -- anyone! -- who was victimized by the kind of action described in Schweitzer's jokes.

H*ll, even Brad Johnson admits this on his 15 minutes of fame in the Fox News segment:

Fox News: ...the Attorney General Mike McGrath turned your request for an investigation down. He said there was no allegation supported by fact. Do you buy that, or do you think there could be wrongdoing here?

Brad Johnson: Well...you know...I'm not judge and jury, Eric. Uh, it's, it's my job to see to it that we get to the bottom of this and, uh, the authority I have in that regard is to formally refer this matter to the Attorney General, and the fact is that he rejected the request.

The shorter Brad Johnson: "No, I have no facts to support my allegations."

This is electioneering, this is political. If Schweitzer had said he framed Roger Rabbit, the usual gang of bloggers and brainiac Republican officials would fall over themselves demanding an investigation.

And remember, Johnson is the man who crowed after the legislative audit of the 2006 election showed no voter fraud, "This audit is a victory for Montanans. It's a victory for the dedicated county elections officials around Montana who make this system work. We protected the integrity of our electoral process, and it shows."

Voter ID law prohibits 97-year-old AZ woman from voting

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Jun 11, 2008 at 20:19:34 PM MST

A 97-year-old Surprise woman who has voted in the past 19 presidential elections said she finds herself a casualty in the voter ID battle.

Shirley Preiss cannot register in Arizona for the November elections without proof of citizenship.

Preiss can't register because she can't provide a birth certificate -- she was born before birth certificates were issued. She doesn't have a DL and never has had a passport.

Meanwhile, untold numbers of non-existant fraudsters were turned away in the imaginations of Republican officials and SCOTUS justices everywhere! Definitely worth it...

IMHO, if one voter is disenfranchised by the law, that's one voter too many.

GOP: Prove your right to vote!

by: Jay Stevens

Tue May 13, 2008 at 17:49:12 PM MST

At the time of the court decision, Loyola law professor Rick Hasen wrote:

...I am disappointed by how cursory that opinion was in its review of the state's interest in light of the highly partisan atmosphere of election administration, and I fear that, despite the Stevens-Kennedy-Roberts' opinion's best intentions, this opinion will be read as a green light for the enactment of more partisan election laws in an attempt to skew outcomes in close elections. It is a real disappointment from that perspective.

And, on cue:

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

Steve Benen:

Proving U.S. citizenship is tougher, creating a hurdle that's harder to clear. Missouri voters would likely have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers, or a passport in order to participate in an election, and a whole lot of eligible voters would likely be denied a ballot or decide in advance it's not worth the trouble.

Insane.

SCOTUS to the disenfranchised: "Get over it!"

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Apr 28, 2008 at 12:27:44 PM MST

The SCOTUS actually acknowledged the partisan nature and purpose of the Indiana law (passed by a Republican legislature, signed by a Republican governor), but the majority opinion dismissed concerns of partisanship:

While the Court's main opinion said it was "fair to infer that partisan considerations may have played a significant role" in enacting the photo ID law, it went on to say that that law was neutral in its application and was adequately supported by the justifications the state had offered.

"Neutral in its application"? And "adequately supported" by the "justifications" from the state?

The SCOTUS indicates it will uphold voter ID law

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 08:28:08 AM MST

Justice David H. Souter countered, "That would be a virtue, but one of the vices would be that it would be after the election, and the entire matter would be academic for another two years."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised a similar objection. "The reason they are bringing a facial challenge is because the horse is going to be out of the barn," she said. "They will have the election, and just what they are afraid of could happen - that the result will be skewed in favor of the opposite party."

The conservatives of the court want to wait until real damage is proven (wasn't that shown in the Georgia voter ID case?) -- although they require no such similar proof of damage if the state lacked a voter ID law. The liberal justices? Well, they apparently are concerned about the civil rights of those that will be adversely affected by the law.

Dahlia Lithwick:

I fear I am counting five justices who believe that a nonexistent problem can be constitutionally cured by burdening the fundamental right to vote. Happy byproduct? Doing away with those pesky facial challenges that liberals like to use to address massive injustices. So in the guise of doing away with hypothetical future challenges to a law, the court is poised to uphold a law that solves hypothetical future problems in voting. And for those of you wondering why the court didn't see fit to release audio for today's monumentally important argument, the answer remains, who knows? But here's one guess: The justices didn't want to be caught on tape sounding like the same 5-4 court that decided Bush v. Gore, even if nothing has changed.

What's up with conservatives? Don't they like civil rights? Don't they want people to vote? Oh...wait...

On requiring a picture ID to vote in Indiana

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Nov 14, 2007 at 12:49:28 PM MST

Surprise! It does!

By a substantial margin, the Indiana residents most likely to possess photo ID turn out to be whites, the middle aged, and high-income voters. And while this is undoubtedly just a wild coincidence, these are also the three groups most like to vote for Republicans. (2006 exit poll data here for the suspicious.) Overall, 91% of registered Republicans had photo IDs compared to only 83% of registered Democrats.

Blacks are the group least likely to have valid photo IDs.

Kevin Drum:

But like I said, this is probably just a coincidence. I'm sure Karl Rove and the RNC had no idea that the demographics broke down like this. Right?

Is the answer to every question really "voter fraud"?

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Nov 02, 2007 at 11:49:33 AM MST

But wait! No! Spitzer (and Clinton) don't really support the policy for the reasons they say they do! It's really about voter fraud!

Worst! Voter! Fraud! Ever!

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 08:40:22 AM MST

Three of seven defendants in the biggest voter-registration fraud scheme in Washington history have pleaded guilty and one has been sentenced, prosecutors said Monday.

Just in case you missed it, I'll repeat it with emphasis. Biggest! Voter-registration! Fraud! Scheme! in! History!

But, wait! There's more!

The defendants were all temporary employees of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, when they allegedly filled out and submitted more than 1,800 fictitious voter-registration cards during a 2006 registration drive in King and Pierce counties.

Eighteen hundred fictitious voters registered! What evil plans were hatched to exploit the 1,800? Which nefarious cabal of George-Soros-backed groups were behind the plot? Which candidate did they intend to elevate to power?

No votes were cast in the names of the phony voters. Prosecutors said the defendants committed fraud in order to keep their jobs without actually registering voters.

Wait?you mean?it was just the work of a couple of paid registration gatherers looking to separate ACORN from a few dollars? So, it wasn't organized by a liberal organization? It didn't affect the outcome of an election?

The story on these indictments is gawd-awful, an implication that there was a concerted, organized theft of an election in the story's lede. And it's not the first time coverage of ACORN went like this. Remember the indictments rushed by administration hack, Bradley Schlozman, in Missouri just before the 2006 election?

News coverage of the indictments tended to buttress the notion that liberal groups like ACORN were conspiring to steal the election. The indictments were covered by Fox News (where a Kansas City election official was quoted as saying that it was "the worst case of registration abuse in the last quarter century"), as well as the AP, CNN, and other nationwide outlets. Schlozman announced in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."

The reality, of course, was much different:

The former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins told Salon that in cases like this, the fraud is perpetrated upon ACORN, not by them. The organizers forge registrations in order to justify their $8.00/hour wages. Elyshya Miller, the organizer from ACORN, explained to me that the group frequently hires people who are in "desperate situations," who "really need something at the time."

Sure, ACORN should probably look into its hiring practices. Better yet, like Forward Montana, it should use volunteers to register voters. The crime itself? Stupid, poorly planned and executed, and utterly harmless. And one-hundred-percent guaranteed to appear in arguments justifying vote caging, voter ID, arbitrary registration dates, and voter purging.

Billings vote by mail...works!

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Oct 15, 2007 at 11:58:31 AM MST

Voting by mail should more than double the turnout, said county Election Administrator Duane Winslow. He said previous municipal elections over the past 12 years averaged about 19 percent turnout. This time, he's expecting nearly 50 percent return of mailed ballots.

Increased voter turnout leads to greater civic participation. Unless you're a reactionary and curmudgeonly authoritarian, that's a good thing. Vote-by-mail is also cheaper, and could save state taxpayers some money if it was enacted across Montana. In short, vote-by-mail works.

Conservatives, as usual, are fearful of phantom voter fraud. (One commenter even said that mail-in voting opened the door to special interests buying elections. That's the kind of hyperbole I'm talking about!) You know what I've got to say about that: voter fraud is a politically motivated myth.

But the real problem with vote-by-mail is that voters who move need to re-register, and that requires a stronger push from institutions, like county governments, which should, you know, update their election websites every once in a while.

Here in Missoula, we have a large and transient student population, which means a lot of ballots are being mailed to the wrong address, even if students haven't moved out of the city or even their neighborhood. Organizations like Forward Montana are busy registering voters, but it would make sense to have the University involved somehow, too. So the real challenge with this system is educating voters on their voting rights and responsibilities.

One more time, with feeling: the myth of voter fraud!

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 11:55:24 AM MST

In it, Tova Andrea Wang recounts her experience working for the Congressionally created Election Assistance Committee (EAC), formed in the aftermath of the 2000 election. Wang and her bipartisan group were appointed by the EAC to conduct a preliminary investigation into voter fraud and intimidation.

After the report was submitted to the EAC, that body later released the "results" of the study:

We said that our preliminary research found widespread agreement among administrators, academics and election experts from all points on the political spectrum that allegations of fraud through voter impersonation at polling places were greatly exaggerated. We noted that this position was supported by existing research and an analysis of several years of news articles. The commission chose instead to state that the issue was a matter of considerable debate. And while we found that problems of voter intimidation were still prevalent in a variety of forms, the commission excluded much of the discussion of voter intimidation.

We also raised questions about the way the Justice Department was handling complaints of fraud and intimidation. The commission excised all references to the department that might be construed as critical -- or that Justice officials later took issue with. And all of the suggestions we received from political scientists and other scholars regarding methodologies for a more scientifically rigorous look at these problems were omitted.

So?what happened between the time that Wang's group submitted its findings, and the EAC released the report?

It's still unclear, but it is worth noting that during the time the commission was holding our draft, claims about voter fraud and efforts to advance the cause of strict voter identification laws were at a fever pitch in Congress and the states. And it has been reported that some U.S. attorneys were being fired because they failed to pursue weakly supported voter fraud cases with sufficient zeal.

We have learned that several Republican officials, including a state official, a former political appointee at the Justice Department and current Federal Election Commission member (Hans Von Spakovsky), and a Capitol Hill staffer complained about our project, particularly about my role in it. Officials at Justice were actively involved in the report throughout the process and even exerted some degree of editorial control over the new report. And it is evident from the commission's "document dump" that its Republican general counsel assumed primary control over the rewriting of the report.

(Hans Von Spakovsky, wouldn't you know, was a controversial member of Alberto Gonzalez' Department of Justice. As a member of the DoJ's Civil Rights' division, he was an advocate of anti-voter-fraud policies, including the unconstitutional Georgia voter ID bill, that helped suppress minority voting.)

Not that is should come as a surprise to anyone who's been following current events, but the Bush administration has politicized the federal government and made it a vehicle of partisanship.

Now I'm all for partisanship - in blogs, in debate, in how we select our representatives. And I agree that government should be run based on our elected representatives' philosophies, instituting programs and legislation that, in their view, best benefits the country. That's how the system should work.

However, the Bush administration has instead made the government work not for any philosophical or ideological ideals, but to act solely in the interests of the Republican party. In this case, political officials suppressed an investigative report that contradicted political rhetoric and government programs of voter intimidation that helps the Republican party win elections.

So what's worse? Larry Craig seeking blow jobs in public bathrooms, or officials abusing the power of government to intimidate U.S. citizens from exercising their basic right to vote?

Report urges Johnson's office to "lead the way"

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 15:33:29 PM MST

Besides revelations that same-day voter registration doesn't lead to fraud, as many righties claimed it would (a staple in the conservative toolbox of dirty politics, used to disenfranchise the meanest among us), the report also contains this gem:

Secretary of State Brad Johnson hailed the audit as a victory, saying it found no fraud and showed his office "protected the integrity of our electoral process."

Wait! Wasn't Brad Johnson one of the biggest critics of same-day voter registration? Why, yes he was!

The secretary of state's office is supporting a measure to do away with same-day voter registration in Montana, arguing it could help prevent a repeat of problems that occurred during the state's 2006 election.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson is in favor of a bill that would require voters to register before Election Day, his chief of staff, Mark Simonich, said Thursday.

Simonich said Election Day 2006, the first year in which same-day registration was allowed in the state, was "somewhat chaotic" because county election officials were required to simultaneously register voters and run elections.

But what the audit found concerning was that there was

"very little uniformity in how poll workers had been instructed to deal with different (absentee) situations, suggesting there is considerable risk voters in different counties will receive different treatment at the polls and experience different outcomes in terms of the voting process."

And urged Johnson's office to "lead the way to mitigate problems caused by same-day voter registration, such as long lines." (Johnson's preferred method is to eliminate same-day voter registration altogether.)

Clearly the audit is a rebuke of Johnson, who's responsible for the elections process in the state. Clearly, Johnson and his staff should have anticipated that there'd be confusion about the new rules and worked to educate poll workers. And clearly the Secretary of State's office does need to "lead the way" on elections.

But remember, instead of doing the task he was elected to do, Johnson spent taxpayer money pasting his mug on billboards around the state.

This is probably a good time to again mention that Linda McCollough is running for Johnson's office. Maybe McCollough might actually take interest in ensuring Montana's elections run smoothly.

Voter fraud and Native Americans, part 1

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Jun 07, 2007 at 07:36:47 AM MST

The lawsuit contends Crow tribal members formed a slate of candidates "based on race" and violated state and federal election laws governing political campaigns. The suit also charges that reports of "double-voting" by tribal members in the November election were not thoroughly investigated by federal officials.

Among the plaintiffs is the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, a South Dakota-based group that contends tribal governments should be abolished and the U.S. Constitution should trump American Indian law.

The lawsuit contends that as a result of the alleged irregularities, nontribal members in Big Horn County were denied equal voting rights. Big Horn County includes much of the Crow Reservation. Elections for more than a dozen county positions were included on the November ballot, according to plaintiff's attorney, Richard Stephens.

Defendants of the suit include Deputy Secretary of State Elaine Graveley, Big Horn County Clerk Cyndy Maxwell, and old pal Brad Johnson, the same fella who wanted to abolish same-day voter registration because of non-existent voter fraud.

I suspect there's never been anyone happier to be sued than Mr. Johnson.

Still more ado about nothing

by: Jay Stevens

Tue May 22, 2007 at 16:16:43 PM MST

To be fair to Johnson, this isn't asking for a picture ID or some other scheme that would effectively bar a number of legitimate voters from the polls. But it does reinforce the government's habit of using SSN for a national identifier, which I'm not keen about.

But the last paragraph featuring old friend Bowen Greenwood is the most interesting:

Spokesman Bowen Greenwood said the office has yet to uncover a verified case of voter fraud. But he said the latest verification procedure, required under federal regulations, will help make sure it doesn't happen.

First, if there's been not a single case of voter fraud, why all the fuss about same-day registration?

Second, if there's no voter fraud doesn't that mean the system works fine? Why even bother with something like this?

The Purged Prosecutors and the Specter of Voter Fraud

by: Matt Singer

Tue Mar 13, 2007 at 09:39:14 AM MST

Interestingly, it appears at least part of the frustration by the Republicans who moved to purge was that the prosecutors in question weren't doing "enough" to "fight" voter "fraud." Why all the "scare quotes"? Because, as Josh Marshall explains, voter fraud is basically a specter, a rightwing talking point that rarely has even a tenuous connection in reality. The lack of prosecution, in fact, might just be a sign of a lack of evidence.

I raise this because some similar arguments are now being made for changing state law in Montana, especially regarding Election Day registration.

What's the problem here? Well, the big problem is that a lot of the people on the right have come to believe their own bullshit. That's a dangerous place to be.