The “Voting Fraud” Fraud

By Scott Horton

As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tells us, there has been a massive diversion of resources away from the core area of white-collar crime, and particularly from the prosecution of confidence artists who scam honest citizens of their money every year. And where are those resources going? Well, one answer is that there has indeed been a large-scale effort to go after “voting fraud.” And the result: it pretty well establishes that there is no large-scale voting fraud in the country.

The New York Times reports this morning that, following up on the pressure applied by Karl Rove, U.S. attorneys across the country aggressively went after whatever “voting fraud” cases they could find. The result? They lost a large part of the prosecutions. And when you get down to the details, the reasons are clear enough. The cases involve single persons casting single votes under circumstances in which honest mistakes are apparent:

The Wisconsin prosecutors lost every case on double voting. Cynthia C. Alicea, 25, was accused of multiple voting in 2004 because officials found two registration cards in her name. She and others were acquitted after explaining that they had filed a second card and voted just once after a clerk said they had filled out the first card incorrectly.

In other states, some of those charged blamed confusion for their actions. Registration forms almost always require a statement affirming citizenship.

Mr. Ali, 68, who had owned a jewelry store in Tallahassee, got into trouble after a clerk at the motor vehicles office had him complete a registration form that he quickly filled out in line, unaware that it was reserved just for United States citizens.

So let’s look, by way of contrast, at one of the stunning convictions that the Department achieved, involving a grandmother in Wisconsin:

Ms. Prude’s path to jail began after she attended a Democratic rally in Milwaukee featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton in late 2004. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and registered to vote. Soon after, she sent in an absentee ballot.

Four years earlier, though, Ms. Prude had been convicted of trying to cash a counterfeit county government check worth $1,254. She was placed on six years’ probation.

Ms. Prude said she believed that she was permitted to vote because she was not in jail or on parole, she testified in court. Told by her probation officer that she could not vote, she said she immediately called City Hall to rescind her vote, a step she was told was not necessary.

“I made a big mistake, like I said, and I truly apologize for it,” Ms. Prude said during her trial in 2005. That vote, though, resulted in a felony conviction and sent her to jail for violating probation.

It’s hard to imagine any professional prosecutor exercising independent discretion actually bringing any of these cases. That makes plain that prosecutorial discretion has been effectively passed to Karl Rove and his acolytes, many of whom are now directly infiltrating the Justice Department. This is the current quality of the Gonzales Justice Department – saving the public from grandmothers in Wisconsin who threaten to vote Democratic. Contrast that with the Justice Department’s action in a high profile voting fraud case involving Republic activist Ann Coulter in Florida: nothing.

Of course, all of this does point quite clearly to a very serious crime. It’s the politicization of the Department of Justice – the corrupt exploitation of the prosecutorial power for the assumed benefit of a political party. And that point comes through loud and clear:

Previously, charges were generally brought just against conspiracies to corrupt the election process, not against individual offenders, Craig Donsanto, head of the elections crimes branch, told a panel investigating voter fraud last year. For deterrence, Mr. Donsanto said, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales authorized prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against individuals.

Some of those cases have baffled federal judges.

“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.”

The Justice Department stand is backed by Republican Party and White House officials, including Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser. The White House has acknowledged that he relayed Republican complaints to President Bush and the Justice Department that some prosecutors were not attacking voter fraud vigorously. In speeches, Mr. Rove often mentions fraud accusations and warns of tainted elections.

The stories in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the New York Times offer us a very deep insight into the workings of the Gonzales Justice Department. What are the priorities? Not protecting the public against fraudsters who prey on retirees, stealing their pension money. No. One objective seems to trump just about everything. And that is assuring an unfair advantage at the polling place for the Republican Party by suppressing voters who match the profile this administration finds most threatening of all: a predisposition to vote for Democrats.