After most misguided attempt at voter suppression the Republicans have ever attempted, the backlash has forced the Republican Party’s director to resign:
HELENA – In an unusual move three weeks before the election and after a failed attempt to challenge voter registrations in some Democratic strongholds, the Montana Republican Party said Tuesday night it was changing executive directors.
Former state Rep. Larry Grinde of Lewistown was named the party’s executive director after Jake Eaton resigned "to pursue other interests," the news release said.That’s good for Montana Dems, but, as Jay Stevens points out, not the end of the story.
…Eaton’s obviously the fall guy here. There’s no way Eaton, a recent college grad, challenges the voting eligibility of 6,000 Montanans on his own. The methods too closely resemble voter suppression efforts elsewhere to be coincidence. Take, for example, the voter suppression effort in Michigan, which was smaller in scale ("only" 1,500 voters), but had a similar outcome. There, the federal judge ruled that the Michigan Secretary of State’s office — run by a Republican — violated federal law in its efforts to purge the rolls of voters because voter cards were returned as "undeliverable" or because voters applied for a driver’s license in another state. And, as if on cue, John McCain, using ACORN as a causus belli, is calling for an "immediate investigation" of "voter fraud" in battleground states…
These people are unmerciful in their attempts to disenfrachise voters, suggesting to me that this has been a standard procedure for longer than we’ve known. Remember this? It was a Conference to look into voter fraud two years ago. There wasn’t any evidence that this little campaign of Mr. Rove’s had any validity, but there was one group:
That group was a front formed by a Republican group specifically put together for this Conference led by Thor Hearne, a Rovian protege` and the Lawyer for Bush-04. Then there was the notorious U.S. Attorney Scandal in which the DoJ fired U.S. Attorneys who wouldn’t file their bogus voter fraud suits. And even now, one of the circuit talk t.v. pundits is one of their active operatives – Hans von Spakovsky from Georgia.
These people are crooks, trying to rig the vote – nothing more, nothing less. I hope the current vigilance is stepped up even further, and that they are brought to justice like in New Hampshire…
Palin talked about voting fraud in her speech today. The US Attorneys who were fired for not making voter fraud an issue in the last two election cycles should get together at a press conference and tell the country why they didn’t go after voter fraud because there wasn’t any and Republicans couldn’t handle the truth. NBC News and another network had a piece about Palin and other families flocking to her with their special needs children because of her youngest child having down syndrome. It would be a warm and cozy story except that it was reported a while back that Gov. Palin had cut special education cost from her budget. I think the reporter should have checked Palin’s record as far as helping Special Education in her administration to round out the story. Stories need to be reported with all the facts and not just the feel good part of the story.
It seems to me that it’s hard enough to get legitimate voters to the polls for campaigns to be out there creating these grand schemes for voter fraud. The only voter fraud I think I see is robbing Americans of the right to vote by making false claims against their applications.
We all have a right to vote and should demand that right be given!