U.S. Attorney Firings: The "Voter Fraud" Angle

The Bush wing of the Republican Party, nationally and here in New Mexico and other states, has long been pumping out misinformation and distorted spin about alleged "voter fraud." As I'm sure you've noticed, one of the major complaints about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias by Domenici, Wilson and other New Mexico Repubs has been that he didn't bring a voter fraud case before the 2004 election, or since.

Various mouthpieces for the Party have repeatedly claimed that massive voter fraud -- by Democratic voters or those registering them -- exists in our state. They claim to have turned over tons of "evidence" of this to Iglesas in 2004. They've been pissed off ever since because he obviously didn't find anything that merited the timely indictments they wanted to use for political hay. Instead, Iglesias appointed a bipartisan task force to study the problem. Surprise -- they found nothing but minor infractions and certainly nothing that rose to the level of "massive voter fraud." Regardless, the Repubs have kept up the disinformation campaign to this day, and now the Department of Justice is using the issue as yet another excuse for firing Iglesias and other U.S. Attorneys.

Iglesias Addresses "Voter Fraud" Claims
As reported today in an Albuquerque Tribune article, here's Igelsias' response to the accusations that he had adequate evidence to issue indictments for voter fraud in New Mexico but refused to do so for some reason:

Iglesias also countered Justice Department claims that his inability to bring indictments in a voter fraud case was a primary reason for his dismissal. His office was one of two in the nation, he told KRQE, that formed a voter fraud task force. It investigated numerous complaints about voter fraud but found only one case that might have gone forward.

"But after looking at the evidence" and conferring with higher level department officials, he said, "we decided jointly" not to pursue prosecution "because we did not have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt."

Repubs Push "Voter Fraud" Strategy in New Mexico
NM Repub State Chair, Allen Weh, continued the harangue on this non-issue into New Mexico's 2005 legislative session, where Repub lobbyists and legislators pushed strict voter ID bills as their preferred solution to a problem they couldn't prove existed. It was a part of a longstanding, Rove-inspired effort to make it harder for people to vote in swing states -- especially people who might be expected to vote Democratic. You may recall the problems created by Republican operatives in Florida and Ohio during the last two presidential elections.

While Dem legislators in Santa Fe worked with nonpartisan election reform activists and election officials to craft bills to improve many aspects of the New Mexico election process, including a switch to a paper ballot system statewide, many Repubs fought them tooth and nail and kept up the "voter fraud" litany. Many Bush Repubs voted against every single bill to reform and improve New Mexico's election process EXCEPT for voter ID measures.

Digging back into our archives, here's a post from early May of 2005 about Allen Weh's fact-impaired attack on Dem Sen. Linda Lopez and the election reform measures she helped craft and pass. It includes her response to Weh's wacky accusations. 

Ironic, isn't it, that Bush and his cronies keep trying to project their own sins onto Democrats in states where elections have recently been close ones? They keep crying wolf with their voter fraud allegations but, so far, haven't managed to come up with a shred of valid evidence to prove their case -- even when they hand their "documentation" to a Republican U.S. Attorney and pressure him any which way they can to get him to play ball with them.

Rove's Pattern of Using Concocted Indictments for Political Gain
More discussion of the voter fraud angle emerged today in an excellent Salon piece by Sidney Blumenthal entitled, "All Roads Lead to Rove." You really should read it in its entirety because it does such a great job of laying out Rove's involvement in the recent political purges, as well as his history of using the FBI for political gains. Here are a few nuggets:

White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, acknowledged that the U.S. attorneys' dismissals were preceded by a conversation between President Bush and Gonzales last October in which Bush complained that some prosecutors were not pursuing voter fraud investigations. These were, in fact, cases that Rove thought were especially important to Republicans.

... Rove was the conduit for Republican political grievances about the U.S. attorneys. He was the fulcrum and the lever. He was the collector of information and the magnet of power. He was the originator, formulator and director. But, initially, according to the administration, like Gonzales, he supposedly knew nothing and did nothing.

... From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in 1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an investigation that led to Rove's client's win. In 1990, the Texas Democratic Party chairman issued a statement: "The recurring leaks of purported FBI investigations of Democratic candidates during election campaigns is highly questionable and repugnant."

... In 2002, the first midterm elections of the Bush presidency, Republicans systematically raised charges of voter fraud involving Native Americans in the hotly contended U.S. Senate race in South Dakota. Though the accusations were never proved and the GOP failed to depose the Democratic senator, Tim Johnson, the campaign served as a template.

By the election of 2004, Rove became a repository of charges of voter fraud across the country, from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to New Mexico, all in swing states. In the campaign, unproven voter fraud charges, always aimed at minority voters, became a leitmotif of Republican efforts.

... In 2006, Rove addressed the Republican Lawyers Association on the "growing problem," as he put it, of voter fraud. Every instance he cited was in a swing state. New Mexico was one of them.

Rove had heard complaints from the New Mexico Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, about David Iglesias, the state's U.S. attorney, for his supposed refusal to indict Democrats for voter fraud. Iglesias appeared to be a dream figure for local Republicans -- the model for the movie "A Few Good Men," Hispanic and evangelical. "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh asked Rove at a White House Christmas party. "He's gone," Rove replied. Indeed, Iglesias' firing was already a done deal. [emphasis mine]

The Charade Continues
Funny, if you read local rightwing blogs, they're still insisting that Iglesias was justifiably in hot water because he refused to prosecute "voter fraud" cases. I still haven't heard any logical reason he might refuse, other than the fact that evidence didn't exist to justify indictments. I guess once the locals start repeating Rove's talking points, they can't bring themselves to stop even if the case they're trying to make is clearly not valid or factual.

Another good source of information on this issue is Talking Point Memo's archive of "voter fraud" posts that dates back to the 2002 election cycle.

To read DFNM's past coverage of the attorney purge, visit our post archive on the story.