Any time that you get Karl Rove saying that he has concerns about a something political, the more I want to do it. Rove should have sleepless nights and skin worn of his hands from the wringing that he must do about vote by mail. You see the mind of Karl Rove wants you to believe that voter fraud is the issue in elections (knowing full well that the volume of votes cast overall is the real issue for his brand of politics). Thanks to TPM we see how the Rove mind reacts to the vote by mail methods of the Northwest and Oregon in particular. Read further to find the "anti-Endorsement".
See the great story about this issue at TPM Muckraker
Apparently Rove gave a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association a year ago and the voter fraud issue figured prominently in his remarks and answers to questions. Little wonder that the Purgeof US Attoney's appears more to be about chasing Democratic "voter fraud" than anything else.
QUESTION: I've been reading some articles about different states, notably in the west, going to mail-in ballots and maybe even toying with the idea of online ballots. Are you concerned about this, in the sense of a mass potential, obviously, for voter fraud that this might have in the West?
ROVE: Yes. And I'm really worried about online voting, because we do not know all the ways that one can jimmy the system. All we know is that there are many ways to jimmy the system.
I'm also concerned about the increasing problems with mail-in ballots. Having last night cast my mail-in ballot for the April 11 run-off in Texas, in which there was one race left in Kerr County to settle -- but I am worried about it because the mail-in ballots, particularly in the Northwest, strike me as problematic.
I remember in 2000, that we had reports of people -- you know, the practice in Oregon is everybody gets their ballot mailed to them and then you fill it out.
And one of the practices is that people will go to political rallies and turn in their ballots. And we received reports in the 2000 election -- which, remember we lost Oregon by 5000 votes -- we got reports of people showing up at Republican rallies and passing around the holder to get your ballot, and then people not being able to recognize who those people were and not certain that all those ballots got turned in.
This was never reported in the media or by anyone that follows elections in Oregon. The idea here is to discredit a method that regularly delivers more turn out in vote that any other state. Rove's Reptillian Republican mind is to remove the franchise of voting from as many people as possible and especially on a targeted basis. This does not ahppen with vote by mail.
Rove Continues: On Election Day, I remember, in the city of Portland, Multnomah County -- I'm going to mispronounce the name -- but there were four of voting places in the city, for those of you who don't get the ballots, well, we had to put out 100 lawyers that day in Portland, because we had people showing up with library cards, voting at multiple places.
I mean, why was it that those young people showed up at all four places, showing their library card from one library in the Portland area? I mean, there's a problem with this.
And I know we need to make arrangements for those people who don't live in the community in which they are registered to vote or for people who are going to be away for Election Day or who are ill or for whom it's a real difficulty to get to the polls. But we need to have procedures in place that allow us to monitor it.
And in the city of Portland, we could not monitor. If somebody showed up at one of those four voting locations, we couldn't monitor whether they had already cast their mail-in ballot or not. And we lost the state by 5,000 votes.
I mean, come on. What kind of confidence can you have in that system? So yes, we've got to do more about it.
I won't even the address the lies and bullshit qualities of this statement. Comment from fellow Oregonians and especially from Multnomah County is solicited to bury Rove's worries on the heap of lies that it is.
Remember Rove cannot cage lists, target voting districts of high Democratic voting or minority populations with a mailed out and mailed return ballot. No more more Rove Rat Fucking with limited voting machines, intimdating armed men at polling places, silly tests and id's to scare of voters or misinformation at about where to go vote and what day. Roves's limited ability to interfere in a voting limits his power for mischief. These limits building participation.
Bottom line if Rove is opposed to it ... I am for it and you should be too.