Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, has been hired by the RNC for opposition research.  According to TPM,
his role will be to dig into Barack Obama's past for damaging information to use against him in the general election (Griffin is credited with finding material to "swiftboat" John Kerry).

This may very well be true, but there are no doubt many operatives doing the same type of digging.  Another possibility is that Griffin is being brought on to do whet he did in 2004: shepherd the RNC's vote suppression works.  Combined with GOP plans to appoint former RNC lawyer Caroline Hunter to the Federal Elections Commission, and I think we are witnessing the birth of another GOP vote suppression scheme for 2008.

Wow!!!

You had better dig out your birth certificate if you live in red state America.  The GOP is so desperate they are going to force people to prove they are American citizens.  The scary Brown people are taking over!  (as I roll my eyes!!)

As has been covered extensively at TPM muckraker and noted by Adam B on the front page here today, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has been disabled by the Bush Administration's efforts to confirm notorious vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC.

Democrats rightly continue to block approval of von Spakovsky.  However, in another shameless effort to install Republican Partisans in influential positions in our elections bureaucracy, the Bush Administration has nominated for the FEC a lawyer intimately acquainted with how to suppress voters:

Caroline Hunter

Cross-posted at Facing South

As reported yesterday in the Raleigh News & Observer, African-American households are receiving anonymous robo-calls with misleading information about voting. Facing South has now learned that those calls are very similar to tactics recently used in Virginia and Ohio, suggesting they may be linked to a national voter deception strategy.

With a final vote of 223-23 the motion to find Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten in contempt for failing to honor congressional subpoena's over the politicization of the Justice Department - has passed.

Providing for the adoption of the resolution (H. Res. 979) recommending that the House of Representatives find Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, Chief of Staff, White House, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with subpoenas duly issued by the Committee on the Judiciary and for the adoption of the resolution (H. Res. 980) authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas

And it's about damn time too.

(Cross posted from BoydaBloc)

(First off, we have to thank or good friend Ally for helping spread the word...this is a tremendously important story, and we need to get the message out!)

Outside of the hilarious burn rate we see in Jim Ryun's fundraising report (he's spent 75% of the money he raised in 2007), we're horrified to see in it three unique expenditures for "caging."

Caging, as you remember from posts here and on Blue Tide Rising, and on other blogs nationwide, is a practice by which registered mail is sent to a poor person, a college student, or someone serving in the armed services, at the address provided by them on their voter registration card in hopes that that letter comes back undeliverable.

Freudian Projection, from orthodox psychology:  The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. The would-be adulterer accuses his wife of infidelity.  An individual who possesses malicious characteristics, but who is unwilling to perceive himself as a protagonist, convinces himself that his opponent feels and would act the same way.

A news story from Russia put a scare into me yesterday, and motivated me to write.

Good on the ever amazing House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) for stepping up for voters again today.

Chairman Conyers Introduces Bill to Fight Voter Caging

   – Provides that the right to register to vote or vote shall not be denied by election officials if the denial is based on voter caging and other questionable challenges not corroborated by independent evidence.

   – Prohibits persons other than election officials from challenging a voter’s eligibility based on voter caging and other questionable challenges.

   – Requires that any voter challenge by persons other than election officials be based on personal, first-hand knowledge.

   – Designates voter-caging and other questionable challenges intended to disqualify eligible voters as felonies, crimes eligible for fines up to $250,000, five years imprisonment, or both.

I searched the site and scrolled through the recent diary list and didn't see this story anywhere, but let me know if it's already been diaried and I'll delete it.

From The Tennessean

Thieves broke in to the Davidson County Election Commission offices over the Christmas holiday and made off with computers containing the names and identifying information of every voter in Nashville.

More...

The Chair of the Kansas GOP, Kris Kobach, sent out an end-of-the-year email to update members on all of the Kansas GOP's accomplishments during 2007.  From that e-mail:

Fellow Republicans:

            2007 has been a busy year for the Kansas Republican Party. We have taken the last 11 months to rebuild our party operations, make technology updates, build our fundraising database, and identify voters.  We have also put operations in place to make the Party a more effective organization to support candidates, and better able to provide rapid campaign response in every county in the state.

Sounds like they have been busy.  Just what are some of the things that Kris Kobach and the Kansas GOP have been able to accomplish?  A few snippets:

We have instituted a wholesale technological change at Party headquarters. We have updated everything, from our website to our email system. Additionally, we are getting ready to launch the official Republican Party blog—to further help spread the positive actions of all of Republican elected officials.

Heh.  I guess us bloggers and Netroots activists aren't so crazy after all.  Even the Kansas GOP is trying to get in on the action - albeit belatedly.

We have revamped the party platform process to better represent the views of all Republicans across Kansas. Share your thoughts with us at

Translation:  Half of our members walked out in 2006 due to the wingnut takeover of our party and we'd like to have you back.  Please tell us how to get your money you back.

Our voter identification system is up and running giving us the capability to effectively mobilize voters and turn them out to vote on Election Day.  To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!

Whoa....hold up.  Did the Chair of the Kansas GOP not only just admit that they have been actively caging voters, but actually have the gall to brag about it in an email to supporters?  Either Kris Kobach, GOP Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, doesn't know what caging means, or he is brashly talking about illegal voter suppression.  What is voter caging?

Vote caging is a voter suppression tactic. The term is derived from a direct mail term. In the direct mail industry, when a third party runs a direct mailing campaign on behalf of a client organization, one of the activities undertaken is to compile all of the responses, handle contributions and to deposit received funds into the client's account, and also update the database of names and addresses that were mailed to with the responses or corrected addresses obtained. Since some of the activities were controlled carefully (donations and deposits) and conducted in a manner similar to the activities within a "teller's cage," the process is called "caging" and the end result of the data entry updates and address corrections is called a "caging list." This led to the term "voter caging" for voter registration analysis and challenges conducted via mass mailings.

Caging, as Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) "helpfully pointed out, 'is a term of art in mailhouses' – it refers to the place where letters go when they have no address, all batched up in a separate room." [1]

As House Committee on the Judiciary chair John Conyers (D-MI) added, caging "in the context of elections 'is not an issue of the mail at all.' Voter caging, in the context of elections, means blocking voters out – choosing whole lists of voters whose vote will be challenged, chosen by whom and the criteria for challenge enunciated by whom, under this [the Bush] administration, still not fully explained." [2]

And Kris Kobach is openly admitting to violating a consent decree against such practices.  From an Oct 2004 Washington Post article:

The Republican challenges in Ohio, Wisconsin and other battleground states prompted civil rights and labor unions to sue in U.S. District Court in Newark, saying the GOP is violating a consent decree, issued in the 1980s by Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise and still in effect, that prevents the Republicans from starting "ballot security" programs to prevent voter fraud that target minorities.

According to that article, during the 2004 election, 35,000 voters from "urban and minority areas" were challenged in Cincinnati alone.  Crooks and Liars points to this article from September of this year which details current Republican caging efforts leading up to the 2008 elections:

Over the last three years, the Republican-controlled state legislatures in Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have passed laws requiring every voter to produce a photo identification card — measures that civil rights groups contend were aimed at suppressing minority voting.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider a constitutional challenge to Indiana's ID law on grounds that it unfairly affects poor and elderly voters. Gubernatorial vetoes or court rulings have nullified legislation in the other four states. A federal judge in Georgia, however, recently upheld a new photo ID law that imposes fewer obstacles to obtaining one.

In Ohio, which swung the 2004 election to Bush, new Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a phone interview that an election law passed last year and signed by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft effectively ``institutionalized'' vote caging.

The law requires that the state's 88 county election boards send non-forwardable, pre-election notices to all 7.8 million registered Ohio voters at least 60 days before the election. Undelivered letters are public record, she said, meaning that effectively, ``now the counties are paying for'' the data needed to compile challenge lists.

In addition, Brunner said, the law toughened voter ID requirements and ``took away rights of some voters to be heard about whether or not their registration was valid.''

In the past, Ohio voters were entitled to an official notice and a hearing before an election board could declare them ineligible, but the new law says that the board can make that decision without notice. A disqualified voter who shows up at the polls must demonstrate that he's fixed any eligibility problem or opt for filing a provisional ballot that may not count.

If these tactics are now being aggressively used by Kris Kobach and the Kansas GOP, you can bet they will be trying to use them in all 50 states come next November.

Let's hope that Kris Kobach will be explaining that email to a Grand Jury in the near future.  Let's also hope that the Democrats will be diligently working to fight these illegal tactics......before November 2008.  

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

From the technological glitches to voter intimidation reports to hyped charges of "voter fraud," American voters are well aware of problems in our system of casting and counting ballots. However, a range of these problems are often confused and conflated with "voter fraud" in media stories, trumped-up accusations, and, most insidiously, in voter suppression attempts. The truth of "voter fraud" is much simpler than many people would have us believe. This proves to be an inconvenient reality for those individuals engaged in systematic attempts to disenfranchise specific voting populations, much like the efforts that have been laid bare at the Department of Justice over the past eight months.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Confirmation hearings for President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, brought promises by the nominee to "block political meddling at the Justice Department,"and the expectation by senators  that the Justice Department will regain public confidence, which was shaken by he U.S. attorney scandal. Questions  from senators on both sides of the aisle stressed the need for the Justice Department to be independent of partisan political interests of the President. Of particular interest to voting rights advocates is finding Mukasey's approach to the enforcement of voting rights laws in the wake of revelations about the DOJ’s use of US Attorneys and the Voting Section to pursue partisan voter suppression tactics.  

This week, Project Vote's new report, "Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters" was featured in McClatchy Newspapers and AlterNet reports. Download the report here.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Two controversial news items this week potentially impact the course of election law before the 2008 election. First, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide upon the constitutionality of voter ID laws, one of the country's most hotly debated issues with a deeply partisan divide. Second, the names of Federal Election Commission nominees have been sent to the full Senate this week, including a key player in  promoting the so-called "voter fraud epidemic," Hans von Spakovsky - and civil rights groups are not happy.

"As the high-stakes ground war escalates heading into next year's elections, Republicans have led the charge for an array of revisions to state voting rights laws, especially in key battleground states. Republican political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have endorsed some of these measures," Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspaperswrote today.

I recently attended a meeting held by some of Harris County’s precinct officials and election judges, most of whom are extremely hard working and deeply committed volunteers.  A subset of this group has formed a committee to investigate voter suppression and integrity concerns in Harris County (Houston area).   They toil away relentlessly in a tireless attempt to guarantee equal and fair access to the county’s elections in this Tom Delay gerrymandered state.  This is no small feat given the GOP is in charge of about everything here.  The challenges the volunteers face are significant and difficult.  Fortunately for voting Democrats in Harris County, we have such committed and patriotic defenders of both our state and national Constitutional rights.  We had better hope and pray they never give up because as it stands now, our democracy here is hanging on by mere shreds.

There is a diary on the rec list title Why In The Hell Isn't Anyone Reading These Diaries??!! (and thanks to uniongal for the hat tip) that ask the question why isn't caging more of an issue here at DKos, or for that matter in Democratic party. The comments range from not alot people are complaining so why should I? to this is very important issue. One commentor, however, gave some valid reasons for why it didn't register high for them, but I wanted to attempt to provide a different perspective based on the commentor's reasons.

Two stories this weekend presented different faces on the unwavering - and perhaps criminal - zeal of the Bush White House to acquire and maintain power.  On Friday, PBS Now reported how a massive Republican "vote caging" scheme targeted minority (read Democratic) voters in key 2004 battleground states.  And today, the Washington Post revealed that Bush HHS appointee William R. Steiger blocked the release of Surgeon General Richard Carmona's 2006 global health report for purely political reasons.  Suppressing votes and suppressing scientific truth will no doubt be among the sorry legacies of George W. Bush.

Yesterday's TPM Muckraker carried a post and discussion of the May 2007 edition of the Justice Department Guide to prosecuting voting fraud.

Several Senators questioned the Guide's emphasis on prosecuting small cases of fraudulent registration - which a recent study found to be miniscule events. But no one mentioned the possibility that a lot of people in the DoJ could be facing prosecution for crimes that carry 10-year sentences. I am talking about an organized conspiracy to violate Section 241 of Title 18, the civil rights conspiracy statute.