The GOP, "Voter Fraud", and Vote Suppression

How can you decrease voter turnout amongst Democratic constituencies? Institute onerous voter ID laws that make it hard or impossible for poor and minorities to vote. (Not to mention highly mobile young people.)

How can you get some of those stupid voter ID laws passed to suppress voter turnout? By manufacturing bogus cases of "voter fraud" and directing millions of tax payer dollars to pursue these false claims. OK, that's not enough. But what the GOP has done over the last five years or so was to generate a hysteria about voter fraud. Guess what? Their claims of massive "voter fraud" have been shown to be without merit. Or, to put it bluntly, a bunch of bullpop. The GOP has been spending taxpayer dollars on pure, unadulterated bullplop. ("Bullflop" is a Simpsons reference that fits well into this story.)

Evidence is all over the place that puts to rest the false claim of concerted "voter fraud" efforts, as The New York Times clearly shows. (See Kevin for a little more.)

Unfortunately, this has a seemingly direct connection to the recent firing of certain US Attorneys. Two states close to my heart, New Mexico (my home state) and Washington (where I went to undergrad), had US Attorneys fired. Part of the reason for their termination seems to be that they were not interested in pushing bogus "voter fraud" cases that the GOP wanted to pursue for partisan gain. I discussed some of the GOP hackery in Washington state a while back. It's a small look at what the GOP does and does not consider "voter fraud".