Here's Thruthdig's Marie Coco's article:
Watergate Without the Break-In
Posted on May 16, 2007
By Marie Cocco
WASHINGTON—It is time to stop referring to the “fired U.S attorneys scandal” by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.
This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department’s law enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. It’s Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen.
The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of “voter fraud”—unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials and academics—were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter registration groups and create a taint around Democrats. The Justice Department’s own statistics show that only a handful of people were convicted of voting illegally since it began a “voter integrity” initiative in 2002. Its top election crimes official, a career prosecutor, has told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that the proportion of “legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud” hasn’t changed.
The “voter fraud” claims that White House political adviser Karl Rove promoted before last year’s congressional elections were in battleground states such as New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with closely contested races. He also has complained about alleged fraud in hotly competitive states such as Washington, Florida and Missouri. Curiously, states where elections often are decided by wide margins—New York, for instance—don’t turn up on his lists.
According to McClatchy Newspapers, Rove pressed Justice officials about voter fraud probes in October. Complaints from Republican activists wound up in the hands of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a key figure in the imbroglio. Five of the 12 U.S. attorneys who were canned or targeted for removal were singled out for alleged laxity in pursuing voter-fraud prosecutions, The Washington Post has reported.
The Justice Department’s power to prosecute was expected to be put to use in carrying out a partisan witch hunt. Yet even this picture is incomplete.
The shenanigans involving U.S. attorneys must be seen alongside the parallel campaign to turn the department’s voting-rights section into a rubber stamp for Republican efforts to enhance the voting power of their loyalists while diminishing that of Democrats.
Greg Palast wrote a new chapter for his book "Armed Madhouse" all about this issue. He's called it "The Scheme to Swipe 2008". What does Greg base this statement on? He's got the emails! Karl Rove's emails!!!
Palast: I know because I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. Who says this job ain’t fun?
Palast goes on to say it is not the voting machines that would lose the election.
A quote from his book:
"Beginning on January 1, 2006, the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) Law gave Secretaries of State the right--in fact, required them--to reject any registering voter whose exact name and "identity numbers" (driver's license, Social Security, Passport numbers) did not match up against a state "verification" list."
He goes on to say that it may sound arcane, but consider this...
"When HAVA gave state politicians this power to reject registration forms nationwide, the official hacks told one in three Americans to 'get lost'".
It was the plan, Rove's plan, to make this a one party system with the Republicans forever running this country.
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