Reading Wayne Slater's article in yesterday's Dallas Morning News about Texas AG Greg Abbott and his, uhm, "efforts" to root out supposed voter fraud, one is left with the distinct impression that the whole thing was nothing more than yet another underhanded Republican attempt at voter suppression:
More than two years ago, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott pledged to root out what he called an epidemic of voter fraud in Texas.
He established a special unit in his office, tapped a $1.4 million federal crime-fighting grant and dispatched investigators.
Since then, Mr. Abbott has prosecuted 26 cases – all against Democrats, and almost all involving blacks or Hispanics, a review by The Dallas Morning News shows.
The cases usually have resulted in small fines and little or no jail time, and for all the extra attention, Mr. Abbott has not unraveled any large-scale schemes with the potential to swing elections.
Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.
They contrast the prosecutions with complaints that more than 100 ballots were mishandled in a 2005 Highland Park election, a case in which Mr. Abbott took no action.
You may remember Highland Park as the filthy rich, overwhelmingly white, and largely Republican enclave in the middle of North Dallas:
The state gay-marriage ban was on the ballot, and long lines were delaying the vote. To speed it up, an election judge had a volunteer distribute ballots to voters waiting in line and then collected them without checking identification, said a memo from Dallas prosecutors to the attorney general's office.
The ballots were put in a makeshift box to be counted later, according to documents accompanying complaints from some of the voters.
Then Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill's office forwarded the complaints to Mr. Abbott, but no action was taken.
But I digress. In most of the cases that he did pursue, Abbott was going after criminal charges for cases that involved little more than alleged technical violations of the law, where people were helping elderly or disabed voters mail their absentee ballots and forgot to put their own name and address for the return information on the envelope:
The cases his office pursued largely have involved mail-in ballots. In 18 of the 26 cases, the voters were eligible, votes were properly cast and no vote was changed – but the people who collected the ballots for mailing were prosecuted.
State law makes it a crime to carry someone else's filled-out ballot to the mailbox, unless the carrier puts his or her own name and address on the envelope.
Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a group that supports electing Democrats in Texas, said Mr. Abbott mostly has pursued "technical violations" against people who have assisted neighbors, often the elderly or disabled. He said the few ballots involved undercuts Mr. Abbott's claim that vote fraud is epidemic.
[...] Among those pursued were Willie Ray, a member of the Texarkana City Council, and her granddaughter, Jamillah Johnson. They helped homebound senior citizens get absentee ballots in the 2004 general election and mailed them after they'd been filled out.
Both women pleaded guilty to mishandling the mail-in ballots, said the attorney general's office. They were fined $200 and given probation.
In another case, three Hidalgo County women were indicted on charges they illegally assisted elderly voters and mishandled the mail-in ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayor's race. A judge dismissed the charges in March.
So after 2 years and $1.4 million, Abbott has virtually nothing to show for his efforts. Nada. Zilch. And yet, despite this, Abbott still thinks that we have an overwhelming need for a photo-ID requirement to vote in the state of Texas:
In a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting tougher voter-identification laws, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott cited the potential for fraud as a reason to require photo IDs.
He wrote that "serious allegations of voter fraud have persisted, especially in South Texas, for more than a century" and said he has "obtained numerous indictments, guilty pleas and convictions."
Yeah, Greg, you investigated those "serious allegations" and came up empty-handed, save for a few face-saving trophy convictions. For those of us who are familiar with the Republicans' efforts to suppress the minority vote here and elsewhere, the intent of this little fishing expedition was obvious, to create a climate of intimidation. Mission accomplished:
In Dallas County, Democratic neighborhood activist Dorothy Dean said the effort has had a chilling effect, especially among elderly black voters in her Oak Cliff precinct.
"You've got an age group that paid poll taxes, and so they take pride in voting and want to participate," said Ms. Dean, 74. "But you've got helpers as well as actual voters afraid to touch" a mail-in ballot, "so it diminishes the vote count."
By his actions in these cases, Greg Abbott has exposed himself as a corrupt political hack who sees his office as nothing more than a vehicle to promote his party's electoral interests. As Democrats, we should prepare ourselves for what this crook and his associates have up their sleeves for this election cycle, as both the presidential vote and the Senate race look to potentially be very competitive this November. Let's not forget what happened in previous years in Florida and Ohio, and let's work to make sure it doesn't happen here.
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