ProgressOhio

Call it Bushmandering.

Years ago, the first clever guy to play political games with voting was Elbridge Gerry who drew favorable Congressional Districts for his political party to control the U.S. House. The practice is now known as gerrymandering.

But old Elbridge would be jealous at the facts dribbling from emails this week between Bob Bennett’s Ohio Republican Party (ORP) and the Bush White House.

The emails were released this week because of the scandal involving the firing of federal prosecutors, and they detail exchanges between the ORP and the Bush White House that reveal a planned activity called “caging,” which is little more than a coordinated attempt to ensure that votes cast by minorities aren’t counted.

We also learned this week that a federal judge’s order to preserve Ohio’s 2004 presidential ballots was violated by 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties who report missing ballots.

For the most part, allegations that George W. Bush stole the election are nothing new. The allegations mostly came from Democrats, progressives or publications or people who traditionally support Democrats. That made it easy for Republicans and the mainstream media to claim that Democrats and progressives were sore losers who espoused odd conspiracy theories – Rush’s “loonie left” dismissiveness.

Still, the questions lingered, and the stories keep flowing -- drip after drip -- like bad plumbing.

Given the tone of the ORP and White House emails which make ’04 vote suppression seem like a Parker Brother’s board game, you can understand why the far-right doesn’t see a conspiracy. After all, to them it wasn’t criminal. It was a sport – complete with strategy, cunning, planning, and the email equivalent of high-fiving.

A recent investigation by the PBS show, NOW, produced documents and other evidence pointing to a 2004 Republican Party plan designed to keep Democrats from voting, allegedly by targeting people based on race and ethnicity with a special emphasis on Ohio and other battleground states.

Ohio appeared to be the most advanced. Emails reveal that the Ohio Republican Party sent letters to absentee voters with instructions not to forward the mail if it didn’t reach its destination on the first try. When the undelivered mail was returned to the Ohio Republican Party, party leaders used the mail as prime evidence of voter fraud.

This process of drawing out voters to challenge their voting is called “ballot caging” by election law experts.

"It was a partisan, discriminatory attempt to challenge voters of color," Eddie Hailes, a senior attorney for The Advancement Project, a civil rights group, told NOW.

But was the White House involved?

David Iglesias, one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, thinks so: "It's reprehensible. It's unethical, it's unlawful. It may very well be criminal," he said.

Iglesias said he was repeatedly urged by his superiors at the Justice Department to investigate allegations of false voter registrations. After his investigations came up short, Iglesias said Republican officials got angry and complained to White House hatchet man Karl Rove. Soon after Iglesias lost his job.

Here’s an excerpt from the PBS Q and A with Inglesias:

Iglesias: We looked at well over 100 cases ... Upon reviewing the evidence and looking at the FBI reports, and actually talking to the FBI agent in charge of this, I concluded, as did the public integrity section at main Justice [Department] and at the local FBI office, that we didn't have any prosecutable cases.

Question: Clearly, voter fraud is a crime. When do efforts to ferret out those few offenders cross the line into something more inappropriate where you are engaging in an effort to strike legitimate voters from the rolls?

Iglesias: Are you putting pressure on the U.S. Attorneys to try to file indictments immediately before an election? If so, that is inappropriate. In fact, there's a longstanding policy in the Justice Department to not do that. And it appears, in some districts, there was pressure put on us to engage in unlawful activities. And that is not what the Justice Department stands for.

Question: One press account described it as, "A misuse of power of the Department of Justice in the service of the Republican Party." Do you agree?

Iglesias: I think that handsomely covers the issue, yet.

NOW: You said the Justice Department made it clear that if the U.S. Attorneys believed there was voter fraud than you needed to investigate and prosecute it…. Was there any explanation ever given as to why there was this interest?

Iglesias: No, there was no explanation. I had assumed that was the historic practice of the Justice Department. But I subsequently learned that this administration has made it a priority.

Question: It wasn't only officials at the Department of Justice who were expressing an interest in pursuing such cases. You were getting requests from other individuals, correct?

Iglesias: That's correct. In fact, there was a Republican attorney, Pat Rogers, who was a prominent local attorney who tried to pressure me to come up with cases. He would send emails to my assistant, who I had tasked with running this election fraud taskforce ... And I had lunch with Mr. Rogers last fall and he expressed his concern about what he believed to be this systemic, ongoing election fraud. I did not know at the time that he belonged to an organization called the American Center for Voting Rights. He did not disclose to me that he was representing any other interest. And I've also found out that the Republican Party was very interested in stamping out what it believed to be instances of voter fraud.

If the American Center for Voting Rights rings a bell for Ohio political insiders that could be because the Republican who is running for Columbus Mayor, Bill Todd, served as the Center’s litigation counsel.

The Center is the same group that did things such as push for ID requirements, which critics insisted was unnecessary.

Todd is so fond of his affiliation with the voter-suppression group that he touts it on his campaign website.

PBS also unearthed a series of emails between the Bush political team and Ohio GOP officials on the topic of “Voter Reg Fraud strategy.’’ Using breathless tones, the Bushies made it clear they hoped the state party chairman would participate.

Chairman Bob Bennett didn’t disappoint.

During his October 2004 news conference, Bennett debuted his party’s ballot-caging strategy when he produced 35,427 pieces of mail the GOP sent that were returned as undeliverable. Ohio Republicans sent the mail at the urging of the Bushies.

If the post office couldn’t find these folks, Bennett told reporters, maybe they don’t exist. And if they don’t exist, there must be widespread voter fraud.

Surrounded by bins of mail stamped “addressee unknown” or “return to sender” Bennett announced that the Ohio GOP was challenging the right of 35,427 people to vote – a move that was legal but unprecedented. Many of those he questioned were minorities, low-income voters, residents of Cuyahoga County or others who history shows are inclined to vote Democratic.

As Bennett soon learned, there are many valid reasons why mail can’t be delivered.

A quick study of his “evidence’’ turned up people such as Surjo Banerjee, an Army sergeant in Iraq who was using his brother’s address because it’s difficult to consistently receive mail when traveling around the world.

All 2,319 challenges in Montgomery County, including the one against Banerjee, were withdrawn.

In Summit County, Catherine Herold’s registration came under suspicion when the longtime Democrat refused to accept a mailing from Republicans, shipping it back with the hope they’d have to pay the postage. She was forced to take a day off work to attend a Board of Elections hearing that restored her uncontested right to vote.

Confronted by Herold and other angry citizens, the Summit County Board of Elections dismissed all 969 challenges. County GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff later commented, “The state party made us look bad.”

Franklin County’s Raven Shaffer was tagged for possible fraud because he gets his mail at a post office box. Delivery trucks have hit his mailbox so often, he’s said, that it’s easier to just pick it up himself.

And an analysis by advocates for the homeless found hundreds of examples of mail returned because prospective voters used a shelter or other homeless program as their voter registration address, something they are legally permitted to do. Their figures included 33 people in Cuyahoga County who registered at sites that serve only homeless veterans.

Bennett insisted that his goal was a noble one: ensuring the integrity of Ohio’s election.

The PBS report suggests a more sinister motive.

In addition to the new information uncovered by PBS, Columbus attorney Cliff Arnebeck has revealed that many Ohio counties destroyed presidential ballots, despite a court order that the ballots be preserved.

But Ohio’s new Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced this week that 56 Ohio counties had incomplete ’04 ballots. Secretary Brunner blames her Republican predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, for not giving counties clear instructions and for not notifying them quickly enough about U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley's Sept. 7, 2006, order to preserve all ballots.

Arnebeck, who represents groups that sued Blackwell last year, says that at least in some cases, ballots were destroyed to cover up voting irregularities.

He wants Brunner and Attorney General Marc Dann to investigate the loss of the ballots as well as allegations of voting fraud that Arnebeck and others say changed the outcome of the election in Ohio and gave the presidency to Bush, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Obviously, George W. Bush’s second term is not in jeopardy of invalidation as he enters his waning last year and a half. But historical accuracy and an ability to create an honest, fair election outcome in 2008 are best served by knowing just what did happen in 2004.

Not to be outdone, this past week the ORP’s new crown prince, Kevin DeWine, signaled that Bob Bennett’s era of Bushmandering shall not go quietly.

After a Stark County Democratic Chair reportedly claimed that Secretary Brunner suggested boards of elections be staffed by attorneys because the GOP cheats, DeWine went apoplectic.

DeWine, a state representative serving as understudy for the ORP Chairmanship, fired off a public records request to Secretary Brunner in his role as right-wing mini-pit-bull feigning outrage over the suggestion the Grand Old Party was playing footsie with election laws.

Huh. Let’s see – in just this past week - evidence shows:

• The ORP attempted to game the election system by caging out thousands of minority Ohio voters.
• GOP former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell mysteriously failed to issue clear orders to preserve ’04 ballots that in effect allowed evidence to disappear -- despite a federal court order demanding that the evidence be kept.
• A former U.S. Attorney appointed by the Karl Rove machine said the GOP tried to manipulate federal election law for political purposes, and Ohio was at the heart of it all.

Well, Kevin golly gee, heaven forbid Ohio progressives might think the right wing conspired to cheat in 04 and possibly want a few legal eggheads on Ohio county boards of elections as watchdogs.

Now, here’s a thought for Kevin DeWine as he ascends his fading red velvet throne: How about voluntarily turning over any and all records between the White House, RNC and ORP from 2004 on election caging, or voter suppression, and starting your Chairmanship reign clean? Now that’s a record request that is historically newsworthy.

And as for Bob Bennett’s fading legacy – drip by drip it sure does seem like those “few bad apples” just seem to keep multiplying in his personal backyard.

Did they cheat? My guess – more drips to come.

View PBS NOW including Ohio emails, Iglesias Interview, ORP Cuyahoga Caging List