Rove Trying to Use Justice Department to Suppress Democratic Votes
The McClatchey Washington bureau reports that Karl Rove is delibertly trying to use tougher voter identification laws as a means of suppressing Democratic voters in a story by Greg Gordon and associates.
Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed tougher state voter identification laws and steered U.S. attorneys toward investigating voter fraud; policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.
Bush, Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the “growing problem” of Democratic election fraud since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division when it was rolling back long-standing voting rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.
Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off eleven states that he said could be pivotal in 2008. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired. Click here to read more.