As it turned out, the Ohio documents were not needed since the official tally put George W. Bush narrowly ahead and – despite allegations of Republican misconduct – Kerry chose not to demand a statewide recount.
In mid-2006, Griffin expressed an interest in becoming the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. The Justice Department then forced out Bud Cummins, the state's U...S. attorney, to make room for Griffin, who subsequently resigned amid the fired-prosecutors scandal.
Campaign 2008
Since the 2006 elections, the Republican strategy has focused more on passing legislation that forces voters to produce photo IDs or even proof of citizenship in order to cast a ballot.
Already, there are signs that legitimate voters are being turned away in the face of such laws. In the May 6 Indiana primary, 12 nuns in their 80s and 90s were prevented from voting because they lacked acceptable IDs.
Now, Missouri and about 19 other states are considering passing laws that require proof of citizenship to vote.
Missouri’s Secretary of State Carnahan estimates that the amendment could disenfranchise some 300,000 voters this November – because they would have trouble acquiring the required documentation – in order to weed out possibly a few dozen ineligible voters.
Cox, the amendment’s sponsor, argues that it would block illegal immigrants from voting and combat voter fraud. The proposed amendment reads:
“This proposed constitutional amendment authorizes the General Assembly to require any person seeking to vote in a public election to provide election officials a form of identification that may be prescribed by law, including a government-issued photo identification, in order to show that he or she is a United States citizen lawfully residing in this state.”
It adds that “the State of Missouri will provide at no cost at least one form of the identification required to vote to any otherwise qualified citizen without proper identification who desires to vote.”
While evidence of systemic voter fraud in the United States has not surfaced, many election integrity experts believe Republicans have used the suspicion of voter fraud as a ploy to suppress minorities and poor people from voting. Historically, those groups have tended to vote for Democratic candidates...
Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
