While the challenge process is prescribed by law, the use of broad, partisan challenges is controversial. For example, in the United States Presidential Election of 2004, the Republican Party employed this process to challenge the validity of tens of thousands of voter registrations in contested states like Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Hey don't those particular states sound familiar. What could it be.. hmm what - oh yeah, I know.
Fired U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden - Nevada.
Fired U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic - Wisconsin.
As noted by Josh Marshall, U.S. Attorney's were fired from seven out of Nine "Battleground States" as identified by Karl Rove's Office, which as it turns out happened to employ Tim Griffin following the 2004 Election.
And by the way - let me repeat - Caging is Illegal.
The Republican Party argued that the challenges were necessary to combat widespread voter fraud. The Democratic Party countered that the challenges were tantamount to voter suppression, and further argued that the Republican Party had targeted voter registrations on the basis of the race of the voter, in violation of federal law.
It's one thing to simply send out mail and request that a voter who have not cast a vote in the last two Presidential elections verify that their registration is still valid. This is one method of helping ensure for example that the old Chicago tactic of having dead people vote, can be avoided. It's another to specifically target Democrats without doing to same thing to Republicans and then subsequently removed them from the rolls so that their votes won't be counted.
Here's more from Greg Palast at Truthout on how this strategy was used against African-American Servicemen serving in Iraq.
Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, "Do not forward", to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."
The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.
Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.
How exactly was Tim Griffin involved in all this?
Well, it seems he only ran the entire operation.
Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
