DoJ targets NC "voter fraud"

Heard about this via email earlier this morning, and now i see that Josh has noted it, with the comment these are "trumped up claims."

He's been right all along about every aspect of the DoJ's U.S. Attorney scandal, and there's no reason to believe his assessment here is any less accurate.

Here's the nub of the Charlotte Observer report:

The dispute comes amid growing national attention to suspected voter fraud. The U.S. Justice Department has devoted more resources to that area -- a decision that voting advocates say could disproportionately affect minorities and the poor ahead of the 2008 election.

In a letter two months ago, the Justice Department said it was reviewing North Carolina's voter rolls and that it found irregularities in the number of people registered to vote. Similar reviews have led to lawsuits against election officials in seven other states, including Georgia.

The second broad challenge is from State Auditor Les Merritt, whose office began a review of the state's voter rolls in January.

His staff presented preliminary findings to the State Board of Elections last week. According to the board, Merritt's staff cited 24,821 invalid driver's license numbers in the voter registration database, 380 people who appear to have voted after their dates of death and others who were under age 18 when they voted.

Gary Bartlett, executive director of the elections board, responded Wednesday with a stinging 10-page letter declaring many of the findings invalid. He accused Merritt's office of misleading the elections board and of rejecting its help.

"(Y)our office appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding about the data that was reviewed or about the federal and State laws governing the voter registration process," Bartlett wrote in the letter, which he provided to lawmakers Thursday.

For example, Bartlett said, many of the people who appear to have voted after their dates of death voted absentee and then died prior to Election Day. At least some people under 18 who voted did so legally, Bartlett said, because state law allows 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election if they will be 18 the day of the general election.

Bartlett said the state's regular maintenance of voter rolls resulted in 725,499 names removed during a recent 19-month period. Most had been inactive, moved or died.

Merritt's office declined to provide the Observer with a copy of its findings Thursday, saying it is adjusting them based on Bartlett's objections.

"This is a typical process we do in refining our findings," said Merritt spokesman Chris Mears.

The report goes on to note that "the Justice Department cited no evidence of anyone voting illegally or of voter fraud."

So, then, why the big deal? Why the double barreled shotgun blast from Republican officials at the Democratic led NC Board of Elections this time?

The only possible explanation is that they're already trying to save North Carolina from tossing out the useless Republican Senator Liddy Dole, and putting its electoral votes in the Democratic column.

Seems to me we fought a coupleof hot wars and a very long cold war against governments that practiced precisely this kind of bullshit. Some of them called it democracy as well.