Purge: Attorneys and Democratic Voters

Slate gives us more information on the voting rights angle of the Great Attorney Purge. As I've been saying since the story broke and I read a Black Commentator piece about the Bush administration DOJ's Civil Rights Division, it appears that the major purpose of the purge was more insurance for Republican election successes.

[The American Center for Voting Rights] ACVR—the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws—simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its Web domain name has suddenly expired, its reports are all gone (except where they have been preserved by its opponents), and its general counsel, Mark "Thor" Hearne, has cleansed his résumé of affiliation with the group. Hearne won't speak to the press about ACVR's demise.

[...]

Presidential adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack, at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals, involved getting the DoJ and various U.S. attorneys in battleground states to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud. That prong has failed. After exhaustive effort, the Department of Justice discovered virtually no polling-place voter fraud, and its efforts to fire the U.S. attorneys in battleground states who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfired.

[...]

But the second prong of this attack may have proven more successful.

If you read the rest of the Slate article, it explains how the AVCR helped to push the ideas behind recent laws in many states that make it more difficult for minority citizens to vote.

Democracy overseas - our favorite export. But it just isn't what we want here.