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Chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committe John Conyers condemned "public attacks on potential voters." Photo by Matthew Bradley
ALBUQUERQUE — New Mexico is again in the spotlight for claims of voter fraud, but on Monday national Republicans backpedaled on accusations made last week by the New Mexico GOP.
In a conference call with reporters, a Republican National Committee spokesman retreated from the charges of voter fraud, choosing to defend the safer position of voter registration fraud, arguing “It’s a very, very difficult thing to prove.”
When NMI pressed RNC to produce details of voter fraud, a spokesman shifted focus back to registration problems, saying, “What we understand is this — and we think it’s enough — is that, once again, these names make it on the rolls.”
But Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Monday that she’s not worried that suspicious registration forms will turn into voter fraud — people casting ballots who are not meant to — because her quality control systems prevent fraudulent registration forms from making it onto the rolls.
I think that we have been able to flag and segregate probably every single one of the potentially fraudulent cards. I think that if, in fact, a false registration were to slip through the cracks, the actual act of voting falsely, if it happens at, is highly rare. I think that voters need to know that the system is pretty sophisticated and able to weed out a lot of this stuff.
On Thursday, the New Mexico Republicans claimed that there were 28 illegal votes in June’s primaries. “We have undeniable proof that a significant number of fraudulent votes were cast,” it announced in a press release. At a press conference, the Party showed 10 of what they said were illegal voter registrations, including five of which party representatives said were considered to be registered by ACORN. State Rep. Justin Fox-Young, R-Albuquerque, called ACORN a “quasi-criminal” organization.
But on Saturday, ACORN called its own press conference to introduce two of the people whose registrations had been called “phony” by the Republicans. Francine Gonzales said she was at the press conference “to prove that I do exist.”
The Republican Party is “trying to scare us new voters from voting and it’s not going to work,” said Brittany Rivera, another of the voters who allegedly voted illegally. “I’m going to vote every election and I’m not going anywhere. I’m here and I’m real.”
According to ACORN Southwest Regional Director Matthew Henderson, ACORN contacted four of the voters mentioned by the state Republicans using the information on the voter registration forms. The fifth had moved a month ago and no longer resided at the address on the voter registration. “These party hacks were shooting from the hip, making stuff up in order to scare the public about voter fraud and that we are demanding an apology from the New Mexico Republican Party,” Henderson said Saturday.
Henderson reiterated those sentiments on Monday.
“It was so obvious that these voters could have been verified,” Henderson said. “This is a cynical attempt to create hysteria around bogus claims of voter fraud when there clearly had been none. But it’s also to send a message that if you’re a new voter, young, Hispanic or a new citizen, one of the consequences of voting is to be attacked, publicly.”
Democrats and Republicans engaged in a volley of conference calls with reporters on Monday as each side tried to win the war of words on the issue (or non-issue) of voter fraud.
The Obama campaign’s general counsel, Robert Bauer, said that claims of voter fraud were “a coordinated attack by Republican surrogates from Washington all the way down to the county level in the states,” and connected it to the politically-motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys.
“New Mexico was ground zero for the U.S. Attorneys scandal and we see many of the same characters cited in the Attorney General’s report who are active now,” Bauer said. “Republican Attorney Pat Rogers, who was involved in the Iglesias firing, is continuing to whip up this story in New Mexico. We’re not worried that it will be successful…but you can expect the demagoguery to continue.”
He sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking him to have the special prosecuter investigate whether the McCain campaign is coordinating with the Bush administration on allegations of voter fraud.
The Democrats claim that the recent FBI probe of ACORN is further evidence of politization of the Department of Justice. Yesterday, John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey that cited what he called “public attacks on potential voters.”
In New Mexico last week, Republicans held a press conference where they announced the names of a number of allegedly fraudulent registered voters. …Publicly announcing the names of allegedly fraudulent voters, at least some of whom were duly qualified to vote, is a clear effort to intimidate voters. …Furthermore, it is deeply troubling that, just weeks after the Department’s own watchdogs documented the role that the specious agitating on alleged vote fraud matters by New Mexico Republicans played in the firing of United States Attorneys in 2006, in this controversy we see the same figures cropping up again and apparently obtaining a new FBI investigation just in time for the 2008 elections.
Conyers also referred to Rogers and his involvement in claims of voter fraud in 2006. But Rogers isn’t backing off his accusations. Claims of “voter suppression and racism are being used to avoid responsibility for the dishonest activities of ACORN,” Rogers told NMI on Monday. “We have evidence that demands immediate and thorough investigation,” Rogers said.
Fox-Young agreed. “We have provided clear evidence of highly suspicious voting activity in the 2008 primary and now it is incumbent on law enforcement, the DA, the AG and or the FBI to fully investigate these leads,” she told NMI on Monday.
The RNC insists “ACORN is certainly a group that is actively engaged in voter registration fraud. Their argument is that they’re writing bad checks and just because the bank isn’t cashing them there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”
The organization was referring to fired ACORN workers who were found to be making up names or taking names out of a phone book.
But Toulouse-Oliver doesn’t see it that way. “My sense of what happened is that you had people trying to earn a buck who were not inclined to do the hard work necessary to register actual voters and they chose to mix things up in order to get paid for a day,” she said Monday. “I really think that’s a far cry from actual people making out a registration with the intention to perpetrate a felony by voting fraudulently.”
The Obama camp on Monday said that Republicans “are using the media to promote these demands for investigation and manufactured claims of illegal voting,” arguing that their goals of voter intimidation and vote suppression are met when they make news with claims of vote fraud, never mind if those claims are discounted later.
But there are signs among the mainstream media of resistance to the voter fraud meme. Last Wednesday, it was widely reported that Flordia’s Republican Gov. Charlie Crist said he thought charges of voter fraud in his state were exaggerated. Following that, on Thursday, ABC News reported that Republicans’ accusations were “out of proportion to reality,” based on interviews with election experts and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page railed against voter fraud as a “principal Republican spin point,” On Saturday, the AP wondered if the ACORN controversy were “Voter fraud or mudslinging?” On Monday, the Christian Science Monitor asked “Are voter fraud fears overblown?” And this week the Los Angeles Times editorialized that McCain was guilty of “malicious misrepresentation” when he claimed in the final presidential debate that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
Matthew Reichbach contributed to this story.
