ace, here are some reasons why I cannot have a substantative discussion with you:
I believe that, while the actual scandal documented below is taking place, you are distracted by the non-issue of BS spin painting John Edwards as a phony elitist. Here are some reasons why I disagree strongly to your opinion:
Director of the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Major Cases Litigated by John Edwards:
http://news.findlaw.com/newsmakers/john.edwards.html
John Edwards: The People Party Candidate of 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-...-_b_45053.html
http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com...rds-story.html
<b>I posted, 30 hours ago, about the "real" scandal, ace:...the Phony BS
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...78&postcount=4
campaign to hijack the DOJ to manipulate the vote in future (and past) elections....it's pretty damning, but you would have to examine the documentation to see how obvious the criminal conspiracy is, and who the sources of it are:</b>
Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...d-report_x.htm
Report refutes fraud at poll sites
Updated 10/11/2006 12:32 PM ET
By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop.
USA TODAY obtained the report from the commission four months after it was delivered by two consultants hired to write it. The commission has not distributed it publicly.
NEW LAWS: Thousands of voters shut out | Read the preliminary report
At least 11 states have approved new rules for independent voter-registration drives or requirements that voters produce specific forms of photo ID at polling places. Several of those laws have been blocked in court, most recently in Arizona last week. The House of Representatives last month approved a photo-ID law, now pending in the Senate.
The bipartisan report by two consultants to the election commission casts doubt on the problem those laws are intended to address. "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling-place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, non-citizen voting and felon voters," the report says.
The report, prepared by Tova Wang, an elections expert at the Century Foundation think tank, and Job Serebrov, an Arkansas attorney, says most fraud occurs in the absentee ballot process, such as through coercion or forgery. Wang declined to comment on the report, and Serebrov could not be reached for comment.
Others who reviewed the report for the election commission differ on its findings. Jon Greenbaum of the liberal Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law says it was convincing. The committee wrote to the commission Friday seeking its release.
Conservatives dispute the research and conclusions. Thor Hearne, counsel to the American Center for Voting Rights, notes that the Justice Department has sued Missouri for having ineligible voters registered, while dead people have turned up on the registration rolls in Michigan. "It is just wrong to say that this isn't a problem," he says.
That's one reason the commission decided not to officially release the report. "There was a division of opinion here," Chairman Paul DeGregorio says. "We've seen places where fraud does occur."
The consultants found little evidence of that. Barry Weinberg, former deputy chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division, reviewed their work. "Fraud at the polling place is generally difficult to pull off," he says. "It takes a lot of planning and a lot of coordination."
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Quote:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...3259.php&cid=0
<h3>.....Little more than a name to serve as a fig leaf to Republican operatives, ACVR was created, Hasen writes, to "give 'think tank' academic cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem in elections."</h3>
That effort to give claims of voter fraud legitimacy explains a lot about what's been happening in the Justice Department. It explains why the administration pressured U.S. attorneys to pursue voter fraud cases and fired the ones who didn't deliver. And it explains why political appointees ruled the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division with such an iron grip.
Here's the apparent scheme from A to Z: ACVR (a think tank with a respectable name) would seize on instances of prosecuted voter fraud by U.S. attorneys (a respected group) to push for voter ID laws. And then once Republicans in the state legislatures passed the laws, the political appointees that ran the Civil Rights Division (a once revered institution) would make sure that the career staff in the voting rights section didn't get in the way. Opponents of the laws would never know what hit them.
There was, as should be expected, some crossover among these groups. A number of political appointees in the Civil Rights Division were sent out to be U.S. attorneys (e.g. Kansas City's Brad Schlozman, among others). And there's at least one case of a political appointee in the Civil Rights Division moving on to work for the American Center for Voting Rights.
Jason Torchinsky, in fact, has held a variety of key positions since graduating law school in 2001. In addition to working at the White House counsel's office under Alberto Gonzales, Torchinsky was Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04 and Counsel to the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Committee, according to an online bio. At the Justice Department, he had a short stint in the U.S. attorney's office in Milwaukee as a Special Assistant USA (he did not handle any voting related cases, according to filings) and was a junior political appointee in the Civil Rights Division. When he left the Division, he held the title of Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General.
Once out of the division, Torchinsky went to work for ACVR (it's worth noting that Torchinsky most likely worked together with ACVR head Mark "Thor" Hearne on Bush-Cheney '04, where Hearne was national election counsel).
Unsurprisingly, Torchinsky makes an appearance in the bipartisan draft fraud report ordered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission -- the report that was suppressed last year after it concluded that there was very little actual voter fraud. Torchinsky was the lone holdout:
"Jason Torchinsky from the American Center for Voting Rights is the only interviewee who believes that polling place fraud is widespread and among the most significant problems in the system."
But as Slate notes, ACVR and its website abruptly disappeared in March of this year (ACVR was little more than a name and a P.O. Box anyway). Don't worry about Torchinsky, though -- he currently works for the Republican law firm Holtzman Vogel as a senior associate..........
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From the unreleased EAC report
blocked by partisan Bush appointees because it's "reality based" findings conflicted with the fake Mark "Thor" Hearnes (2004 Counsel to Bush-Cheney campaign) and Jason Torchinsky (Asst. Counsel to 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and fromer DOJ staffer...), now disappeared <b>ACVR</b>....phony research of election "fraud" that justified the partisan transformation of the DOJ into a reverse of what a voting rights enforcement agency would actually be....in the "real" world):
Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/pdf/200...on-report.pdf?
Page 4:
"American Center for Voting Rights uniquely alleges it is focused on Republicans"
Interviews
The consultants jointly selected experts from the public and private sectors for interviews.
The consultants' analysis of their discussion with these members of the legal, election
official, advocacy, and academci communtities follows.
Page 5:
....Jason Torchinsky from the American Center for Voting Rights is the only interviewee who believes that polling place fraud is widespread and among the most significant problems in the system....
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