Voter fraud is a highly polarized issue, with Republicans asserting frequent abuses and Democrats contending that the problem has been greatly exaggerated to promote voter identification laws that could inhibit the turnout by poor voters.

The New Priority

The fraud rallying cry became a clamor in the Florida recount after the 2000 presidential election. Conservative watchdog groups, already concerned that the so-called Motor Voter Law in 1993 had so eased voter registration that it threatened the integrity of the election system, said thousands of fraudulent votes had been cast.

Similar accusations of compromised elections were voiced by Republican lawmakers elsewhere.

The call to arms reverberated in the Justice Department, where John Ashcroft, a former Missouri senator, was just starting as attorney general.

Combating voter fraud, Mr. Ashcroft announced, would be high on his agenda. But in taking up the fight, he promised that he would also be vigilant in attacking discriminatory practices that made it harder for minorities to vote.

“American voters should neither be disenfranchised nor defrauded,” he said at a news conference in March 2001.

Enlisted to help lead the effort was Hans A. von Spakovsky, a lawyer and Republican volunteer in the Florida recount. As a Republican election official in Atlanta, Mr. Spakovsky had pushed for stricter voter identification laws. Democrats say those laws disproportionately affect the poor because they often mandate government-issued photo IDs or driver’s licenses that require fees.

At the Justice Department, Mr. Spakovsky helped oversee the voting rights unit. In 2003, when the Texas Congressional redistricting spearheaded by the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, was sent to the Justice Department for approval, the career staff members unanimously said it discriminated against African-American and Latino voters.

Mr. Spakovsky overruled the staff, said Joseph Rich, a former lawyer in the office. Mr. Spakovsky did the same thing when they recommended the rejection of a voter identification law in Georgia considered harmful to black voters. Mr. Rich said. Federal courts later struck down the two laws.

Former lawyers in the office said Mr. Spakovsky’s decisions seemed to have a partisan flavor unlike those in previous Republican and Democratic administrations. Mr. Spakovsky declined to comment.

“I understand you can never sweep politics completely away,” said Mark A. Posner, who had worked in the civil and voting rights unit from 1980 until 2003. “But it was much more explicit, pronounced and consciously done in this administration.”

At the same time, the department encouraged United States attorneys to bring charges in voter fraud cases, not a priority in prior administrations. The prosecutors attended training seminars, were required to meet regularly with state or local officials to identify possible cases and were expected to follow up accusations aggressively.

The Republican National Committee and its state organizations supported the push, repeatedly calling for a crackdown. In what would become a pattern, Republican officials and lawmakers in a number of states, including Florida, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington, made accusations of widespread abuse, often involving thousands of votes.

In swing states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, party leaders conducted inquiries to find people who may have voted improperly and prodded officials to act on their findings.

But the party officials and lawmakers were often disappointed. The accusations led to relatively few cases, and a significant number resulted in acquittals.

The Path to Jail

One of those officials was Rick Graber, former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

“It is a system that invites fraud,” Mr. Graber told reporters in August 2005 outside the house of a Milwaukeean he said had voted twice. “It’s a system that needs to be fixed.”

Along with an effort to identify so-called double voters, the party had also performed a computer crosscheck of voting records from 2004 with a list of felons, turning up several hundred possible violators. The assertions of fraud were turned over to the United States attorney’s office for investigation.

Ms. Prude’s path to jail began after she attended a Democratic rally in Milwaukee featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton in late 2004. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and registered to vote. Soon after, she sent in an absentee ballot.

Four years earlier, though, Ms. Prude had been convicted of trying to cash a counterfeit county government check worth $1,254. She was placed on six years’ probation.

Ms. Prude said she believed that she was permitted to vote because she was not in jail or on parole, she testified in court. Told by her probation officer that she could not vote, she said she immediately called City Hall to rescind her vote, a step she was told was not necessary.

“I made a big mistake, like I said, and I truly apologize for it,” Ms. Prude said during her trial in 2005. That vote, though, resulted in a felony conviction and sent her to jail for violating probation.

Of the hundreds of people initially suspected of violations in Milwaukee, 14 — most black, poor, Democratic and first-time voters — ever faced federal charges. United States Attorney Steven M. Biskupic would say only that there was insufficient evidence to bring other cases.

No residents of the house where Mr. Graber made his assertion were charged. Even the 14 proved frustrating for the Justice Department. It won five cases in court.

Here's how Bartlett described the conversation:

The President did that briefly, in a conversation he had with the Attorney General in October of 2006, in which, in a wide-ranging conversation on a lot of different issues, this briefly came up and the President said, I've been hearing about this election fraud matters from members of Congress, want to make sure you're on top of that, as well. There was no directive given, as far as telling him to fire anybody or anything like that.

Karl Rove had a similar conversation with Gonzales at about the same time. According to Kyle Sampson's testimony, Rove had complained to Gonzales "about U.S. attorneys in three jurisdictions, including New Mexico, and the substance of the complaint was that those U.S. attorneys weren't pursuing voter fraud cases aggressively enough."

Sampson did not say in his testimony what those other jurisdictions were, but it's apparent from Bartlett's comments and Justice Department documents what they must be.

Take, for instance, that printout from Rove's computer and the dossier on Wisconsin voter fraud that had been sent to Rove. How did they end up at the Justice Department (they were, remember, turned over as part of the Justice Department's document production)?

Well, it looks like Rove sent it over in an envelope addressed to Kyle Sampson. On the envelope is the handwritten date October 17, 2006.

That would seem to be a significant date. In his testimony, Sampson said that "sometime after October 17th but before November 7th," the department "went back" and looked at the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired and " asked the question: 'Is there anyone else who should be added?'"

Four names "came forward," according to Sampson. All of them were "close cases," because "they weren't specific policy conflicts or significant management challenges." One of them was Iglesias'. Sampson would not say during his testimony who the other three were, saying that he "was not a hundred percent sure" that he remembered.

But think about it. On October 17th, or thereabouts, Rove sent over a dossier on Biskupic, just as the department renewed their effort to find U.S. attorneys to fire. And Bush was complaining about Biskupic too.

Only there was something that saved Biskupic in the end. Iglesias, Sampson said, "remained on the list because nobody suggested that he come off."

So who suggested that Biskupic come off -- and why? Does it, for instance, have anything to do with his office's aggressive pursuit of Wisconsin's Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle?

<h3>Note: Biskupic's task force pursued a range of cases -- eighteen prosecutions total. The US Attorney's office prosecuted fourteen individuals.</h3> Four were indicted on charges of double voting, all of whom were either acquitted or had charges dismissed. Eight felons were indicted for unlawfully voting. Five of these individuals were eventually acquitted; the others were convicted and sentenced to punishments ranging from fines to probation. In addition, two former felons serving as poll workers were prosecuted for unlawfully voting. Both men received short jail sentences. The office of the District Attorney confirmed their successful prosecution of two individuals who falsified registration cards. Finally, the Journal Sentinel has reported that the District Attorney prosecuted two additional cases of illegal voting by felons.

Will Thomas contributed reporting to this piece.