White House Demands Vigorous Prosecution of ELECTION fraud (changed from "voter fraud")

Voter Fraud happens, but it is relatively rare because it only typically gains you one lousy vote, it's a felony and it also leaves evidence. (e.g., dead voters, double voting, illegal registrations). When the US Attorney scandal broke, it was clear that Republicans and the White House were pushing for frivolous voter fraud charges to be made by US Attorneys, mostly against Democrats, and that study after study shows "voter fraud" is rare to nonexistent. See March 2007 study at http://tinyurl.com/2o4cqx

On the other hand, ELECTION FRAUD is the proper name when insiders (typically) get involved, it is a lot more interesting since they have the capability, often, to deliver the desired result: THE ELECTION RESULT. Individual voters can't do that. Insiders and voting machine vendors can, especially with computers in the mix that allow unprecedented speed and scope in terms of the size of changes any one person with access can make.

The first counts announced on election night for both optical scan systems and touch screen systems feature trade secret software and therefore completely secret counts (even elections officials don't know the counts or have access to the internal workings of the software) . WIth both of these types of electronic voting, the magic numbers are required to be taken on faith (or else the legitimacy of the entire election would have to be rejected).

Being forced to trust unverified secret "magic numbers" ought to be a form of Election Fraud all by itself -- it's not showing your work. I used to get in trouble for not showing work in high school math class, and election math is only 1 plus 1 equals 2. With such a simple process and no creative accounting allowed, why is it such a big secret?

With electronic optical scan or touchscreen elections, any election insider could easily sell the election. Luckily, controlling all or part of the the world's greatest country is of so little attraction that nobody would be tempted to cheat on computers where the cheating leaves essentially no evidence, right?

Ok, but despite the previously mentioned rarity and futility of VOTER fraud, and the danger and likelihood of ELECTION fraud, everyone knows that causing US Prosecutors to chase after voter fraud ghosts (mostly Democratic) is wasting taxpayer money and corrupt.

So, the rhetoric is now changing and the Bush Administration and others are referring to ELECTION FRAUD and instead of the term VOTER FRAUD. The Missouri Star gives some good examples of this, note how Dems and the press still use the correct term "voter fraud" but Rove and Bush use "election fraud" which really only refers to the stealing of an entire election:

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WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud.

Bush has said he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases," and administration e-mails have shown that Rove and other White House officials were involved in the dismissals and in selecting a Rove aide to replace one of the U.S. attorneys. Nonetheless, Bush has refused to permit congressional investigators to question Rove and others under oath.

{...}Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations "smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies." http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/16963344.htm
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You heard it here first: Bush complains and repeats complaints about the lack of vigorous prosecution of ELECTION FRAUD cases! I couldn't agree more. Given that the control of the world's sole superpower and richest country are at stake in presidential elections, and given the secrecy of the electronic counts, there is every reason in the world to be suspicious the day before the election. The day AFTER the November 2006 election we knew that the exit poll discrepancies, but primarily in battleground states, were large enough to say that Kerry won Ohio and Florida and the popular vote by over 6 million votes. Such a discrepancy should cause an investigation of BOTH the secret vote counts as well as the exit polls. But in fact NEITHER were investigated.

This leaves a great deal to be desired in the area of defending Democracy. And so, this is the maiden blog entry on www.DefendingDemocracy/blogspot.com

The voter fraud pressure is the US Attorney scandal, but the lack of vigorous election fraud investigation is a REAL ISSUE too. Bush's reckless reframing of this issue results in the Bush Administration calling for their own elections to be investigated, which they should be.

In fact, following up on several very recent convictions for felonies for rigging the presidential recount in Ohio in 2004, an Ohio criminal prosecutor is looking deeper. See this breaking story at http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2506

Let's not forget, Bush wants to vigorously prosecute "election fraud"! We'll take him his word, since it is a statement very much against his interest. And besides, we all have the obligation and the privilege of defending democracy, so the least we can do is defend fair, open, honest and completely transparency election vote counting.

---Paul Lehto, Attorney at Law
lehtolawyer@gmail.com This post may be blogged, emailed, and forwarded intact with all attribution preserved.

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