A panel of government experts prepared a detailed report examining instances of voter fraud in the U.S. and found, not surprisingly, that there is no systemic national problem. Bush administration officials didn’t care for those results — so they changed the report.
A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.
Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.
The revised version echoes complaints made by Republican politicians, who have long suggested that voter fraud is widespread and justifies the voter identification laws that have been passed in at least two dozen states.
This was hardly a subtle shift or a debate over nuances and semantics. Though the original report said that among experts “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,” the final version of the report released to the public concluded in its executive summary that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.” Political appointees altered the opposite point, as well — when researchers found “evidence of some continued outright intimidation and suppression” of voters by local officials, especially in some American Indian communities, that was edited out, too.
This is absurd. Job Serebrov, a Republican elections-law expert from Arkansas, helped produce the report and wasn’t pleased to see partisan higher-ups misconstrue reality. In an email to an Election Assistance Commission member, he said he produced a “correct, accurate and truthful report,” adding, “I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted.” Serebrov concluded that he and his colleague on the project were not willing “to conform results for political expediency.”
And that’s exactly why his Orwellian bosses had to edit reality — because every Bush administration document has to conform the results for political expediency.
There are multiple angles to this, but consider three. First, as Josh Marshall noted, this is an important part of the U.S. Attorney scandal.
You have to put all these pieces together to see the whole picture. The Republican party is heavily invested in hyping and inventing claims of voter fraud which they then use to stymie legitimate voter registration drives and institute ‘ballot integrity’ efforts which have the actual goal of limiting voting by racial minorities and under-income voters. The truth can hurt but that’s the unvarnished truth. And the backdrop to the US Attorney Purge was a concerted effort to enlist US Attorneys to put the power of the state criminal prosecution apparatus behind this partisan gambit.
Second, consider just how many times we’ve seen experts prepare an accurate, reliable government report for the public, only to have Bush’s political appointees intervene to overrule researchers and make the report reflect a more politically-convenient reality. Paul Kiel and I tag-teamed on putting together a lengthy list.
And third, this is one of those handful of controversies which is a scandal compounding another scandal. In this instance, the Republican machine wants to manufacture a non-existent voter-fraud crisis so that GOP partisans can stifle participation in the political process. That’s obviously scandalous enough, but these revelations show the same machine taking this one step further, lying to the public about the evidence so as to perpetuate a lie to the public about the illusory problem.
Some days, it’s hard to conceal my contempt for these people.