Election Fraud and the Justice Department

President Bush is now asking the Justice Department to do what the Ohio Republican Party could not get the Supreme Court to do--look into 200,000 new voter registrations that some have called fraudulent. Information on registration cards did not correspond with information in a database of voters and, as such, they look suspicious to some.

On its face, this appears to be reasonable. Except that we have three contextualizing factors:

1. George W. Bush's Justice Department has been the most notoriously partisan of any recent administration, and "voter fraud" was the entering wedge that U.S. attorneys were supposed to use to disenfranchise people who were predisposed to vote Democratic. In case anyone forgot, this brought down Attorney General Albert Gonzales and shamed the administration. It led James Bovard to call for Bush's impeachment.

2. It has been a long-time tactic of Republicans to set up as many roadblocks as possible to prevent registered Democrats from voting. The usual saying is that Democrats do a better job of registering voters and Republicans do a better job of getting those voters to the polls. Perhaps Democrats would be better about voting if they didn't find that their registrations had been "lost" or destroyed, as in Fulton County (my county of residence, by the way) where 70,000 new registrations were found in the trash.

3. We are eight days from an election. For Ohio Republicans to attempt to disenfranchise 200,000 new voters--and for the President to suggest an investigation at this point--smacks of a cynical last minute ploy to keep Democrats sitting next Tuesday. If nothing else, the President ought to maintain an air of impartiality in the execution of his official duties. But then again, this president has exhibited an unprincipled ignorance of our Constitution, when not treating it with outright contempt.