The following piece appears in the current issue of the Washington Spectator. For more great stories, check out their site.
In 2005, Mark “Thor” Hearne, a
lawyer who had worked for the Bush-Cheney political campaign, founded
the American Center for Voting Rights.
The
center produced one 72-page report: “Vote Fraud, Intimidation, &
Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election,” which was submitted to a
House committee chaired by Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (who would later do
time for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal).
The
report included no documented account of any individual impersonating
another at a polling place. Yet it recommended that “[s]tates should
adopt legislation requiring government-issued photo ID at the polls and
for any voter seeking to vote by mail or by absentee ballot.” The center
soon closed its doors, or more precisely its private postal mail-drop,
and Hearne returned to private practice.
What Hearne was selling had a longer shelf life than his voting rights
center. Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and Heritage Foundation
Fellow Hans von Spakovsky began promoting photo-ID laws as an essential
line of defense against election fraud. Republican state party officers
began writing voter-ID planks into their platforms. And in 2009, the
American Legislative Council drafted the model legislation that
Republican legislators would use a template for their bills. (ALEC is a
Republican outfit that receives more than 98 percent of its funding from
corporate lobbyists.) READ MORE
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