Dear small Texas counties: Blame Abbott for your #VoterID bills

As I blogged yesterday, the state of Texas and its "sue Obama" attorney general, Greg Abbott, are now being sued BY Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice over both Texas new voter ID law and over redistricting.

Well, the local county clerk is complaining about the cost of running a legal notice for the details of the new voter ID law. It would cost, unless she can get the Secretary of State to let it be trimmed, about $250 to run bilingually.

Hey, I don't want to soak the county unnecessarily, but, if that's what the state says is needed, that's what's needed. (And, I don't know if it's a required posting, but I sure got that indication.)

Once again, Texas' money-waster in chief rears his head. And, with DOJ officially involved, the voter ID bill may at least face an injunction before this November's constitutional amendments election. If so, more money wasted.

Oh, and ain't it funny, or "funny," that the law does nothing to address vote fraud, actual as well as alleged, in voting by mail? Why? Because in the past, that's been the provenance of old, white, rural Republicans, in many cases, though that's probably changing.

(I'm waiting for the GOP to try to figure out how to "cage" voters by mail.)

Vote fraud, GOP style

Instead of "caging," "voter ID bills" and other nonsense, if the GOP was serious about vote fraud (and it's not), it would look at its own. Like Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White.

100-percent plus vote in IranElection would be fraud

Supposedly, more than 100 percent of those eligible to vote actually are recorded as voting in 50 Iranian cities, according to Iranian government TV.

Of course, Council of Guardians Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei said it was “only” 50 cities after claims of overvotes in as many as 170 cities.

That said, I know nothing about PressTV’s reliability, nor about the reliability of this particular story, as I started this post.

However, the New York Times confirms the story:

Serious new questions about the vote’s integrity were raised outside of Iran. Chatham House, a London-based research organization, released a study done with the University of St. Andrews challenging theIranian government’s results, based on a comparison with the 2005 elections as well as Iran’s own census data.

The study showed, for example, that in two provinces where Mr. Ahmadinejad won a week ago, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.

The study also showed that in a third of all provinces, the official results, if true, would have required that Mr. Ahmadinejad win not only all conservative voters and all former centrist voters and all new voters, but up to 44 percent of formerly reformist voters.

If we are talking about fraud, then, who started it? Khamenei alone? Khamenei with Ahmadinejad? Select members of the Council of Guardians?

And, since, per Wiki, PressTV is government-funded, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, press censorship inside Iran is obviously NOT total. Or, that close to it yet.

Abbott wastes Texas money for nonexistent ‘vote fraud’

Showing that he is a “GOP Oreo” (bipartisan on the outside, attack dog on the inside” Greg Abbott dug up a whole 26 “cases” of alleged vote fraud. I put “cases” in scare quotes because part of what Abbott labels as “cases” is old folks getting someone else to mail in a mail-in ballot for them, and that person then not identifying himself or herself on the envelope. (Texas law makes it a crime to carry someone else’s filled-out ballot to the mailbox, unless the carrier puts his or her own name and address on the envelope.)

In other words, 18 of the 26 cases Abbott prosecuted were technicalities.

Jerry Strickland, an Abbott spokesman, rejected that, saying the attorney general's office responds to complaints it receives. Under state law, the attorney general can initiate voter-fraud cases or respond to district attorneys seeking outside help in local political cases.

Bullshit. Who complained?

With just 18 of these non-cases, Mr. Strickland, it looks pretty obvious that Abbott deliberately went searching for penny-ante crap like this.

In another case, three Hidalgo County women were indicted on charges they illegally assisted elderly voters and mishandled the mail-in ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayor’s race. A judge dismissed the charges in March.

“They were not our investigations, and I didn't feel they would stand up before a jury,” said Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra.

Read the story for more examples of Greg Abbott looking for the mote in somebody else’s eye while walking around with a 2x4 in his own.

Meanwhile, in the real world, has Greg Abbott prosecuted, or even investigated, allegations of real vote fraud?

Hell, no:

Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.

They contrast the prosecutions with complaints that more than 100 ballots were mishandled in a 2005 Highland Park election, a case in which Mr. Abbott took no action.

First, Mr. “Open Government” needs to be open with us just how much money he wasted on this snipe hunt.

Second, he needs to stop being chickenshit about dodging interviews. Did he get marching orders from Rove?

Strickland said Abbott declined to be interviewed because of ongoing litigation and investigations.

Citing pending litigation, the office also declined to release letters, e-mails and other documents – other than a list of the cases prosecuted – sought by The News under the state's Public Information Act. So it’s unclear how many complaints the attorney general has received or investigated overall.

Is it something about being the state’s AG, if you’re a Republican, that has an especially corrupting influence?

Texas Observer has much more than the Snooze does, including having been on this a month earlier.

And, his own initial press release made clear he was targeting large, Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas:

In early 2006, he announced “a statewide initiative to work with local law enforcement and prosecutors to combat and prevent the persistent problem of voter fraud.” The project’s initial phase would target “44 key counties that either have a history of voter fraud or the population of which exceeds 100,000,” the release said.

And money for this came from the same state grant pool that funded the Tulia non-drug task force clusterfuck.

Oh, if you visit teh Snooze story, there is a sidebar about Abbott pushing again (natch) for voter ID laws.