How U.S. attorneys were used to spread voter-fraud fears

Long before it fired eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the Bush administration had politicized their jobs by making them push a favorite GOP talking point.

By Mark Follman, Alex Koppelman and Jonathan Vanian

Read more: George W. Bush, Politics, Department of Justice, News, John Ashcroft, New Mexico, Mark Follman, Alberto Gonzales, 2006 Elections, Alex Koppelman, U.S. Attorneys, Bud Cummins

March 21, 2007 | Under intense criticism for firing eight United States attorneys, the Bush administration has spent the past few weeks casting about for an explanation for the dismissals that involves performance rather than politics. On March 13, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett tried to come up with one. "Over the course of several years, we have received complaints about U.S. attorneys," he insisted, "particularly when it comes to election fraud cases." On Tuesday, President Bush pressed home this claim with a similar statement during his defense of embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "We did hear complaints and concerns about U.S. attorneys," said Bush. "Some complained about the lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases."

Bush and Bartlett were arguing that some of the fired attorneys had underperformed by failing to prosecute the raft of offenses that make up voter fraud -- things like vote buying, double voting, and voting by felons, illegal aliens and the deceased. And it is true that at least two of the prosecutors who were let go might not have pursued voter fraud cases to the satisfaction of their bosses at the Department of Justice. But under the Bush administration, pursuing voter fraud is not always about performance. It's often about politics.

A belief in rampant voter fraud in Democratic strongholds -- big cities, minority neighborhoods -- is widespread among Republicans, and claims of vote buying and the like have long been a mainstay of GOP rhetoric. The party has used these claims of voter fraud to help build public support for what it considers electoral reforms, like requiring voters to show photo ID -- reforms that also tend to suppress Democratic turnout on Election Day.

During the Bush administration, a rhetorical tool became public policy. The Republicans could not get a photo ID law through the Senate, but they were able to enlist the 93 United States attorneys in their crusade against voter fraud. In 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an initiative that required "all components of the [Justice] Department" to "place a high priority on the investigation and prosecution of election fraud."

Five years later, Ashcroft's initiative hasn't produced all that much in the way of convictions, at least relative to the overall Department of Justice caseload. Prosecutions for electoral fraud remain a minuscule part of the federal criminal docket. In 2002 alone, there were 80,424 criminal cases concluded nationwide in the 94 U.S. District Courts. By comparison, according to a DOJ document, between the fall of 2002 and the fall of 2005, there were only 95 defendants charged with federal election-fraud-related crimes in the whole country.

After all, election fraud on the federal level can be hard to prove, since proving it often requires that the fraud was committed with the intent of preventing a "fair and impartially conducted election." In New Mexico in 2004, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, one of the two fired U.S. attorneys who allegedly failed to pursue electoral fraud cases, took a pass on an especially dubious prosecution. A swing state that Gore won by 366 votes in 2000 and Kerry lost by fewer than 7,000, New Mexico is also the site of a long, bitter and ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over requiring voters to show photo ID. In 2004, state Republicans pressured Iglesias to file charges in the case of a 13-year-old boy who was illegally registered to vote. The boy had been registered without his or his parents' knowledge, and Iglesias declined to indict anyone. In an interview with Salon, Iglesias conceded that some local Republicans may have been especially disappointed to learn he would not be pursuing criminal charges for election fraud because they would have liked the extra political ammunition.

But sometimes pursuing an investigation can be just as effective as a conviction in providing that ammunition and creating an impression with the public that some sort of electoral reform is necessary. The battle between Democrats and Republicans over photo ID has been most contentious in so-called battleground states like New Mexico. In one such purple state, the GOP used repeated and very public accusations of fraud to ram a photo ID law through the state legislature. In Missouri, Republicans have been accusing Democrats of fraud since the 2000 election. During the Bush administration, three different U.S. attorneys have launched investigations into electoral fraud in Missouri, indicting nine people. Last year, prior to the midterm elections, the administration even dispatched a key voting fraud expert from Washington to assume the job of U.S. attorney in Missouri's Eastern District.

It all began in November of 2000, when then-Sen. John Ashcroft lost a close election to a dead man, Democrat Mel Carnahan. That election was a controversial one in Missouri -- polls remained open past the official closing time in St. Louis, a city dominated by African-American Democrats. This infuriated Republicans, especially Sen. Kit Bond, who delivered a podium-pounding denunciation of alleged voter fraud at the Missouri GOP's victory party on election night. Bond later spearheaded calls for an investigation, pushing Republican lawyers to put together a dossier of allegations that was then delivered to the outgoing, Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District.

When Bush appointee Raymond W. Gruender took over as U.S. attorney for the St. Louis-based Eastern District, a federal grand jury was hearing testimony about electoral fraud by Gruender's third day on the job. However, before long the grand jury apparently shifted its emphasis from the 2000 race to improprieties in yet another election, the March 2001 Democratic mayoral primary. Investigation of the 2000 election became the province of DOJ lawyers in Washington. Ultimately, neither Gruender nor his superiors in D.C. filed any charges, but after Gruender kicked the investigation of the mayoral primary back to St. Louis city officials, eight individuals were convicted in state court. Gruender was later named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.

Missouri Republicans used the multiple investigations, which together lasted more than a year, as evidence in a push for tougher election laws. By spring of 2002, they were proposing a law requiring that voters show photo ID. The state Legislature finally passed a Republican-sponsored photo ID law four years later, in May 2006. Helping the Republican cause was yet another major investigation of voter fraud by the state's other U.S. attorney, Todd P. Graves of Missouri's Western District, headquartered in Kansas City. In 2004 and 2005 he prosecuted and convicted four people for voting in both Missouri and neighboring Kansas.

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