Another legal problem for Karl Rove?

It's not exactly Plamegate, but a Texas resident wants a local district attorney to investigate Rove's voting status.

Published October 7, 2005 7:37PM (EDT)

It's not quite an indictment in the Valerie Plame case, but Karl Rove may soon have some legal trouble back home in Texas, too. A resident of Comfort, Texas, is urging her local district attorney to follow up on a newspaper report that Rove has been voting in Texas even though he doesn't live there anymore.

As we noted last month, a recent story in the Washington Post discussed the tax status of Rove's home in Washington. The story said that Rove is registered to vote in Texas -- apparently based on his ownership of a couple of rental cottages there -- despite the fact that he lives in Washington and is building a home for himself in Florida. In the course of the story, Elizabeth Reyes, a lawyer in the Texas secretary of state's office, was quoted saying that a person could be criminally prosecuted for voting in a place he doesn't live. When the story came out, Rove put in a phone call to the Texas secretary of state, a man described as a longtime supporter of George W. Bush and a major GOP fundraiser. Shortly thereafter, Reyes was fired.

That might have been the end of things if it weren't for Comfort resident Frances Lovett, who has written a letter to the Kerr County district attorney asking for an investigation into whether Rove has been voting in Texas illegally. There's no word yet on what the district attorney will do, and the White House is insisting that Rove has acted within the dictates of the law -- at least this time.


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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