Rove's obsession with "election fraud"
Paul Kiel writes on TPMmuckraker: We already know that Karl Rove passed along complaints to Alberto Gonzales about certain U.S. attorneys' performance on voter fraud prosecutions. And in the case of New Mexico's David Iglesias, that complaint likely contributed to his firing.
But it's clear this is something of an obsession to Rove.
One year ago, April 7, 2006, he gave a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, in which he covered a number of topics of interest to his audience (i.e. tort reform), but one topic seemed to hold the audience's attention in particular: voter fraud. To quote an audience member: "The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud."
Rove had clearly spent a lot of time on it -- rattling off statistics and referring to problem counties in far-flung states with familiarity. He also showed no shyness at over-hyping the issue: "We are, in some parts of the country, I'm afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where they guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses." -- TPMmuckraker April 10, 2007 06:32 PM