From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Cynthia Tucker

The base of the Republican Party — a dwindling but still significant group — clings to a handful of pseudo-facts that don’t hold up to serious scrutiny but that still occupy a central place in GOP ideology. Those include the assertion that Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the United States, that affirmative action in lending led to the mortgage crisis and that voter fraud is a serious problem in modern elections.

In campaign seasons such as this, when victory may turn on a handful of votes, none of those claims is more important to Republican activists than overhyped allegations of voter fraud.

During the past decade, GOP-dominated state legislatures across the country have used assertions of mischief at the ballot box to push through harsh voter ID laws. Republican strategists have also pushed prosecutors to go after allegedly fraudulent voters.

Those GOP strategists know better: One study after another has shown that voter fraud is, at worst, extremely rare. And the sort of in-person fraud that would be prevented by stiff voter ID laws is virtually nonexistent. But Karl Rove and his minions also know this: Voter ID laws can be used to disenfranchise a few hundred or a few thousand voters who are more likely to vote Democratic, usually poor or elderly voters who don’t have driver’s licenses. In close races, shaving off 1 or 2 percentage points is all you need to claim victory.

A recently unearthed e-mail from a Republican strategist in New Mexico shows the unbridled cynicism that underlies claims about fraudulent voting. Patrick Rogers, former lawyer for the New Mexico Republican Party, was among the party hacks pushing for criminal investigations into alleged voter fraud. He clearly was hoping that the threat of legal sanctions would intimidate Democrats and aid Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who was in a tight race for re-election. According to a new report from the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general, Rogers wrote in September 2004:

Read more Voter ID