The Show Me State
THE SHOW ME STATE....In the 2006 election, ground zero for voter fraud claims by Republicans was the state of Missouri. Greg Gordon reports on how that turned out:
Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved.This may not be news to you if you've been following the Brad Schlozman subplot of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, but even if you have, Gordon does a good job of wrapping up the whole story in a single place and putting a bow on it. Worth reading.The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout. That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.