Howard Dean: Stop Playing Politics With Voting Rights

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today demanded an end to Republican efforts to play politics with voting rights after two recent New York Times reports outlined a persistent campaign by Bush Administration officials to undermine fundamental voting rights for countless Americans. Dean’s comments come as recent reports have highlighted a five-year political campaign by Bush Republicans in the Justice Department, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the White House to trump up charges of voter fraud in order to pursue restrictive voter ID laws that disproportionately disenfranchise minority, senior, student and disabled voters.

Today, the New York Times revealed that “five years after the Bush Administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.” [New York Times, 4/12/07] This follows yesterday’s report revealing that political appointees at the EAC downplayed evidence by election experts that found little evidence of voter fraud, but found real evidence of ongoing voter intimidation and suppression. The Times also noted that this issue played a "significant role" in the Bush administration's "firing of eight United States attorneys, several of whom, documents now indicate, were dismissed for being insufficiently aggressive in pursuing voter fraud cases." [New York Times, 4/11/07]

DNC Chairman Howard Dean today issued the following statement:

“The Bush Administration’s campaign to undermine and politicize essential federal voter protections while downplaying voter suppression tactics is one of the most chilling and cynical examples of the Bush Administration’s consistent use of our government to put partisan politics ahead of the American people. In our Democracy, every eligible voter deserves the right to cast his or her vote and have that vote counted. But for Republicans, nothing is more important than their narrow partisan interests.

“The list of tools that Republicans have used to enhance their electoral prospects at the expense of our right to vote reads like a shameful litany from past eras: restricting access to voter registration, improper attempts to purge voter lists, the use of voting machines that leave no verifiable audit trails, criminal phone jamming schemes, discriminatory voter ID laws, and inconsistently administered elections. Now, we see the very institutions of our government that are intended to protect the right to vote used by Republican political operatives to undermine that right. This brand of politics is undemocratic and un-American. The time has come for Republicans to stop playing politics with our fundamental right to vote.”