Court Cowardice Calls for Public Vigilance

Steve Hoffman, Beacon columnist, reminded us that even the simple act of counting can be a hyper-partisan action.  Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted found no instances of voter suppression in an election campaign when his office’s repeated changing of the rules, times, places and processes for voting confused even those who professionally follow politics. 

On the flip side, his office encouraged county election boards to forward cases to prosecutors where his office saw voter fraud, even though the League of Women Voters (among others) argued strenuously that both voters and poll workers were doing exactly what the law expected and required. 

His encouragement resulted in 270 cases of possible voter fraud being referred to prosecutors.  But out of 5.6 million votes cast, we have a rate of voter fraud well below .01 percent of voters…and as Hoffman points out none of the 270 are likely to be prosecuted, because they did nothing wrong, which leaves us with even less…zero…voter fraud.

Since the SCOTUS is unwilling to see the ongoing (and impactful) effort to suppress the vote (and the related effort to trump up fears about phony voter fraud arguments), this will become a conflict we all need to place high on our agenda for ongoing, data-driven, strict public scrutiny.