Jam the vote

Karl Rove is obsessed with clean elections these days.

In a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association in Washington last Friday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove thanked its members for their "work on clean elections," RAW STORY has found.

"I want to thank you for your work on clean elections," Rove said. "I know a lot of you spent time in the 2004 election, the 2002, election, the 2000 election in your communities or in strange counties in Florida, helping make it certain that we had the fair and legitimate outcome of the election."

Rove then suggested that some elections in America were similiar to third world dictatorships.

"We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today," Rove said. "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. I mean, it's a real problem, and I appreciate that all that you're doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the ballot -- the integrity of the ballot is protected, because it's important to our democracy."

Yes, ol' Karl knows all about "the integrity of the batllot."

WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

[...]

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the
Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

Rove is an arrogant piece of industrial waste floating in an oily pond next to the rendering factory. That said, it pays to pay attention to his arrogance because, in settings such as this -- a convention of Republican lawyers (and aren't you shocked to learn that not all "trial lawyers" are Democrats? Why, another GOP meme gone wrong.) -- he tees up his strategy demanding that his co-conspirators admire its beauty.

Rove sees that things aren't looking real hot for his Republican congressional, senate, and statehouse candidates this Fall. So he's preparing the Judicial Warriors of the Right to gird their loins for the assault on election results that will surely ensue when Republican incumbents start losing close ones in November.

I hope Democrats are thinking along similar lines, and not get rolled as they were in Florida in 2000.