Tea Party-Backed Anti-Voter Fraud Effort Touts Non-Partisanship At First National Conference

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The Voter ID laws that OSU Election Law Professor Dan Tokaji and others say are intended to DISENFRANCHISE voters, are a national movement. Here is information on a national organization that is partly behind the push for Voter IDs:

Tea Party-Backed Anti-Voter Fraud Effort Touts Non-Partisanship At First National Conference

Ryan J. Reilly | March 28, 2011, 3:25PM

HOUSTON, TEXAS -- When you talk about conservatives who rail against the supposed scourge of voter fraud and support voter identification laws that many expert say depress turnout among Democratic-leaning constituencies, there's a few big names that invariably come up.

There's John Fund, the Wall Street Journalcolumnist who wrote an entire book on the matter. There's Hans von Spakovsky, the former Bush Justice Department official who supported allowing a voter ID law in Georgia to be cleared by the feds over the objections of career staffers in the Civil Rights Division voting section, who believed it could dilute the minority vote. There's Andrew Breitbart, the conservative behind the series of "Big" websites, who helped promote the undercover videos by James O'Keefe that brought down the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).

All of them were at the first national conference of True the Vote this weekend, held at the swanky InterContinental Hotel in Houston, Texas. True the Vote, which was started by a Texas Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots, made it clear they intended to help groups around the country monitor the polls and make anti-voter fraud efforts a major part of the political landscape going into 2012.

A few consistent themes emerged from the speeches at the summit (which this reporter watched via a live stream from outside the room): that their efforts to preserve the integrity of elections weren't partisan, that they wanted everybody to be able to vote, and that suggestions that their efforts suppressed the vote of minorities were just unsubstantiated partisan attacks from the left. But the non-partisan theme was somewhat undercut by the partisan messages of the speakers and attacks on the Obama administration.

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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/tea_party-backed_anti-voter_fraud_effort_touts_non-partisanship_at_first_national_conference.php

True The Vote Documents Show Hidden Donations, Republican Ties
Ryan J. Reilly | October 29, 2010, 2:21PM

True the Vote, the Tea Party-backed anti-voter fraud group that has come under scrutiny because poll watchers trained by the organization have been accused of using intimidating tactics, received a large chunk of its money anonymously. It has also paid for or hosted events with several major players in the anti-voter fraud circuit.

The True the Vote organization, which is dedicated to preventing voter fraud and emerged from the King Street Patriots group, has received over $80,000 in donations, but they have not disclosed who their money is coming from. Instead, they classify their income as "general meeting donations," according to records examined by TPMMuckraker. When the Texas Democratic Party examined their records, they also turned up records of payments to EmergingCorruption, a website run by so-called ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Scott Swett, who was the webmaster for SwiftVets.com, has been paid $11,000 this year by the King Street Patriots for website services, the Lone Start Project points out. Swett is the founder of New American Media Online Services as well as a director of the conservative message-board site Free Republic.

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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/true_the_vote_documents_show_hidden_donations_republican_ties-vote_fraud_players.php

BACKGROUND:
Ohio's New Disenfranchisement Bill
Daniel P. Tokaji
Professor of Law; Associate Director, Election Law @ Moritz
Moritz College of Law
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/comments/index.php?ID=8199

VOTER IDENTIFICATION FACT SHEET
Before state legislatures start passing laws to disenfranchise voters, legislators, advocates and voters should be aware of the serious flaws in these proposals and the substantial data that undermine the claims of their proponents.
January 12, 2011
By Tova Andrea Wang

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http://www.demos.org/publication.cfm?currentpublicationID=523A7CE4-3FF4-6C82-555D3C52689565C4

Ohio's Voter ID Law and the 2012 Election

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If Ohio is decided by a close margin, the new voter ID law could give a Republican contender enough of an edge to win there. And, if the state's 20 electoral votes are decisive, the outcome in Ohio could determine the election.

The math here is pretty simple. According to state Democrats, an estimated 890,000 Ohioans do not have a government-issued photo ID. A disproportionate number of these people are African-Americans, Latinos, seniors, and students -- groups that tend to vote Democratic. In fact, nationwide about 25 percent of African Americans do not have a photo ID and nor do a fifth of voters between 18 and 22.

A 2007 study on voter ID requirements by three political scientists -- Matt Barreto, Stephen Nuño, and Gabriel Sanchez -- found that voting laws which require specific or multiple forms of identification are likely to "disenfranchise many Latino, Asian and African American citizens."

The study also found that voter ID laws have clear partisan effects:

We find compelling evidence that those less likely to have access to multiple forms of identification are disproportionately Democrat. . . . voters with more access to identification are more likely to vote Republican.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-callahan/ohios-voter-id-law-and-th_b_840399.html