Posted on 01/13/2004 10:43:27 AM PST by Jeff Gannon
(Talon News) -- Sparks began to fly shortly after former Rep. John Thune (R-SD) announced his intention to challenge Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in November. But it wasn't the candidates or their staffers taking shots at each other.
Thune didn't even mention his opponent's name in a recent speech at a Sioux Falls restaurant. Daschle's statement on Thune's long-anticipated entry into the race was equally civil. Media figures, however, have tapped into the acrimony that has continued to simmer since the contentious 2002 election between Thune and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD).
South Dakota's largest newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, ran an editorial last week urging both sides to "keep the Senate election clean," but conceded in an article two days later that "analysts expect the nastiest ever South Dakota campaign". Ironically, the Argus Leader itself was chastised in 1990 by the New York Times and The Hill, a Washington, DC-based political newspaper, for its "vituperative" attacks against Republican incumbent Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD).
In the wake of last year's Jayson Blair scandal, the Argus Leader's chief political reporter, David Kranz, was forced to admit a relationship with Daschle that stretched back over 35 years to their time together at South Dakota State where they staged a mock Democrat convention in 1968.
The fireworks began last Tuesday on CNN's "Crossfire," where syndicated columnist and co-host Robert Novak claimed, "In 2002, Thune would have been elected to the state's other Senate seat, but the election was stolen by stuffing ballot boxes on Indian reservations. Now, Tom Daschle may have to pay for that theft."
His statement touched off denunciations and demands for an apology from members of both parties in South Dakota.
The Thune campaign quickly distanced itself from the controversy in a statement from manager Dick Wadhams that said, "Robert Novak's comments were inappropriate and certainly do not reflect John Thune's commitment to work hard for the Native American vote in 2004... The accusation overall is just off the mark."
Thune decided not to challenge his 524-vote loss in 2002, even though there was evidence of irregularities, in order to avoid the kind of controversy generated by Novak's remarks. Following his lead, Republican leaders and elected officials uniformly proclaimed the election results as legitimate.
Novak defended his remarks on CNN's "Capitol Gang," saying, "I don't have any bias against Native Americans or anybody else, but I do feel, based on my reporting, that there were very serious voting irregularities in 2002 in South Dakota -- I still believe that -- which the Republican Party, for political purposes, did not want to protest."
Frank LaMere, treasurer of the Four Directions political action committee, wrote, "Indian people did not stuff ballot boxes on Indian reservations and to even hint at that is insensitive and irresponsible at best and blatantly racist at worst."
His comments encapsulate the "third-rail" nature of Native American issues in South Dakota politics.
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Jandreau was quoted as calling the accusations "outrageous, offensive and factually wrong," but the facts surrounding the 2002 election cast doubt that it was free of fraud. In July 2003, Lyle Nichols entered into an agreement to plead guilty to felony possession of a forged instrument for the 252 voter registration cards he admitted were completed by his friends using names found in a telephone directory. The United Sioux Tribes hired him while he was on work release from Pennington County Jail and paid $3 per voter registration card.
The forgery trial of Rebecca Red Earth-Villeda begins on February 9. The Native American woman, also known as Maka Duta, was hired in 2002 by the state Democrat Party to register voters. She faces eight counts of forgery for fraudulent voter registration applications she submitted to county officials.
Originally, 277 of 381 interviewed by the state Division of Criminal Investigation said their signatures were forged on election documents, but Rebecca Red Earth-Villeda was charged with only 19 counts. That number was further reduced because several people changed their stories.
On October 28, 2002, Rebecca Red Earth-Villeda issued a press release in which she explained her registration and absentee ballot efforts were "our Native American attempt to get on a level political playing field with our anglo conquerors, usurpers of our ancestral lands and culture, and our oppressors."
Nichols and Red Earth-Villeda are the only ones to be prosecuted for voter fraud, but South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson believes there were others who have never been caught.
"There was information that was clearly fraudulent, but they could never track it back to where it came from. Somebody was trying to register illegally. That's pretty clear," Nelson told the Rapid City (SD) Journal last Thursday.
Nelson added, "There were voter registration cards submitted that I don't think can necessarily be tracked back to either of those two individuals, [Nichols and Red Earth-Villeda]."
Some of those incidents included 200 applications for absentee ballots received in the mail in a single day from the Buffalo County town of Ft. Thompson, population 1,375.
In Shannon County, 1,100 new voter registration cards were received in a county with only 10,000 people.
The Wall Street Journal reported an election clerk as saying, "Many were clearly signed by the same person... Some registrants actually live in neighboring Nebraska."
One woman, Denise Red Horse, submitted forms for absentee ballots in both Dewey and Ziebach Counties twenty days after she had been killed in a car accident. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Dewey County Auditor explained that the documents came in an envelope of 350 absentee ballot applications postmarked from the Sioux Falls office of the Democrat Party.
Two Republican women in Fall River County discovered that their names had been forged on registration cards that reregistered them at the other end of the state as Democrats.
On Election Day 2002, the Democrat Party employed an extensive voter-hauling operation conducted from inside numerous polling places. Prospective voters were given flyers during their ride to the polls stating "Don't be Intimidated" and claiming the "Republican Party does not want Native people to vote." There were reports that individuals were offered $10 upon their return from voting.
Polls were ordered to remain open for an extra hour in the heavily Democrat Todd County after a complaint from Democrat lawyers about the time zone. Every other county conducted a 12-hour voting period, except for Todd, which allowed voters to cast ballots for an unprecedented 13 hours.
More absentee ballot forgeries became evident when voters in Dewey and Moody Counties came to the polls and were told they had requested absentee ballots. A woman who voted on the Crow Creek Reservation received absentee ballots in the mail that showed she had been registered as a Democrat even though she is a Republican.
Daschle spokesman Dan Pfeiffer was recently quoted as saying, "The false allegations and efforts to intimidate voters on the reservations were a very dark moment in South Dakota politics."
Yet it was Republican poll watchers who complained of intimidation from Democrat operatives. An elderly poll watcher in Charles Mix County reported being harassed throughout the day by a Minneapolis lawyer brought in by Democrats. In Todd County, it was reported that a Democrat election official "harassed Republican voters, exclaiming that 'Republican' was a questionable voter registration."
As a result of the election problems, a new state law will require voters to produce photo identification at polling places. Nelson expressed optimism for the upcoming election when pointed out that the new federal Help America Vote Act put in place new procedures to verify the identities of newly registered voters.
"Every one is being checked against a number of data bases to make sure we've got real, live human beings registered to vote and they are not under felony convictions," Nelson said.
Other measures being considered include increased penalties for fraud, a ban on bounties for voter registration and absentee ballots, and a ban on out-of-state poll watchers.
Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved.
To his credit, the Libertarian candidate withdrew and endored Thune, but many of his supporters weren't smart enough to follow his head (he withdrew too late so he still appeared on the ballot).
You say that as if Libertarians were rational human beings rather than vindictive, dogmatic idealogues.
TS
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