WILL IT STILL BE HER SENATE?
ACTION DOES. ACT TODAY.
Posted on 10/29/2002 8:41:52 AM PST by xsysmgr
SIOUX FALLS, S.D — Election tactics can brand a pol for life. Democrats perpetuated a half century of Nixon-hating following his defeat of Helen Gahagan Douglas, the "Pink Lady," in the bruising 1952 California Senate race. And thanks to two decades of research by Robert Caro, LBJ will forever be remembered for stealing the 1948 Senate race in Texas. When LBJ's lawyer (and fixer) Ed Clark needed extra votes, Caro reports, he said it "meant going into the Mexican country: the Rio Grand River, the border…" Sen. Tim Johnson's (D., S.D.) campaign attempted a similar strategy on Indian reservations. And he, too, will be remembered for his bounty-hunting even if he wins.
In May, the head of the national Democratic party told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, "We're actively going after the Native American community," and Johnson's manager noted that the campaign was working hand-in-hand with the national group. In March, Johnson had told the Lakota Journal that he hoped to open a campaign office on each of South Dakota's nine reservations. By July, he had made good on his promise.
After a voting-fraud scandal broke, however, the Johnson campaign denied that it had any offices on the reservations. According to the Associated Press, "[w]hen a reporter called the Lower Brule Reservation, a woman said she was a field officer for Johnson's campaign and referred the reporter to Johnson's office. [Johnson Campaign Manager Steve] Hildebrand said the woman was mistaken and that she works for the Democratic Party." Two days later, however, Sen. Johnson himself told the Washington Times, "We do have campaign offices in Indian Country." Soon afterward he backpedaled, telling Newsweek's Howard Fineman, "That's the state party's business, not my campaign's."
At the heart of the problem is the Democrats' decision to adopt the unorthodox practice of paying $3-per-head bounties for voter-registration cards and absentee-ballot requests, making fraud practically inevitable. The more registration cards and absentee-ballot requests one fills out, the greater the size of one's check from the South Dakota Democratic party — and, naturally, the greater dimensions of the voter-fraud problem election officials must now untangle.
The Pennington County sheriff noted that one individual had probably gathered his bounties by copying names from the phonebook or from newspaper obituaries. At least six dead people were registered to vote. Further compounding the odds of fraud, the Democrats selected a man on work-release from jail to be the bounty-hunter. No one should now be surprised that such circumstances led to charges of forgery. Indeed, the only reason more counts weren't filed was that authorities decided to prosecute only the "worst five."
On Thursday, two women in Fall River County discovered that someone had forged Republican registration cards and reregistered them in counties at the other end of the state as Democrats — a move which could have deprived the people initially registered of their right to vote. Fortunately, one of the women worked for the state's attorney, who was alert to the fraud problem.
Or take the now-infamous Becky Red Earth Villeda Maka Duta (BREVMD, for short). BREVMD collected more than $13,000 in bounties before being terminated for the voting irregularities that had piled up on her watch. Again, the Democrats compounded the odds of fraud by choosing this bounty hunter, who had previously been accused of submitting an election petition that contained a forgery. According to the attorney general, at least 15 forged absentee-ballot requests can be traced to BREVMD and she could be linked to as many as 1,750 questionable absentee-ballot applications. She herself claims that the charges are part of a conspiracy, organized by Dan Quayle's nephew, to suppress Indian voting. The same conspiracy story (absent the Dan Quayle twist) has since become the Democrats' mantra.
On October 17, the Mitchell Daily Republic reported that the Buffalo County auditor had turned suspicious registration cards over to the sheriff. The auditor for Lyman County also noted that registration confirmation cards had been returned — showing that their intended recipients did not exist. In Pennington County, 230 voter-registration cards are being analyzed for fraud; in Shannon County, one in ten of the 1,000 new voter registrations are being scrutinized; and at least 50 voter registrations are under scrutiny in Roberts County. And the Rapid City Journal recently reported that Meade County was investigating 5 questionable Democratic voter registrations and Hughes County was investigating 4. In a state known for close races — Tom Daschle won his first election by 139 votes — every suspicious registration demands investigation.
Reports from Dewey and Ziebach Counties have caused particular concern. Perhaps most famously, one woman applied for absentee ballots in both counties — twenty days after she had been killed in a car wreck. It remains unclear who signed and dated the fraudulent ballot requests, but the problem applications arrived in large envelopes containing other applications from the South Dakota Democratic party in Sioux Falls. Only time can tell how many of the registrations and absentee-ballot requests in those envelopes turn out to be problematic. But when the Democratic party sends Dewey County 350 applications for absentee ballots — amounting to 10 percent of registered voters in the county — and indicates that all 350 applicants will be out of the county on Election Day, something seems fishy. A frustrated Dewey County told the Argus Leader: "There's no accountability."
The Democratic party insists that only a "single person and a handful of documents" are at issue. Given the widespread accounts of fraud, however, this explanation falls flat: The FBI and the attorney general do not generally launch a large-scale investigation for one person and a couple of documents. And yet the Democrats persist. The same day that the Rapid City Journal reported additional fraud investigations underway in Meade and Hughes Counties, the Democrats were declaring that there were "absolutely no credible accounts of widespread voter-registration or absentee-ballot fraud." The Democrats are refusing to let a state and federal investigation into voter fraud in 25 counties, involving as many as 1,750 registrations, to interfere with their spin. And, predictably, they are blaming Republicans for suppressing minority voting — even as they also reject Republican calls for federal election monitors to ensure a fair and open election.
Only when Democrats acknowledge the scale of the problem they created by paying voter bounties can the problem be properly addressed. And, win or lose, Sen. Johnson will likely never escape the taint of the bounty-hunting scandal.
— Jon K. Lauck is currently teaching government at Dakota State University, and practices law in Sioux Falls.
WILL IT STILL BE HER SENATE?
Stay well - Stay safe - stay armed - Yorktown
Why would a wholly owned propaganda susbsidary of the Democrat Party publicise the voter fraud they are commiting?
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