YOUR MONEY AT WORK: TEXAS AG SPENDS $1.4 MILLION TO TARGET ELDERLY VOTERS
Topic: Government in My Backyard (GIMBY), Your Money at Work, The Forum29. May 2008 |
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You may have thought this stuff (rooting out non-existent voter fraud) went out of fashion when Karl Rove left the White House. Not in Rove’s adopted home state, apparently. Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News reports that Texas’s attorney general, Greg Abbott, a Republican, has devoted $1.4 million to rooting out voter fraud in the Lone Star State, and since 2006 he has "prosecuted 26 cases – all against Democrats, and almost all involving blacks or Hispanics." In each case, the defendant was accused of mailing legal ballots for legal voters who voted legally. The illegal part was taking the sealed ballots to the mailbox for these mostly elderly voters. According to Texas law, it’s illegal for private citizens to assist voters in this way. I don’t pay taxes in the State of Texas, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad for the people who do. Understanding Government doesn’t take partisan positions. But $1.4 million to prosecute people who dropped letters in the mailbox?
Ned Hodgman
understandinggov.org
Isn’t mailing a letter protected by federal statute, and, further, isn’t taking a letter to a mailbox to mail it inferentially covered by the same statute?
comment at 03. June 2008
I’m not sure what you mean by mailing a letter. The idea that people would be prosecuted for dropping envelopes from registered voters in a mailbox is a little insane in itself. But maybe you are referring to the idea that the whole act of mailing a letter is protected in some way?
comment at 03. June 2008