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After five long years of searching and searching, the Bush Administration couldn't come up with anything near the amount of voter fraud that they've been claiming all along:

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

For instance:

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

"There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election," Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.

Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: “If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”

Furthermore, our government, in the form of the Election Assistance Commission, downplayed the findings of its own consultants who told them that voter fraud is nearly nonexistent across the nation!

So, not only did our government know that the issue of voter fraud was completely baseless, the Justice Department added extra emphasis on rooting out this non-existent fraud:

The Justice Department encouraged United States attorneys to bring charges in voter fraud cases, not a priority in prior administrations. The prosecutors attended training seminars, were required to meet regularly with state or local officials to identify possible cases and were expected to follow up accusations aggressively.

The Republican National Committee and its state organizations supported the push, repeatedly calling for a crackdown. In what would become a pattern, Republican officials and lawmakers in a number of states, including Florida, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington, made accusations of widespread abuse, often involving thousands of votes.

In swing states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, party leaders conducted inquiries to find people who may have voted improperly and prodded officials to act on their findings.

But the party officials and lawmakers were often disappointed. The accusations led to relatively few cases, and a significant number resulted in acquittals.

Instead of rooting out criminals, this Republican administration was politicizing US Attorney Generals in an effort to win elections. That's right - this government has made you and your family less safe in an effort to consolidate its power.

So, when you hear that "voter fraud" is a problem that needs to be addressed, you can just retire that canard and realize it's code for voter-rights suppression - targeted overwhelmingly at the poor, since most of those targeted would vote for a Democrat. Period. End of Story.

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