Right Wing Front Group Evaporates

Evanescence isn't just the name of a band. It also means to fade away, to evaporate like alcohol in the sun. The word is extremely useful in describing the American Center for Voting Rights, a right wing group dedicated to identifying widespread voter fraud and suppression -- that is, voter fraud and suppression by Democrats. Republican ballot box machanations were completely uninteresting to these guys.

I said 'were' because ACVR has evanesced into the atmosphere.

Richard L. Hasen, Slate:

...With no notice and little comment, ACVR -- the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws -- simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its Web domain name has suddenly expired, its reports are all gone (except where they have been preserved by its opponents), and its general counsel, Mark "Thor" Hearne, has cleansed his resume of affiliation with the group. Hearne won't speak to the press about ACVR's demise. No other group has taken up the "voter fraud" mantra.

This ties in well with my last post, which had the US Attorney's Office investigating voter fraud not only where it wasn't, but where only a lunatic would believe it would be.

Of course, this whole idea of widespread voter fraud by dems was only a smokescreen, a way to take attention away from the GOP's own ballot misdeeds. While Republicans were investigating voter fraud by dems, Ohio voters in blue precincts spent hours in the rain because there weren't enough voting machines. Voters in red districts had no real wait. This is voter suppression -- and only one example out of many.

Maybe they really believed the myth of blue state fraud. Maybe it was all projection -- the GOP knew they were pulling fast ones all over the nation, so they assumed that Democrats must be doing the same thing. A few GOPers probably bought it; after all, this is the party that's home to global warming denial and 'creation science.' There are plenty of chumps in the Republican party.

But the disappearance of ACVR shows that the issue wasn't taken seriously by those at the top. Because ACVR was those at the top -- a front group made up of Bush campaign staffers. A close look would probably show Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it. If we look at Mark 'Thor' Hearne's info from the ACVR website (archived at ZoomInfo), we see he's a Republican operative.

Prior to joining ACVR, Hearne served as National Election Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04 and Missouri counsel to Bush-Cheney '00. Hearne has also served as General Counsel to Missouri Governor Blunt, and was appointed by then Secretary of State Blunt as an advisor for the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Hearne testified before the U.S. House Administration Committee hearings in March 2005 into the conduct of the presidential election in Ohio. Hearne also testified before the Missouri commission established by Blunt to investigate the 2000 Missouri general election and voter fraud in the city of St. Louis. Hearne also served as General Counsel to the re-election campaigns of Congressman Kenny Hulshof and Congressman Todd Akin.

All those investigations, by the way? Nothin'. No widespread voter fraud, just a few guys voting twice or registering people they never met. Not nearly enough to throw even a local election, let alone a national one, and the voters were working on their own behalf. The Democratic party, accused of orchestrating fraud campaigns, came out looking even more like Boy Scouts than they did before.

Meanwhile, this big investigation into fraud blew up in their faces. That's what the Gonzales scandal turns out to be -- a series of decisions that were guaranteed to turn out badly. You can accuse dems of stealing elections, but when you actually investigate your propaganda as if it were factual, it's not going to go well for you.

Maybe Gonzales believed it. After all, he was firing people for not finding the nonexistent. If he did buy it, that's reason enough to be rid of him -- he's a freakin' gullible ass. The last person you want for the top law enforcement position in the nation is a chump who believes whatever BS he wants to believe. That's not exactly an empirical approach to truth finding.

So what does the evanescence of the American Center for Voting Rights mean? Maybe that the whole house of cards is coming down around the right's ears. You can only push propaganda for so long before you actually have to come up with some evidence. And, since it's just propaganda, that evidence will be nowhere to be found. In the end, it proves you can't get away with it -- not if the lies are disprovable, anyway.

In a democracy, where broad and untrue statements have to be backed up somehow, it's only a matter of time before the propaganda finally fails. If you don't act as if your lies were true, they're exposed as obvious lies -- you can't accuse the opposition of widespread crime and not do anything about the alleged crime. On the other hand, you can act as if your accusations are true, investigate them and, inevitably, prove them false.

The propagandist sets a trap for himself and, as Gonzo's finding out, it's a damned good one.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2000; 2004; 2006; Republican; American Center for Voting Rights: Alberto Gonzales and the White House are learning that the myth of Democratic voter fraud is bullshit propaganda that hurts them more than the dems