Rigged elections: The noose tightens around Rove

Or so, at least, implies Greg Palast. You'll recall that the Department of Justice bumped the US Attorney in Arkansas, Bud Cummins, who was looking into shennanigans that might have brought down Missouri's Republican Governor Blunt. For some odd reason, the DOJ replaced Cummins with Karl Rove's close buddy Tim Griffin. Palast:

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal...

Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Palast's scoop depends on the GerogeWBush.com domain name. Griffin sent a ton of incriminating emails to the wrong address: georgewbush.ORG. That domain was owned by an anti-Dubya leg-puller. Thus, Palast got hold of the inside dope.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

And now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reports that Tim Griffin is under investigation for election fraud. If he faces legal troubles, he may well sing -- and the subject of his song will probably be Karl Rove.

But Griffin is nothing if not a loyalist. He was the "legal advisor" for Bush's successful attempt to rig the 2000 Bush-v-Gore recount. And:

From March 2001 through June 2002 he was Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff. He then left to become Research Director and Deputy Communications Director for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.

This guy won't go easily.