DNC Counsel on Kirk’s Effort

Exactly:

A ‘voter integrity’ program? However he tries to dress it up, it sounds to me like Mark Kirk is talking about a coordinated campaign of voter suppression in some of Illinois’ best known African American neighborhoods. Indeed, although Republicans continually claim that such voter suppression campaigns are merely intended to prevent voter fraud, conclusive evidence of any systemic fraud in any recent American election has never been found. In fact, a five-year investigation by the Bush Administration into the matter found “virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.”

The simple truth is this: in Illinois’ neck and neck Senate race, Republicans are trying to pull out a victory not by bringing their supporters to the polls, but by preventing Democratic voters from casting their ballots. The climate may be a little cooler, but this could be Florida 2000 all over again.

The tactics that George Bush and Karl Rove used to steal that election were devastating – not just to our country’s future but also to every voter who cast their ballot in good faith that their voice would be heard, only to have that voice silenced. That a candidate for Senate would explicitly embrace Rove’s brand of dirty politics, and would go so far as to openly endorse and fund the largest voter suppression effort in Illinois in 15 years is shockingly despicable.

The goal of American elections is not to send the candidates who are most willing to play dirty to Washington – it is to enable the American people to exercise their political will by choosing their own leaders. When Republican candidates set out to prevent that from happening, it is not only a perversion of the democratic process, it is an explicit threat to our democracy.  We cannot allow Mark Kirk to profit by undermining our Democratic process. And the way to ensure that he does not is to guarantee that every vote is counted in Illinois.

Unfortunately, Mark Kirk’s attempt at voter suppression is not the first since Florida – there are documented accounts of Republican intimidation of African American voters in Virginia and Hispanic voters in New Mexico, and Republicans illegally removed thousands of qualified minority voters from registration rolls in Ohio, Colorado, and Montana, among other states – but we can help to thwart their attempts at voter suppression by bringing their shady tactics into the light of day.