It is indeed about our vote.

The politicized mess that is the U.S. Justice Department stinks more and more each day as new revelations are made. The McLatchey News Service is reporting that a senior Justice Department official intervened on behalf of Republicans involved “vote-caging” in Ohio’s 2004 elections. I have talked about vote-caging on the site before (see here and here) but, in a nutshell, here’s how the game worked in Ohio. Republicans would send Democratic voters mail that was undeliverable (in Florida, this was done by stamping the mail “Do Not Forward” and was sent to many people who, at the time, were away at school or on active duty in Iraq). Then, when the mail was not answered, Republicans could use this to challenge the person’s right to vote.

This tactic was to be carried out against 23,000 voters, an overwhelming majority of them black.

Acting on behalf of his fellow Republican party loyalists, Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta sent a letter to Judge Susan Dlott, who was in the process of deciding on the legality of the Republican’s tactics, to influence her to allow this to happen. In is letter, Acosta stated that stopping the Republicans mass-mailing campaign would “undermine” state and federal elections laws if they could not challenge voters. In other words, they used the nearly-mythical entity of Democratic voter fraud to justify disenfranchising black voters.

In the end, even with the interference of the Justice Department work in collusion with then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, they were denied the right to use caging to challenge a voter’s rights.

Karl Rove, at one time, would always talk of creating a “permanent Republican majority”. Now, we see, in part, how he intended to do it — at the expense of black voters.

Popularity: 21% [?]