October 24, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC – Today Project Vote sent a letter to Gregory Fouratt, U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, to request an investigation of intimidation and voter suppression by the New Mexico Republican Party.
In the letter attorney Donald Wine II, on behalf of Project Vote, requests “an immediate investigation into the attempts by the Republican Party of New Mexico to intimidate minority, first-time voters into not exercising their right to vote.”
Members of the NM Republican Party held a press conference on October 16 where they presented voter registration cards for ten voters they claimed cast ballots illegally in the New Mexico primaries, including five registered through ACORN and Project Vote’s joint voter registration drive. At the press conference, State Rep. Justine Fox-Young (R-Albuquerque) claimed: “We really have a bombshell…We are presenting undeniable proof that there was voter fraud in the June election.”
Since then, however, the GOP’s “undeniable proof” has not only been denied, it’s been disproven: ACORN has made contact with eight of the ten voters named, and discovered that they were all legitimate voters who were eligible to vote and had no problems with their registrations. The Bernillo County Clerk’s office has verified that the voters are legitimate.
Nine of the ten voters are Latino, all identify as Democratic, and most are 18-19 years old. One of them is a new citizen naturalized in 2007 who was voting for the first time.
“This is a cynical attempt to create hysteria around bogus claims of voter fraud when there clearly had been none,” says Matthew Henderson, ACORN’s southwest regional director. “But it’s also to send a message that if you’re a new voter, young, Hispanic or a new citizen, one of the consequences of voting is to be attacked, publicly.”
One of those new voters from Albuquerque is Francisco Martinez, 19, who registered to vote for the first time when volunteers came to his high school in May. Mr. Martinez said Monday that he felt like he was being bullied and intimidated out of his rights as an American. “This is my first time voting, and it’s important to me to be part of history,” Mr. Martinez said.
As reported in an Associated Press story on Thursday, two of the voters named have also reportedly been harassed by private investigators. Guadalupe Bojorquez of Albuquerque spoke out Thursday about a private investigator who came to her home to question her family about their right to vote. Bojorquez says “her 67-year-old mother was reduced to tears by a man who told her he was a private investigator with ties to the state Republican Party and questioned her right to vote.” In response to questions about the private investigators, State Republican Party spokeswoman Shira Rawlinson said the party has “numerous volunteers and attorneys” working on voter fraud issues.
Project Vote executive director Michael Slater told the Associated Press he believes New Mexico’s Republican Party might be part of a national effort to intimidate voters based on their ethnicity ahead of the Nov. 4 election. “I am beginning to believe that there is a real effort to create the impression that new registrants are going to be under surveillance and scrutiny before they cast a vote,” Slater told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I think it’s deliberate and it’s happening in other states.”
Both Robert Bauer, general counsel for the Obama presidential campaignand Rep. John Conyers(D-MI) have sent letters to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting an investigation into sham voter fraud claims by the GOP, and what Conyers calls “a clear attempt to intimidate voters” in New Mexico.
Conyers points out that Pat Rogers, a Republican attorney involved in the current accusations, was one of the individuals named the U.S. Attorneygate scandal, in which nine U.S. Attorneys—including New Mexico’s David Iglesias—were fired for refusing to bring trumped up voter fraud charges against ACORN and other organizations. “It is deeply troubling,” Rep. Conyers says in his letter, to “see the same figures cropping up again and apparently obtaining a new FBI investigation just in time for the 2008 elections.”
Yesterday the New Mexico Independent reported that Rogers refused to deny that the private investigators were working for the GOP.
“This form of intimidation and suppression is in direct violation of Section 12 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as Section 2” Project Vote’s letter states. “We feel that the right of all Americans to vote is of the utmost importance, and if there is credible evidence of voter intimidation and suppression of a particular class of voters it should be addressed and promptly persecuted.”