The Scourge of "Identity Theft"

Posted by Bob Bauer, More Soft Money Hard Law at 5:02 PM on August 6, 2008.

On the front page of the Washington Post this morning is a story about a competitive Presidential campaign in Virginia, with the emphasis placed on the Democrats' energetic drive to register hundreds of thousands of new voters. Pages later, the lead editorial notes one response, depressingly predictable, from the Chair of the Republican Party, Mr. Frederick. He has suggested with no basis whatsoever that prospective voters, contacted through registration drives, may face "identity theft." The Post calls it, correctly, "a classic attempt to suppress votes."

It is certainly that. And the Post omits mention of another feature of Frederick's suppressive gambit. He also called for an "investigation," well understanding that this word would creep into the press on his remarks and filter out into the electorate. It would suit him to have Virginians believe, as registration occurs, that an "investigation" is under discussion. He would hope that this, too, would cause just enough doubt to give some Virginia citizens, somewhere in the state, reason to turn away from a registration appeal.

The response to Frederick, from state and local election officials, has been cold, and the editorial response, like the Post's, highly critical of what he is quite clearly trying to accomplish. Frederick may not care: he may figure that the lie will always have a head start on the truth, and that the press he got, unfavorable as it is, is far better than no press at all. This tactic has tested well enough in the past. He is giving it another try, discarding for the moment the claims about "vote fraud" and substituting in its place a suggestion of "identity theft."

The Post editorial slips up in only one respect, in finding that this "utterly baseless charge" is "surprising." It is not surprising at all: Mr. Frederick is working within an infamous tradition of suppressive practices. He has won for himself a short footnote in the ongoing chronicle of attacks on voting rights, but that, in this year, is about all he will have won. The name he has now made for himself is such that other party officials may, and certainly should, hesitate to borrow, steal or assume in any way his identity.

Tagged as: voter suppression, identity theft, registration

More Soft Money Hard Law is a blog written by Bob Bauer, a longtime Washington-based election attorney who represents Democrats and is the Obama campaign’s election lawyer.