User:Kgrr/Sandbox/ACVR

The American Center for Voting Rights or ACVR was a non-profit organization that operated from March 2005 to May 2007 and pushed for laws to reduce voter intimidation and voter fraud, including photo ID for voters. Its lobbying arm was called the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund. Critics noted that it was "the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem," and called the Center a GOP front group whose support of a photo ID requirement was intended to suppress the minority vote.

ACVR was founded in March 2005 in Midlothian, Virginia as "a non-partisan 501(c)(3) legal and education organization committed to defending the rights of voters and working to increase public confidence in the fairness and outcome of elections" and declared that it did not "support or endorse any political party or candidate." Its lobbying arm, the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund was chartered as a 501(c)(4) non-stock corporation,

Leadership
ACVR's officers included:
 * Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, founder and general counsel. Served as national election counsel to George W. Bush's 2004 campaign and Missouri counsel to his 2000 campaign. Founded ACVR with encouragement from Karl Rove and the White House. Helped Missouri Senator Delbert Lee Scott draft Missouri's voter ID law, which was later ruled unconstitutional.
 * Robin DeJarnette, executive director. Founder and executive director of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC.
 * Jim Dyke, publicist. Communications director of the Republican National Committee (RNC) during the 2004 campaign.
 * Brian Lunde, chairman. A former Democratic National Committee executive director who ran Democrats for Bush in 2004.
 * Pat Rogers, board member. An attorney from New Mexico who had handled federal civil rights cases, he pushed Justice Department officials to fire U.S. attorney David Iglesias for inattention to voter fraud, a dismissal that fell under scrutiny as part of a larger, allegedly improper pattern of political influence.

Activities
ACVR endorsed the September 2005 recommendations of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which was co-chaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker. Among its publications on the topic of voter fraud were "Democrat operatives far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression in 2004 than Republicans," "Vote Fraud, Intimidation & Supression - The 2004 Presidential Election," and "Ohio Election Activities and Observations."

On March 22, 2005, a few days after the organization was formed, ACVR officials were called to testify by Republican members of Congress before a House Administration Committee hearing held by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) ranking member McDonald. (Ney served from 1995 until November 3, 2006, when he resigned. Ney's resignation followed his October 13, 2006 guilty plea to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal.) Hearne was called as a witness to discuss election reform issues and the implementation of the federal Help America Vote Act during the 2004 Presidential election. In testimony, he described himself as a "a longtime advocate of voter rights and an attorney experience in election law" and did not mention his service as a top GOP operative. U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri), who described the group as a non-partisan, voting rights advocacy group, testified and submitted the ACVR's report on 2004 election irregularities in Ohio, which documented, among other incidents, the registration of voters named "Mary Poppins", "Dick Tracy", and "Jive F. Turkey." According to court records in the criminal prosecution of Chad Staton in Defiance County, Ohio, individuals registering these fictional voters were paid money and in at least one instance, crack cocaine. The organization involved in this effort was called "Project Vote," and the fraud was perpetrated by a registrations volunteer.

Dissolution and controversies
The ACVR was dissolved in May 2007, and the web pages ac4vr.com and AmericanCenterForVotingRights.com were taken down.

The dissolution of ACVR came several weeks after the Election Assistance Commission issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate. "The DoJ devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out polling-place fraud over five years and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country," Slate reported.

Moreover, evidence was accumulating that the issue of voter fraud had been pushed by the GOP in an effort to mask voter suppression. Much of the evidence has emerged in media reports and congressional hearings into the firings of U.S. attorneys in at least eight cities in 2006, which "led to allegations that Republican officials pressed some of the fired prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases in hard-fought races."

For example, Bradley Schlozman, the interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, brought a controversial set of indictments for voter-registration fraud several days before the 2006 election in Missouri. The cases appeared to flout DoJ policy, which discouraged election-related indictments too close to Election Day. Schlozman told the Senate judiciary committee that he acted at the "direction" of the DoJ's Public Integrity Section, testimony he later recanted.

The indictments involved operatives paid by the not-for-profit organization ACORN, who allegedly submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri. Five of these operatives have since been indicted and plead guilty or convicted in federal court to charges of vote fraud and identity theft.

Several states have adopted laws requiring voters to provide some form of government-issued identification before casting a ballot. The strictest of these requirements is the Indiana photo-ID requirement which was challenged by the Indiana Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union. This law was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Arizona voter ID law against a similar challenge. Similar laws have been upheld by state courts in Pennsylvania, but struck down in Missouri and Georgia.