GregsOpinion.com

Ironic little column out today by Rick Casey. Ironic because I think Casey misses a tangential point on the voter fraud mentioned by the Hartnett Report:

It seems that Heflin's team found a group of African-American voters in the Vo-Heflin race who, voter-registration records indicated, had moved into another legislative district, that of Democrat Rep. Scott Hochberg.

But it turned out that these voters had not moved. Someone had fraudulently filed change-of-address cards for them. Who might have done that?

A reporter for a left-wing Web site wrote about these and about some questionable entries on voter forms provided by the Heflin legal team.

Instead of showing Democratic fraud, the reporter said, the hearings "served up a fine public record of practices by Republicans and unknown others that would suppress their rights."

Soon the article was circulating by e-mail among Democratic activists, some of whom demanded an investigation by the district attorney.

As it turns out, the District Attorney's Office already was investigating the fraudulent address changes at Bettencourt's request.

...

It is the good fortune of the Democratic activists who voiced their suspicions to a few thousand friends over the Internet that their rhetoric didn't rise to public attention.

It was, like the rhetoric of Heflin, his attorney Taylor and Republican Party leaders, based on assumption and innuendo.

Slinging mud into the wind, a bipartisan pastime, is a messy business.

OK, I had to do a quick check to see which article Casey was referring to. This was after I had to get my heart going back again after running through my own quote list on the matter. Seems Casey is referring to the Greg Moses posting which was pretty incindiary and I do recall it getting some circulation.

One problem, though.

The quote Casey used does not refer to the voter fraud in question as part of that "fine public record." Here's the fuller context of that quote:

On Friday Hartnett noticed another curious thing. As he examined original questionnaires that were supposed to be filled out by alleged illegal voters and notarized as depositions, he found two kinds of ink used to fill out the answers and two kinds of handwriting. Larry Veselka, the Yale-educated lawyer who represents the elected Democrat in the race, Hubert Vo, then noticed that handwritten 'no' and 'NA' answers on at least two questionnaires looked to be written in the same hand.

Again, nobody reported this alleged 'tampering with evidence, 'especially not the state capitol press corps, who let this open-air revelation pass without even quoting the words that were mentioned in the broadcast. However, since the proceeding took place under the jurisdiction of Austin prosecutor Ronnie Earle, maybe reporters are simply waiting to quote him on the matter of 'assisted depositions.' Or maybe I'm trying too hard to find a sensible motivation for media behaviors.

Finally, Hartnett was caught grinning at the flexibility he found at the official website of the Harris County voter registrar, which changed its
listing of more than one voter from legal to illegal sometime during early January, following consultations with Republican lawyers. Hartnett seemed perversely amused when lawyers for the defense showed him a web page confirming a voter registration, dated early
January, as Republican lawyers submitted more recent web pages showing the voter was not registered. Sometimes this duel of conflicting web pages seemed enough for Hartnett to say that he just couldn't be sure if the voter was illegal or not.

At one point Republican lawyer Andy Taylor openly admitted that when he was not satisfied with a listing he found at the web site, he contacted the registrar's office, presented his own findings, and got voters kicked off the rolls so that he could submit revised web pages as evidence. That wasn't mentioned in the press, either.

In the end, it appears that the Republican challenge not only failed to prove 'widespread fraud' among Democrat voters of West Houston, but actually served up a fine public record of practices by Republicans and unknown others that would suppress their rights.

There's a lead in to that in which the Amadi fraud is covered, offered as Example A ... the fuller quotes above are offered as Example B.

The quote in question refers to both situations and even mentions "record of practices by Republicans and unknown others ...." There's nothing wrong with the quote as it stands. So why is Casey ignoring the issue of Andy Taylor getting the voter rolls changed with a phone call to Paul Bettencourt?

That's the problem with trying to appear evenhanded ... sometimes the bad guys just really need to be properly identified as such without fear of the writer being labelled biased.

ADD-ON: Greg Moses offers more on Taylor's transgressions after a full reading of the Hartnett Report.