Indiana Voters Beware of Matt Drudge's Dirty Tricks

Above the fear mongering of the headlines in today's Drudge Report, Matt Drudge decided to turn Indiana 2008 into Florida 2000, with headlines like: "MYSTERY: 'Voters' Outnumber Residents in Indianapolis?" and "Voting Age Population in Indianapolis: 632,896...Registered Voters in Indianapolis: 677,401..."  

Indiana has one of the strictest voter id laws in the country.  “As far as anyone knows,” Judge Posner conceded, “no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter.”

Indeed, said Richard L. Hasen, an authority on election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, “there has been a lot of talk about fraud but very little evidence.”

Accroding to the NY Times:  “Let’s not beat around the bush,” Judge Terence T. Evans, a Clinton appointee, wrote in his dissent from Judge Posner’s panel decision. “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage Election Day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”

Lacking evidence of actual fraud, proponents of the laws have started to rely on an unusual argument, one given credence by the Supreme Court in a hurried and unsigned decision last year allowing an Arizona election to go forward in the face of a challenge to that state’s voter identification law.

“Voters who fear their legitimate votes will be outweighed by fraudulent ones will feel disenfranchised,” the decision said. 

Did you catch that? The reason to risk actual disenfranchisement is to combat the possibility that some voters may “feel” disenfranchised because they think their votes may count less thanks to unproven fraud. The recent Georgia decision cited that bit of legal logic. 

Judge Evans, in his dissent, said it might be nice to have some facts before putting the right to vote at risk.

“Is it wise,” Judge Evans asked, “to use a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table?”

Could Indiana Go Blue?

From Newsweek magazine: Picture a swing state. Got it? Good. Chances are it looks peninsular, like Florida. Or triangular, like New Hampshire. Or maybe even amoeboid, like Ohio.

But I'm willing to bet it doesn't look like Indiana.

There's good reason for that. Technically, swing states are states that, you know, swing from election to election. Like, say, Iowa, which voted for Al Gore in 2000 and George W. Bush in 2004. By this measure, Indiana isn't a swing state at all. It's chosen the Republican candidate in every election since 1964--and it hasn't even been close. Last time around, Bush won the Hoosier state by 15.7 percent. His margin of victory in 2000--20.7 points--was even larger.

So why, then, has Barack Obama opened 32 local offices, hired dozens of paid staffers, spent at least $1.5 million on general-election TV ads and made five stops in the state since mid-July? Answer: because he thinks Indiana may finally be ready to swing. For months, the Republican Party appeared to disagree. John McCain hasn't visited since July 1,hasn't opened any field offices and hasn't sent any paid staffers, choosing instead to bundle operations in county Republican headquarters that also manage outreach for Gov. Mitch Daniels' reelection bid. But suddently, it seems, the GOP has had a change of heart. Today, the RNC is launching a nearly $5 million advertising blitz in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and--for the first time--Indiana. That's no coincidence.

Read the entire Newsweek article here.