"SPECIAL REPORT: The Myth of Widespread Non-Citizen Voting; A Response to the Heritage Foundation"

The GAO study as a whole belies von Spakovsky’s assertion, however.

The 2005 report features data from 14 U.S. district courts. GAO researchers asked staff associated with these courts for information about the number of individuals who were called for jury service and responded that they were non-citizens. These researchers found that the “AOUSC officials and federal jury administrators we spoke with generally did not have exact data on the number of people called for jury service that responded that they were non-citizens.” Due to the lack of concrete data, 6 of the 14 gave no information to the GAO. Of the remaining 8 jurisdictions, 4 of them had never witnessed non-citizens who had been called to serve on a jury. Ten of the 14 district courts surveyed, then, could offer no evidence whatsoever of non-citizens in jury pools.

Ignoring this, von Spakovsky presents isolated data from just one of these fourteen jurisdictions.

Further, 3 of the 4 courts that did report non-citizens in their jury pools estimated that on-citizens comprised, respectively, approximately 1%, 0.158%, and 0.01% of the jury pool. Von Spakovsky, in his attempt to manufacture concern about a nonexistent crisis, simply ignores key elements of the GAO report which do not support his hypothesis that noncitizens threaten the integrity of U.S. elections.

It should be noted, furthermore, that being called to jury duty is not the same thing as voting fraudulently in an election (despite Von Spakovsky’s suggestion that jury pools are proxies for voter participation). As noted in the GAO report, several of the district courts’ jury pools contained names drawn from state identification or driver’s license records in addition to voter registration lists. Even assuming that non-citizens in jury pools appear on voter registration rolls, that wouldn’t establish that a) these voters have ever voted in federal elections or b) that these voters voted while knowing they were ineligible (i.e., fraudulently). Even von Spakovsky’s skewed evidence is only significant if one makes these unsupported assumptions.

Bob Fitrakis has assembled considerable information about a central player in the Republican election irregularities pantheon.

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Ohio, the DOJ scandal and "Thor" - the god of voter suppression
Bob Fitrakis - June 18, 2007 - http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1555

The current scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys cannot be separated from the Bush administration's scheme to suppress black, poor and working class voters. In order to divert attention from its voter suppression tactics that won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, the Bush administration created the myth of "voter fraud." Using fake "voting rights" organizations, obscure groups to finance civil suits and pressure on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against voter registration organizations, Karl Rove and his political operatives like Mark F. "Thor" Hearne have succeeded in undermining the United States' democracy.

"Hearne was one of the most important Bush operatives that almost nobody in America has ever heard of. ....." Brad Friedman, Editor of Bradblog, told the Free Press. Bradblog was the first to reveal Hearne's masquerade as a voting rights advocate.

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Mark F. "Thor" Hearne & election fraud timeline ......

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