Behind the firings: GOP assault on one person, one vote

According to reporter Michael Coleman of the Albuquerque Journal Washington Bureau, Mickey Barnett, a former Albuquerque Republican national committeeman, sent an e-mail message to Iglesias in September 2004 chastising him for “appointing a task force to investigate voter fraud instead of bringing charges against suspects.”

During the 2004 election campaign, New Mexico ACORN engaged in a huge voter registration drive in which individuals were paid to bring in valid voter registrations. It only took one informant to come forth and “confess” to obtaining registrations fraudulently for the whole New Mexican Republican machinery, along with its daily mouthpiece the Albuquerque Journal, to proclaim that this mass voter registration was illegal.

It should be noted that the trumped up “voter fraud” claims have racist and anti-working class aspects. The first to be challenged on voter eligibility are usually Latino, Black, immigrant or low-income – or a combination of any of these.

The end result was that the state Democrats became so frightened of being tarred with a smear charge that, in the 2005 legislative session, they altered the state voter registration law to such a point that before a person could be registered to vote, they had to swear on a double affidavit that they were not committing any fraud. This cut out the street-level voter registration drives. As a result, despite union and community efforts for rank-and-file people to increase voter registration, the number of newly registered voters decreased from the previous year.

It seems Iglesias had not done enough on behalf of his bosses. He followed the traditional legal process of appointing an investigating task force to check out the GOP claims of voter fraud, rather than making flaming accusations that would become grist for the local media, confuse the public, turn down the Democratic edge, and then later be retracted on page 24 of the Journal in small print. In pursuing this process of investigating charges to determine their merits, he was following normal textbook procedure. As did former state Attorney General Patricia Madrid — a Democrat — during the statewide corruption scandal involving former State Treasurer Robert Vigil — a Democrat — who was found to be taking bribes on various state projects.

Apparently, neither Republican Sen. Pete Domenici nor Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson was satisfied with Iglesias’ methods, because they constantly complained to the Justice Department about the slowness of his work, despite the fact that in regular merit reviews he was given high marks.

According to the Journal, a number of state Republicans were unhappy with Iglesias because he did not use the Vigil bribery case as a platform for making scattershot charges against state Democrats. In last fall’s U.S. House race between Wilson and Madrid, GOP officials were hoping that it would be a perfect fit to smear Madrid with complicity in this corruption.

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