Part II: April 2007
As discussed in a previous post, the staff for Secretary of State Carnahan, beginning with the Chief of Staff Mindy Mazur, did far more than perform standard duties in communicating with Project Vote prior to the lawsuit filed against the head of the Department of Social Services.
The first emails clearly detail a set of instructions from Michael Slater to Mindy Mazur on how to best help Project Vote achieve its goals. Looking through the emails and memos, we see the Secretary of State's office laying down a chain of evidence that would be used in Acorn's lawsuit as proof the DSS was failing to comply with NVRA.
On March 29th, Betsy Byers forwarded a series of memos out to state agencies stating "it had come to their attention that registrations had dropped since 2004." Byers then requests a time to meet with the agencies to provide training to any agency that needed it. No mention is made that the information was provided by Project Vote, or that lawsuits had been filed against other states in an attempt to force compliance through the courts. Carnahan's office, which assuredly knew about Project Vote's legal strategies (because Slater was sharing reports with them), blatantly sets up the agencies to take the fall. The memos are designed with one purpose - to provide an authoritative statement of fact that can be used later, all at the behest of Project Vote.
It's such an urgent matter that Michael Slater, having been given contact information for Ron Berry and Betsy Byers by Mindy Mazur, writes to ask how the task is going.
Michael Slater email March302007
Slater asks: "what progress your office has made with respect to helping state agencies better comply with the public agency requirements of NVRA." This is a strange email. Just two weeks after first being contacted by Mindy Mazur, Slater is asking what impact there has been on registration rates. Does he really expect there to be some major change in policy within two weeks? And how does he know Betsy? There are no other records of discussions as to what may have occurred. Was it phone calls? Emails not released by the Secretary of State's office? We know this. Slater is expecting something, and the only evidence we have is his request to Mindy Mazur to pursue allegations and render conclusions.
Slater requests a phone call, but that is the last communication we see about the issue. The next piece of evidence is a highly detailed Sunshine Request that is presented April 12, 2007. Somehow, Slater knew exactly what to ask for.
Michael Slater SunshineRequests April122007
Note that Slater goes from knowing very little about Missouri voting law (confessed in an earlier email) to knowing exactly what to ask for to use in his litigation. A series of earlier emails show a familiarity between Slater and Mazur growing, including the very odd request for Mindy Mazur and Ron Berry to provide him with state newspaper articles quoting Republicans on the Voter ID Law. It's important to recognize that at the time, the Missouri Republicans had passed a Voter ID law that would later be ruled unconstitutional, and this law was a subject in which Slater had a keen interest. Slater references a phone conference for national opponents of the bill, but we never find out to what extent the Carnahan office is involved. We do know they respond to the Sunshine Request with amazing accuracy, providing exactly what was requested. I have received several Sunshine Requests with state agencies, and my requests are always very targeted. I've never gotten the level of detail evident in these requests. See, most requests are a bit of a fishing expedition. You're looking for documents that may or may not exist, and so you cast a wide net to make sure you get the relevant documents, but not so wide that you get a lot of fluff. An example of this is the ACORNCarnahan documents provided to the MO GOP. The Secretary of State threw in a large number of Project Vote press releases sent to Ron Berry, and reports submitted by Project Vote to large groups. You have to sift through those to find the personal emails. Slater did not have those problems.
It is this familiarity which is the issue. Starting with Mindy, and moving on to Ron and Betsy, we see a willingness to go above and beyond normal duties to provide Project Vote with what they needed to sue the state of Missouri. The Secretary of State's office, rather than working to protect the state, clearly sets up the other agencies, and then repeatedly provides the documentation requested by Project Vote.
If Secretary of State Carnahan felt a need to bring agencies into compliance with her definition of the NVRA, she could have done so. As an elected official, she could have worked with the governor and the legislature to bring agencies she felt were in violation into complaince. There was no need for an outside political entity connected strongly with ACORN and funded by national progressive groups into the state to enforce their version of the NVRA through the courts. Carnahan failed to protect us, and in doing so, brought in political allies that would work to get her re-elected, support her with donations, and ultimately connect her to the national progressives that would support her Senate campaign.
What we'll see next is how these two threads - the memos and the emails in March and April, are used to great effect in turning the state agencies, specifically the DSS, into an adversary. Secretary Carnahan worked with Project Vote to push their interpretation of the NVRA onto Missouri at great legal expense to the state.
And there's more...
This is the most remarkable violation of the public's trust I think I've ever read about. It's time for Department of Justice to open a federal criminal investigation into the Secretary of State's office.
Posted by: Bill Hennessy | 02/22/2010 at 06:36 AM