Voter fraud allegations by John McCain and Republican Party officials in recent days appear intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Although the Republicans don’t say this, their comments could be aimed at several goals, experts said, ranging from simply energizing their conservative base to laying the groundwork for possible election challenges.

In any case, spokesmen for both the national Republican Party and the McCain campaign don’t deny the implication that their comments raise questions about the legitimacy of the election outcome.

“I hope the election does not have this problem,” said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, when asked Friday whether he was suggesting the election outcome could be illegitimate. “We’ve got 18 days. We think
John McCain could win this election, and we don’t want a pall cast on it.”

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama campaign charged Friday that the U.S. Justice Department is collaborating with the GOP in seeking to create doubt about the validity of the election process.

That accusation, from Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer, was based on a news story leaked from the Justice Department, saying that the FBI was investigating charges of voter fraud against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a liberal group that has done voter registration work nationwide.

Because the leak violated Justice Department policy, and because of the lack of significant evidence of vote fraud involving ACORN, Bauer said, the department appears to be succumbing to political pressure to hype the accusations.

He called it a repeat of the Justice Department’s politically motivated firing of U.S. attorneys in 2006. An inspector general’s report concluded they were fired because they had displeased Republicans by not prosecuting allegations of corruption and voter fraud against Democrats.

Bauer called it “an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the worst kind of politics,” and said the inspector general’s probe should be expanded to include the leak and all allegations of voter fraud and voter suppression.

A McCain campaign spokesman called the accusation “outrageous,” “absurd,” and “almost a parody of the Obama campaign’s attempt to intimidate their political opponents.”

There have been several state investigations into voter registration forms submitted by ACORN, which sometimes pays registrants to get prospective voters to fill out and sign forms. ACORN acknowledges its workers have sometimes falsified forms to get paid without doing the work.

In probably the worst case so far, prosecutors in Washington state charged seven ACORN employees with turning in more than 1,800 phony registration forms in 2006.

King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg emphasized the defendants’ aim was to get paid, not influence elections, and the workers were cheating ACORN. None of the phony forms led to illegal voting.

He said ACORN applied “lax oversight,” and the organization signed a consent decree promising better oversight.

ACORN says that in some cases it has alerted elections officials when it suspected workers were turning in falsified forms, but that once it receives the forms, it’s legally required to turn them in.

Because of checks by elections officials, if a fraudulent form is submitted, that doesn’t mean a voter will be registered or vote illegally.

A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law examined recent claims of fraud made by parties, elections officials, journalists and bloggers, and concluded, “We are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast.”
Nonetheless, McCain, his top campaign aides and Republicans have repeatedly suggested that ACORN’s work threatens the legitimacy of the election.

They’ve criticized Obama for his links to ACORN, including having represented the organization in a court case, and having paid an affiliate for work on his campaign.

In Wednesday’s debate, McCain said ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history, … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” He added in a TV interview that “several thousand votes could obviously tip the entire huge state of Florida.”

In a news conference call with reporters Friday, Davis said “rampant voter fraud” has created a “cloud of suspicion that seems to right now hang over this election.”

In a conference call Thursday that focused on what they said was extensive election fraud in Florida, Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz and counsel Sean Cairncross accused ACORN of “attempting to subvert our election system and election laws” and “trying to defraud the electoral system,” in Diaz’s words.

Even McCain allies consider these accusations overblown.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Secretary of State Kurt Browning have both denied there are any significant problems with ACORN voter registration activities in Florida, and Diaz and Cairncross couldn’t give any figures indicating there were; they pointed to one form signed by “Mickey Mouse.”

Browning has said he has a good impression of ACORN, and that there have been only scattered incidents of problems in its registration work.

Crist pooh-poohed the allegations of fraud, saying there’s “less than is being discussed. As we’re coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who sort of enjoy chaos.”

Asked whether Diaz and Cairncross were suggesting the results of the Florida election might be tainted, RNC officials wouldn’t respond on the record. One party official, asking not to be named, responded only,

“ACORN’s activities have the effect of undermining confidence in the integrity of the election process.”
University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett said there could be several motives behind the accusations by McCain and his allies: to “rally the conservative base”; to create pressure for elections officials to scrutinize and possibly toss ACORN’s voter registrations, which focus on Obama-leaning young and minority voters; or to lay groundwork for a legal challenge of the outcome.

“If it came down to as close as in 2000, or to just one or two states with close votes, then it could be trying to plant the seed for a challenge,” he said.