Martinez campaigns on 'voter fraud'

Posted 7/31/2009 01:20:00 PM

But was it voter fraud or incompetence that the district attorney’s office prosecuted in 2003?

Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez claims in a news release sent today that, “on her watch” as Doña Ana County district attorney, the county clerk “was successfully prosecuted for voter fraud -- convicted of five felony counts of violating the election code.”

A look at the facts reveals a slightly more complicated situation.

Then-Clerk Ruben Ceballos was removed from office in 2003 after being convicted of five felonies for violating the state elections code -- failing to file voter registrations in a timely manner, failing to notify voters of precinct changes, appointing unregistered voters as poll workers, unlawfully changing a polling place, and failing to destroy unused absentee ballots.

But are those problems proof of voter fraud or incompetence?

In a Nov. 20, 2003 article published in the Las Cruces Sun-News, Martinez’s chief deputy district attorney, Susan Riedel, was quoted as saying this about what led to the charges against Ceballos: “There was no training of employees, no attention to detail. The evidence showed the clerk’s office was in chaos and who was responsible.”

She and the other prosecutor on the case, then-Assistant District Attorney Jeff Lahann, made no mention of “fraud,” which, according to dictionary.com, is an act of “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.”

Martinez could not immediately be reached for comment. Today’s news release, her first, formally announced her candidacy and notified people that her campaign Web site is online.

A hot topic for some conservatives

Martinez isn’t the first GOP political candidate to refer to the Ceballos case as voter fraud. When then-GOP secretary of state candidate Vicki Perea testified before a congressional committee in 2006 about allegations of widespread voter fraud, she did the same thing. After talking about a 1998 case in which the Rio Arriba county clerk and others were convicted of charges stemming from actual voter fraud, she said this:

“This is not the only county clerk to be convicted of fraud, however. In 2003, Doña Ana County’s clerk, Ruben Ceballos, was convicted of five counts of violating the New Mexico election code,” Perea told members of Congress.

The “voter fraud” meme is sometimes referred to as an example of “dog whistle politics” by people who accuse conservatives of exaggerating its effect on elections. It’s an issue that highly political, conservative voters tend to be more passionate about than any other group in America. A candidate who has actually taken on voter fraud would appeal to that base of GOP voters.

While voter fraud has occurred (as evidenced by the 1998 case in Rio Arriba County), there’s been little evidence presented publicly that it’s widespread. The New York Times reported in 2007 that, “Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.”