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December
13, 2002 10:30 a.m.
The
South Dakota Vote Scandal: How High Does It Go?
A
new lawsuit makes some intriguing accusations.
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 he
woman at the center of a vote-fraud investigation in South Dakota says
the state attorney general is ignoring evidence of other improprieties
during the election.
Democratic activist
Becky Red Earth is suspected of falsifying hundreds of absentee ballot
applications before last month's vote. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in
federal court against attorney general Mark Barnett, she charges that
Barnett has "improperly singled [her] out, notwithstanding hard evidence
of substantial voting improprieties at actual polling places during actual
voting which has been ignored by [Barnett]."
The lawsuit also
charges that other people were involved in the improprieties. Saying that
she is "on the lowest rung of the ladder," Red Earth says, "It
is expected that an evidentiary hearing will 'flesh out' the selective nature
of [Barnett's] choice to single out [Red Earth] to the exclusion of others
both higher on the ladder and involved in improprieties during the actual
election."
Red Earth goes on
to allege that "Barnett was "well aware that [Red Earth] was
operating on orders from her superiors and that she specifically denied
any intent to defraud anyone." She asks the U.S. District Court in
the Southern Division of South Dakota to bar Barnett from taking any action
against her.
The lawsuit appears
to refer to allegations of vote buying, absentee ballot fraud, illegal
electioneering, improper voter identification, and other issues raised
by Republicans in the aftermath of Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson's 524-vote
victory of GOP challenger John Thune. Many of those allegations are contained
in more than 40 affidavits from Republican poll watchers, along with interviews
with Republican and Democratic election officials, which are featured
in the current issue of National Review.
Barnett has on several
occasions dismissed most of the allegations as "local election-board
management problems." For example, referring to witness accounts
that allege Democrats used polling places as get-out-the-vote offices,
in apparent violation of South Dakota law, Barnett told a local newspaper,
"That's not a crime. That's a lesson plan."
The Red Earth lawsuit
charges that in recent statements, Barnett has "portrayed indifference
to allegations of impropriety at the polls during the actual election
of November 5, 2002, saying that sometime in the future he would appoint
an investigator to look into allegations of vote buying, and apparently
had nothing to say or do about allegations of improper voter identifications
and improper opening of polling places."
Barnett, who has
not responded to telephone inquiries from National Review, told
the Associated Press in South Dakota that, "Sooner or later everybody
sues me, so I don't get too worried about it."
Meanwhile, the Sioux
Falls Argus Leader reports that Barnett will today release the
results of his investigation into the accounts of three people who swore
that the driver of a "Tim Johnson For Senate" van offered them
$10 to vote. It is not clear whether he will also announce the indictment
of Red Earth, which has been expected for several weeks.
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