Fraud III

Colorado Republicans are baying at the moon again about election fraud. They want to pass a bill making it harder for some people to vote.
The chief instigator is Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who by law is the state's chief elections officer. In his most recent role as protector of the ballot, he has again alleged that thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in Colorado.
So he wants a law allowing him to dig into public data bases to check if registered voters are, in fact, citizens. In suspicious cases he would send out letters asking for proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate.
He says he's not aiming at prosecutions, but merely at cleaning up the voting rolls.
Well, the history of this sort of crusade reveals another, less noble purpose: To further discourage voting by blacks and especially the burgeoning Latino community -- people who seldom have enjoyed much encouragement from the white-bread establishment.