(Originally written on 9/24/2006)

By Paul Hill

HOUSTON – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is under pressure for his “voter fraud” crusade and for improperly seizing records that were part of a pending federal court case involving possible fraudulent diagnoses of silicosis, a lung disease.

The San Antonio Express-News reported that Abbott, a Republican, is enforcing a controversial 2003 Texas law that makes it a crime to put other voters’ absentee ballots in the mail or deliver them to election officials. Democrats reportedly plan to file a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the law, arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of free speech, free association and equal protection. Democrats will allege that Abbott is “selectively enforcing the law against Hispanics and blacks to intimidate minority voters and dilute their strength at the polls.” Democrats complain that of the 13 individuals indicted for voter fraud, 12 are minority women, 1 is an Anglo male and 0 are Republicans. The suit will also allege that Abbott’s educational campaign launched before last year’s primary used racial cues and linked African Americans to voter fraud.

Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Amber Moon stated, “I think it’s evident that Abbott’s practice of singling out minorities and seniors is a shallow political effort to suppress the votes…It’s being done disingenuously. The majority of these cases are well-meaning folks who are simply trying to help their neighbors to vote.”

The Texas NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund testified against the voter fraud law because it targets Latino and African American patterns of voting. Elderly African Americans and Latinos frequently prefer to vote absentee because they fear intimidation at the polls. If they are homebound, younger members of the community often assist them.

Meanwhile, it has been reported on David Van Os’ website that Abbott’s office “dispatched a squad of armed agents with subpoenas to forcibly seize, without permission, thousands of records from the federal court’s storage facility. These records were part of pending federal court cases involving possible fraudulent diagnoses of silicosis, a lung disease.”

U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack demanded that Abbott’s office return the documents immediately and suggested their removal could become a criminal matter. Abbot returned all the records except for 152, which his spokesperson said could not be found.

Abbott’s opponent in the November election, Democrat David Van Os, issued the following statement: “I’m not surprised by this arrogant conduct. Greg Abbott is part of the silk-stocking social clique that runs Texas government as if it were their private club…This is the same Gregg Abbott who lets the Texas Department of Transportation hide its contracts with foreign companies. This is the same Greg Abbott who uses the taxpayers’ money to file legal briefs and maps on behalf of the Republican Party, who employs Tom DeLay’s cronies, and who refuses to challenge the oil companies on behalf of the people of Texas. Seizing and then losing working people’s personal medical records from a court file is par for his course.”

Abbott apologized in a letter to Judge Jack for ‘the confusion and misunderstandings’ his actions caused. He also maintained that his agents were only joking when they threatened to arrest the storage supervisor if he didn’t hand over the documents.

Van Os commented: “Attorney General Abbott admitted to the federal court in Corpus Christi that he should not have seized court files without getting permission from the court. He apologizes, but then offers the incredulous excuses that his office thought permission had been obtained from the judge and that his armed agents were just joking when they threatened the supervisor of the court’s records with arrest. How did top officials in the Attorney General’s office come to think permission had been obtained from the judge when nobody had even contacted the judge? What kind of law enforcement organization allows its agents to threaten arrest as a joke when in the course of official duties?”