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<DIV class=timestamp>April 11, 2007</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">Panel Said to Alter Finding on Voter
Fraud </NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0"></NYT_BYLINE>
<DIV class=byline>By <A title="More Articles by Ian Urbina"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/u/ian_urbina/index.html?inline=nyt-per">IAN
URBINA</A></DIV><NYT_TEXT></NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody>
<P>WASHINGTON, April 10 — A federal panel responsible for conducting election
research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there
was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original
report obtained by The New York Times.</P>
<P>Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that
said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.</P>
<P><STRONG>The revised version echoes complaints made by Republican
politicians</STRONG>, who have long suggested that voter fraud is widespread and
justifies the voter identification laws that have been passed in at least two
dozen states. </P>
<P>Democrats say the threat is overstated and have opposed voter identification
laws, which they say disenfranchise the poor, members of minority groups and the
elderly, who are less likely to have photo IDs and are more likely to be
Democrats.</P>
<P>Though the original report said that among experts “there is widespread but
not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,” the final
version of the report released to the public concluded in its executive summary
that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.”</P>
<P>The topic of voter fraud, usually defined as people misrepresenting
themselves at the polls or improperly attempting to register voters, remains a
lively division between the two parties. It has played a significant role in the
current Congressional investigation into the Bush administration’s firing of
eight <A title="More articles about United States Attorneys."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/united_states_attorneys/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">United
States attorneys</A>, several of whom, documents now indicate, were dismissed
for being insufficiently aggressive in pursuing voter fraud cases.</P>
<P>The report also addressed intimidation, which Democrats see as a more
pervasive problem.</P>
<P>And two weeks ago, the panel faced criticism for refusing to release another
report it commissioned concerning voter identification laws. That report, which
was released after intense pressure from Congress, found that voter
identification laws designed to fight fraud can reduce turnout, particularly
among members of minorities. In releasing that report, which was conducted by a
different set of scholars, the commission declined to endorse its findings,
citing methodological concerns. </P>
<P>A number of election law experts, based on their own research, have concluded
that the accusations regarding widespread fraud are unjustified. And in this
case, one of the two experts hired to do the report was Job Serebrov, <A
title="More articles about Republican Party"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org">a
Republican</A> elections lawyers from Arkansas, who defended his research in an
e-mail message obtained by The Times that was sent last October to Margaret
Sims, a commission staff member.</P>
<P>“Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report,”
Mr. Serebrov wrote, referring to Tova Wang, a voting expert with liberal
leanings from the Century Foundation and co-author of the report. “I could care
less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party
wanted.”</P>
<P>He added: “Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political
expediency.”</P>
<P>For contractual reasons, neither Ms. Wang nor Mr. Serebrov were at liberty to
comment on their original report and the discrepancies with the final, edited
version. </P>
<P>The original report on fraud cites “evidence of some continued outright
intimidation and suppression” of voters by local officials, especially in some
American Indian communities, while the final report says only that voter
“intimidation is also a topic of some debate because there is little agreement
concerning what constitutes actionable voter intimidation.”</P>
<P>The original report said most experts believe that “false registration forms
have not resulted in polling place fraud,” but the final report cites
“registration drives by nongovernmental groups as a source of fraud.”</P>
<P>Although Democrats accused the board of caving to political pressure, Donetta
L. Davidson, the chairwoman of the commission, said that when the original
report was submitted, the board’s legal and research staff decided there was not
enough supporting data behind some of the claims. So, she said, the staff
members revised the report and presented a final version in December for a vote
by the commissioners.</P>
<P>“We were a small agency taking over a huge job,” said Ms. Davidson, who was
appointed to the agency by President Bush in 2005. “I think we may have tried to
do more research than we were equipped to handle.” She added that the commission
had “always stuck to being bipartisan.”</P>
<P>The commission, which was created by Congress in 2002 to conduct nonpartisan
research on elections, consists of two Republicans and two Democrats. At the
time of the report, one of the two Democrats had left for personal reasons and
had not yet been replaced, but the final report was unanimously approved by the
other commissioners.</P>
<P>Gracia Hillman, the Democratic commissioner who voted in favor of releasing
the final report, said she did not believe that the editing of the report was
politically motivated or overly extensive.</P>
<P>“As a federal agency, our responsibility is to ensure that the research we
produce is fully verified,” Ms. Hillman said. “Some of the points made in the
draft report made by the consultants went beyond what we felt comfortable
with.”</P>
<P>The Republican Party’s interest in rooting out voter fraud has been
encouraged by the White House. In a speech last April, <A
title="More articles about Karl Rove."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/karl_rove/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Karl
Rove</A>, Mr. Bush’s senior political adviser, told a group of Republican
lawyers that election integrity issues were an “enormous and growing”
problem.</P>
<P>“We’re, in some parts of the country, I’m afraid to say, beginning to look
like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are
colonels in mirrored sunglasses,” Mr. Rove said. “I mean, it’s a real
problem.”</P>
<P>Several Democrats said they believed that politics were behind the
commission’s decision to rewrite the report.</P>
<P>“This was the commission’s own study and it agreed in advance to how it would
be done, but the most important part of it got dropped from the final version,”
said Representative José E. Serrano, Democrat of New York and chairman of the
House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the commission. “I don’t see how
you can conclude that politics were not involved.” </P>
<P>Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, another New York Democrat, who requested
the draft report from Ms. Davidson during a subcommittee hearing last month,
agreed. </P>
<P>“By attempting to sweep this draft report under the rug, the E.A.C. is
throwing out important work, wasting taxpayer dollars and creating a cloud of
suspicion as to why it is acting this way,” he said.</P>
<P>Some scholars and voting advocates said that the original report on fraud,
for which the commission paid the authors more than $100,000, was less rigorous
than it should have been. But they said they did not believe that was the reason
for the changes. </P>
<P>“Had the researchers been able to go even further than they did, they would
have come to same conclusions but they would have had more analysis backing them
up,” said Lorraine C. Minnite, a political science professor at <A
title="More articles about Barnard College"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/barnard_college/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Barnard
College</A> who is writing a book on voter fraud. “Instead, the commission
rewrote their report and changed the thrust of its conclusions.”</P>
<P>Ray Martinez III, the Democrat who left the commission for personal reasons,
quit last August. He said in an interview that he was not present for any
discussion or editing of the voter fraud report.</P>
<P>Mr. Martinez added, however, that he had argued strenuously that all reports,
in draft or final editions, should be made public. But he said he lost that
argument with other commissioners.</P>
<P>“Methodology concerns aside, we commissioned the reports with taxpayer funds,
and I argued that they should be released,” he said, referring to the delay in
the release of the voter ID report. “My view was that the public and the
academics could determine whether it is rigorous and if it wasn’t then the egg
was on our face for having commissioned it in the first place.”</P>
<P>In recent months, the commission has been criticized for failing to provide
proper oversight of the technology laboratories that test electronic voting
machines and software. The commission is also responsible for conducting
research and advising policy makers on the implementation of the Help America
Vote Act, the federal overhaul of election procedure prompted by the 2000
Florida debacle. </P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID></NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<DIV id=authorId>
<P>Eric Lipton contributed reporting.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>