The crimes took place in Virginia, where ironically Democratic lawmakers opposing a voter ID law recently contended there was no evidence of election fraud in their state. Like their party’s national leaders and other assorted liberals, Virginia Dems claim such measures discriminate against minorities.

For instance, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, refers to voter ID laws as a “full-scale assault” on minority voters designed to “rig” elections for Republicans. This absurd theory is based on the fact that minorities are either too poor or too ignorant to get a valid identification—provided free in many of the states that have passed voter ID laws—that proves they are who they claim to be. This will prevent a chunk of citizens that would normally vote Democrat to cast ballots, the thinking goes.

That’s why the Department of Justice (DOJ), the president’s political tool, is challenging voter ID laws—like one already upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court—around the country.  Eight stateshave strict laws that require a voter to provide picture identification in order to cast a ballot. All but two of the states—Georgia and Indiana—passed their measures in 2011. Currently, the DOJ is pursuing discrimination probes against ID laws in Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Mississippi.  

Virginia’s law, passed earlier this year, is likely to escape federal scrutiny because it’s lax compared to others. Under the measure, acceptable forms of ID aren’t limited to a valid government card with a photo and can include a utility bill, bank statement or paycheck. The state once had a strict voter ID law that was nixed about a decade ago to allow anyone to vote as long as they signed a sworn statement attesting to their identity. 

State Democrats fought hard to prevent the reinstatement of any ID measure, assuring that voter fraud is not an issue in Virginia. Clearly they were wrong. This week a Richmond grand jury indicted 10 convicted felons on charges of election fraud committed during the 2008 presidential election.

The five men and five women are each charged with making a material false statement on a voter registration form, a felony. The crimes were discovered in the course of a broader, statewide probe into fraud allegations during the 2008 election. On a national level, this sort of fraud was also rampant in 2008, with the likes of community groups like ACORN committing massive voter registration fraud. Read about Judicial Watch’s various ACORN investigations. 

To prevent this sort of corruption in this year’s presidential election, Judicial Watch launched the 2012 Election Integrity Project to assure that voter rolls are as clean as required by federal law. Through publicly available data, JW has already discovered that voter rolls in several states—including Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida, Alabama, California and Colorado—contain the names of individuals who are not eligible to vote. 

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Today, August 30, 2011, Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha will testify before the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee on the “National Security Begins at Home” legislative package. This legislation is designed to address the illegal immigration crisis by shutting down public benefits, employment access and other economic incentives that draw illegal aliens to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.