Progress Illinois

Meet Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita. By now, you might know him as the Republican official who stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. He then promised to conduct a criminal investigation into the suspicious voter registration forms submitted by ACORN in the same county, despite no evidence suggesting the organization itself purposefully committed fraud. While his election-season behavior is frustrating, it shouldn't be shocking.

As Talking Points Memo noted, in a 2002 South Bend Tribune article pulled from Nexus, Rokita spoke fondly of his experience preventing a recount in Florida during the 2000 election:

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

But here's the real doozy. Last year, the AP caught him offering this dubious analysis of African-American voting patterns:

During a speech Thursday at a Republican event, Todd Rokita said 90 percent of blacks vote for Democrats.

"How can that be?" Rokita said. "Ninety to ten. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?"

As Adam Serwer writes, "Rokita seems to have answered his own question: black people don't vote Republican because Republicans are given to reductive and dehumanizing racial commentary about black folks."

Meanwhile, in his request for an investigation of ACORN, Rokita dismisses the fact that the organization was required by law to submit all the registrations it received from its canvassers and that they notified election officials of the problematic forms:

Acorn officials contend they are required by law to submit all applications it collects, and a spokesman said they made efforts to call attention to applications that appeared to be problematic. The official said Acorn was the victim of unscrupulous employees and the organization fired at least five of those involved with the Lake County drive.

Rokita’s letter, however, states that “complying with the law to submit legitimate applications does not allow Acorn officials to evade the law against knowingly submitting fraudulent applications.”

Thomas from Blue Indiana sums up the problems with Rokita's statement:

It seems to me that ACORN had some bad employees who committed some highly unethical acts. If ACORN is telling the truth about flagging these applications -- and there hasn't been any substantial evidence to the contrary -- then they are being accused of a crime for following the law.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Unless, of course, this is nothing more than a political ploy to stoke the deep-seeded fear of Lake County and renew the fundamentally false connection between the Democratic ticket and a troubled community organizing organization. But Todd Rokita wouldn't do that, would he?