Remember in the 2000 elections when Democrats complained about voter fraud and problems in Florida and nothing was done? When Florida had all sorts of problems and eventually the Supreme Court ended up selecting a president for us instead of finding out whom we had actually elected?

By 2004 we had all lost hope, expecting something fishy to happen, and lo and behold it did. In Ohio, urban area voters waited for hours outside of the polling places because not enough machines were sent. I remember watching the news and seeing tons of people standing outside in bad weather waiting to vote well into the evening. In Florida, stories were told of black voters being turned away for supposedly being on lists of convicted felons. They managed to prove they weren’t on the list, but only after the election was over, essentially disenfranchising many black voters.

Bush was still elected, even though Democrats like Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) brought pages upon pages of evidence and complaints to the floor. Republicans didn’t do a thing to look into them, and the results of that election were upheld.

Now, The Washington Post is reporting that Karl Rove actually asked that investigations into voter fraud take place. Rove wasn’t discussed in any of the above, however. He wanted voter fraud investigated in three key battleground states last October, right before the elections. His desire to investigate “fraud” may have played into some of the recent prosecutor firings. All this information was revealed during the questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by the Democrats concerning recent prosecutor firings.

At least we discovered that one Justice Department official has some sort of integrity. Matthew Friedrich was given documents from Wisconsin Republicans on what they thought was voter fraud right before the election. Friedrich was expected to pass it on to the proper people, but informed his superiors that it would “violate strict Justice rules that limit the pursuit of voter-related investigations close to an election.”

Apparently Rove was doing this in every election, even wanting prosecutors to show that there had been a Democratic conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes in Wisconsin and New Mexico in 2004. Prosecutors refused, and that’s likely the reason why New Mexico’s prosecutor was fired. According to interviews with Gonzales, Wisconsin’s prosecutor was spared because they didn’t want to spark the anger of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Republican from Wisconsin.

In 2006, Rove wanted them to re-open a two-year investigation right before the elections. In that investigation, the prosecutor had already found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, yet they still prosecuted people for voting-related offenses.

All this information has reached us thanks to Democrats who possess newfound subpoena power with which they can question officials and discover all sorts of interesting dirt. Here we were thinking that the White House has been twiddling its thumbs, but apparently Rove been very busy behind our backs.

Republicans are arguing that these prosecutor firings are perfectly normal and that these individuals serve at the leisure of the president. It’s one thing to fire someone because he or she isn’t doing a good enough job; it’s another to fire them for not doing something unethical or illegal for you.

Democrats and the public were busy in 2004 complaining about voter fraud, and we all watched lines of people in Ohio trying to vote. We saw it with our own eyes. Rove ignored our complaints and instead spent his time investigating two-year old allegations and trying to bring up dirt before the midterm election, according to interviews with Gonzales.

I am getting sick and tired of Rove, from the pictures of him thumbing his nose at photographers to his gross mishandling of our government. I just have to keep telling myself, only one more year of this. In the meantime, we can at least expose these people for everything they are.

Reach columnist Hunter Kincaid at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.