ChoicePoint defends its methods, saying the ultimate responsibility to clean up the voter rolls rests with the state. "Florida law, the result of bipartisan legislation passed two years before this election, creates an annual, two-step process to be used to ensure voters rights are protected," ChoicePoint vice president Marty Fagan said in a statement Wednesday. "We helped fulfill the law's requirements by completing the first step of the two-step process ... It was up to the county election officials to verify the information, and take whatever actions they deemed as appropriate." ChoicePoint's endorsement from the Voting Integrity Project makes some Democrats believe the firm has a partisan agenda.

VIP chairwoman of the board is Helen Blackwell, also the Virginia chairwoman of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, whose husband, Morton, serves as executive director of the conservative Council for National Policy. It took lumps for being partisan earlier this year from Slate writer Jeremy Derfner. "In fact, almost everything about the Voting Integrity Project makes you wonder. Though VIP's members assert that they are both independent and nonpartisan, the organization is essentially a conservative front," Derfner wrote.

VIP has vigorously opposed efforts to liberalize voting procedures -- railing against everything from Internet voting to Oregon's mail-in balloting to the Motor Voter bill. But it is VIP's involvement in partisan political fights that makes Democrats charge the group is a Republican front group.

VIP sent investigators into largely black areas in Louisiana after Mary Landrieu's 1996 U.S. Senate victory over Republican Woody Jenkins.

"The VIP conducted its investigation over a 10-day period from December 26 through January 4, during which time they concentrated on the Orleans Parish voting activities," a VIP release says. "The VIP examined and independently verified substantial amounts of evidence gathered by the Jenkins campaign, as well as gathering its own evidence concerning vote buying, vote hauling and improprieties by elections officials tasked with protecting voting machines."

VIP chairwoman Helen Blackwell told the Senate Rules Committee, "Many claims of the Jenkins campaign have merit and should be investigated to the fullest extent of the law."

But VIP advisory board member John Siebel calls any effort to cast the organization in a partisan light "self interest masquerading as reason," and said that the fight over the cleansing of voter rolls has well-reasoned arguments on both sides of the issue.

"When you look at this in an intellectually honest way, it should never be about putting up obstacles to people registering to vote," he said. "When you only ask, 'Should it be easier or harder to vote?' the answer is pretty simple. However, flip it around, is it good to create a system that makes it difficult to administer an election and may encourage people to commit voter fraud' you get the same answer."

Jenni Gainsborough, senior policy analyst of the Sentencing Project in Washington, said she has worked with VIP on the issue of restoring felons' rights to vote, and believes the group has received something of a bum rap.

"I think it's not true to say they're a Republican front," Gainsborough said. "I think they are in some respects conservative. On the other hand, they're supportive of getting ex-felons back the right to vote. It's certainly not the Republican line to be taking on that issue. Yes they are certainly doing a lot to get voter rolls purged, but I don't think they're doing it to increase Republican votes."

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