June 19, 2007 (LPAC)--Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales calling for an investigation into illegal voter suppression tactics by Republican National Committee (RNC) operatives in the 2004 election campaign, operatives including Karl Rove's former aide, Tim Griffen, now the interim U.S. Attorney General of Little Rock, Arkansas. The letter asks for an investigation to determine if Griffin violated the Voting Rights Act with racially-targeted vote "caging", which involves sending out registered letters marked "Do Not Forward" to targeted voters and then challenging these voters' rights when their letters were returned undelivered. The Senators note that the RNC has a history of this from the 1980's and had signed consent decrees with the DoJ agreeing not to do this. "It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging," the senators wrote. "Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation."