Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft
Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions that ACORN, a grassroots voter registration group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
While the Republicans had the distracted media searching for links between Obama and ACORN, RNC operatives were busily completing one of the most massive voter suppression and purging efforts in American history, stealing hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes across the embattled swing states and striving to arrange chaos and endless lines at the voting booths next week.
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.
They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.
And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.
The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico."
Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."
Certainly ACORN collected some bad signatures. But despite McCain's claims, now morphed into media theology, none of ACORN's actions will have any impact on any election. ACORN hired 13,000 canvassers to register new voters. A small number of these workers defrauded ACORN by handing in phony registration forms using names they had invented (e.g. Mickey Mouse), or copied from phone books. In one case ACORN canvassers used cigarettes to bribe a homeless man, now a Fox News regular, to register 17 times. None of these activities constituted voter fraud. It is no crime to register 17 times; only the final registration counts. His multiple registrations would not allow the tobacco lover to vote 17 times. Nor is there any evidence the phone book registrants will cast multiple ballots.
Finally, the removal by GOP officials of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from voting rolls over the past year provides ACORN with a sound rationale for obtaining new registrations, even from voters who believe they are already registered.
ACORN took pains to screen its registrations and cull out those it considered dubious. However, federal laws make it a felony for voter registration groups like ACORN to discard registrations even when it believes them fraudulent. So ACORN flagged the forms it considered doubtful and handed them in to the registry. Ironically, it was those flagged forms -- the fruits of ACORN's diligence -- that have been flogged by Republicans as their best evidence of widespread election fraud.
Voter fraud is a phantom according to Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Columbia University. Only 24 cases of federal voter fraud have been uncovered between 2002 and 2005 despite massive government efforts devoted to uncovering evidence of a voter fraud crime wave.
The GOP is ginning up hysteria about non-existent vote fraud by Democrats in order to distract the press from its own campaign to disenfranchise millions of American voters.
The Republicans have created an obstacle course of barriers designed to suppress the vote, purge tens of thousands of Democratic voters from voting rolls, create mayhem and delay at voting venues on Election Day, and stop millions of votes from being counted this election cycle.
Jailed GOP activist Jack Abramoff and his fellow convict, Congressman Bob Ney, wrote the most sinister provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which Congress passed in 2002 creating a series of diabolically cunning new voting impediments. HAVA, for example, allows state voting officials to purge tens of thousands of voters from the polls using algorithms and voter ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise black, Hispanic and minority voters, and other Democratic demographics including senior citizens and young people.
In 2004, highly organized GOP tacticians helped disenfranchise no less than 2.7 million American voters. Almost a million of them were African Americans. The The Federal Elections Commission has found black voters were nine times more likely to have their votes discarded than white voters and that over one-third of the million provisional ballots cast in 2004 -- ballots handed disproportionately to African Americans -- were never counted but simply thrown into dumpsters.
In a technique known as "caging" RNC operatives send millions of first class letters to black voters across the country marked 'do not forward.' Republican operatives armed with lists then invade black precincts on Election Day to challenge those voters whose letters were returned to the RNC because the voter was not home when the mail arrived. That tactic deliberately targeted black students on vacation in August, homeless men and soldiers posted overseas. "Caging" is resurrecting Old Dixie's Jim Crow procedures designed to rid the lists of black voters and create long lines in black precincts.
In this election, new HAVA mandates permit voting officials to precisely match registration form information with the voter's driver's license and other government records. While it may sound reasonable, in practice, any change, even a dropped hyphen, is cause for eliminating the voter from the rolls. Since 2004, Colorado's Republican Secretaries of State have purged one out of every five voters from the rolls. The current Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, a Republican also running for office, recently purged an additional 37,000 voters and discarded 6,400 new voter registrations -- overwhelmingly Democratic -- based upon an obscure technical mistake that Coffman's office encouraged voters to make in the first place.
The GOP "anti-fraud" campaign resulted in one in nine New Mexico Democratic voters finding their names had disappeared from voter roles during this year's caucus.
Despite a recent Supreme Court decision upholding Ohio's refusal to disenfranchise 200,000 legitimate voters based on this absurd demand to "match" voter names to databases, White House operatives are still fighting to purge these names from the rolls. President George Bush last week personally asked his Attorney General Mike Mukasey to renew Republican efforts to disenfranchise these voters.
Contrary to Mr. McCain's assertions, the real threat to democracy is from the GOP itself. ACORN has served as a good distraction from Republican efforts to steal the vote from hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters, a genuine threat that has received almost no media attention.
They're stealing your vote, but you can steal it back. Here are some steps you should take to protect your vote. First, avoid the November 4th minefield. Voters, wherever possible, should vote early and in person. Where feasible, avoid mailing in your ballot, many are rejected for flimsy reasons, and first time voters in many states must include a photocopy of ID. However, if you have a mail-in ballot, don't throw it away. Follow directions, use the correct postage (that's an error that cost a hundred thousand votes last time) and, if possible, walk it in to your elections office.
At the polling station, should you find yourself one of the 2.7 million purged, or your ID rejected, then do your best to resist a "provisional" ballot--one third of which are not counted. Return with proper ID, or call 1-866-OUR VOTE for legal assistance. And never just walk away discouraged. That's just what they want you to do.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast are authors of an investigation of vote suppression in the current Rolling Stone, and a comic book voter guide, "Steal Back Your Vote," both available for download at StealBackYourVote.org.
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In the 2004 presidential election, 57,000 voting irregularities, such as problems with voting machines and voter suppression, where filed with the Government Accountability Office mostly favoring Bush and hurting Kerry. Yes 57,000! If you're a journalist who has courage to speak up, look at the information presented and let it be known to the public.
http://www.electionfraud2004.org/presentation/index.html
I'd like to restate my wish for RFK jr. to submit his name for an Obama watchdog post. Mr Obama knows what it takes to work from the ground up and needs allies like this to:
#1 Get the American people's confidence back.
#2 Form policies that make voter disenfranchisement difficult.
#3 Set the record straight for history on the 2000 and 2004 elections.
#4 Find evidence for a real witch burning when the process is clear.
I would volunteer on this end to help in any way possible.
http://www.pubrecord.org/politics/436-new-gop-ad-accuses-democrats-of-trying-to-steal-ohio-election.html
New GOP Ad Accuses Democrats of Trying to 'Steal' Ohio Election
The Ohio Republican Party launched a new statewide ad Tuesday claiming Democrats are trying to “steal the election in Ohio” by allowing hundreds of thousands of people to vote illegally, the latest effort by GOP operatives in the battleground state to challenge the eligibility of newly registered voters, many of who are expected to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
“As Election Day approaches, consider this: could Ohio’s election be stolen?” a woman says in the 60-second spot. “Hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations are questionable. Many may be fraudulent. Yet [Ohio] Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is concealing the evidence.”
When the Rs accuse, they reliably accuse the other side of what _they_ are doing. The 'how' is of course different.
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It frustrates me greatly to hear all the tactics that republicans use to knock us off the roles or send us home from the polls without having voted...but my question is this- If we know these things are occuring to citizens that every right to cast a vote, why is it being allowed? Who in government should be prosecuting people for these things? Is there such an entity, and if so, why are they not doing their job?
Why are there so many arbitrary rules? It just makes no sense. And IF a person is turned away, do they have ANY recourse for getting their vote counted if they can prove that they were illegally kept from voting? I think we should be able to check on our votes after the fact to see if they were counted, and if not, get an explanation as to why. If they had to start answering to people instead of just being able to toss your info into a trash can, they might stop doing this!
Loved this!
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice.
They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough.
And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.
OKAY PEOPLE, LET'S GET BACK TO WORK STOP BEING DISTRACTED. WE HAVE AN ELECTION TO WIN AND IT'S NOT OVER YET. THIS SHOULD ENCOURAGE US MORE TO TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT THE REAL ISSUES AND GET OUT THE VOTE. VOTE EARLY IF POSSIBLE,OFFER ASSISTANCE IN WORKING THE POLLS AND GETTING PEOPLE TO THE POLLS.
All the republicans know is dishonesty.What ever they are involved in. Voter supression, lying to go to war, outing a CIA agent,torture,no bid contracts to Halliburton,raping the constitution,you name it they have done it. Now why would the american people want any republican in office? That is why they are fighting so hard to keep power. They think america belongs just to them. American citizens, please vote all these crooks out of office.
This is driving me craaaaazzzzzzyyyyy.
Either the Dems are complicit with voter suppression or they are afraid to defend against it?
DEMS ARE NOT PU**IES! just some of our representatives are. I DONT UNDERSTAND...if we are YELLING from the top of our lungs to DO SOMETHING...why is no one doing anything?
Also can we get a list of all the culprits involved in voter suppression?
There was another post in another article from an Obama representative. She stated that, contrary to popular opinion, team Obama is actively fighting these slimy GOP vote suppression schemes.
The point of the article is not that Dems are doing nothing. The point of the article is that we can only overcome these corrupt GOP vote suppression schemes if we all do our part.
You gentlemen should email this post to CNN reporter Drew '"Acorn" Griffin.
What I want to know is, if our leaders truly believe that voting is so important that they will even spend tax money to buy ads telling us so, then why do they limit voting to one day in most states and set such inconvenient hours, as well as having such a limited amount of Polling Places. They should not only extend the amount of days for voting but the hours as well. As a matter of fact they should if they insist on having it on only one day make it a national "Holiday" if you will, and that way employers would not only be obligated to allow people the time to vote but folks would not incure a penalty of any kind. In addition they should have an office for voting in every Firehouse and Police station as well as Government Building in the country.
clear questions never to be answered, I believe not one single vote is counted, it is all a fraud.
The truth is so simple, lies never end, there are so many questions unanswered.
Federal law prohibits removal from the voter registration roles within the last 90 days before an election!
THEREFORE, (too late now) if you double-check your registration 89 days out, you usually still have a month to fix your registration before the election!.
I have suggested this before but I think it is something that definitely needs to be done. We ought to enlist the aid of foreign election observers via the U.N.. These observers would be unbiased and could even launch an investigation into alleged or perceived illegal election activities. Apparently there is no one that can be trusted here at home to run our own elections legally. We have sunk to the level of third world behavior. As you mentioned that many of the tactics being used by the Republicans harkens back to Old Dixie Jim Crow procedures and I am not surprised because so much of the Republican hierarchy is now of the South. Many of our present Republican Administration are Southerners from Texas. Rove, Bush and Gonzales were all from Texas. That's why their tactics don't surprise me. Apparently Republicans can't win without cheating. It's what they're good at.
Registering to vote is not rocket science. Of course an electorate that can vote in an ignoramus as President can't be that bright to begin with.
Yup, witness 1976, 1992, and 1996.
you forgot 2000, when Gore was elected president and Bush appointed.
Thank you for your courageous work, gentlemen.
http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/coke-or-pepsi/
Folks who don't have early voting in their states don't just sit there lamenting the fact. We know what the repubs are up to!
They're going to look at your ID; they're going to look at your address; they're going to look at any reason to discourage you or turn you away.
Now is the time to get your house in order so that on election day they can't tell you no!
Not only have your ducks in a row, but know what to do if they challenge you. Visit some of the sites refered to by other poster on this blog and familarize yourself with what to do when challenged.
If you know an elderly person(s) ,or young person(s), or other first time voter(s) get with them and help them organize themselves with everything they will need to vote.
Bring your ID card; utility bill; birth certificate; rental agreement or mortgage papers with an address; anything and everything to show your are a US citizen and are eligible to vote, which of course means your voter registration card as well.
Going with a group of friends will give you confidence if you are challenged.
And if you are challenged speak up and don't be meek about it make his or her job of challenging people a miserable task for the whole time he or she is there, make them dread walking up to challenge the next person in line.
This is how you beat these fascist thugs!!!!
One thing the article left out: Federal law prohibits removal from the voter registration roles within the last 90 days before an election!
THEREFORE, (too late now) if you double-check your registration 89 days out, you usually still have a month to fix your registration before the election!
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