Jennifer Brunner

If elections were like football games, this would be your two minute warning.  All of the passion, energy and renewed interest in politics that propelled the tea party movement of 2009 opens the door to a new level of involvement. As patriot groups around the country prepare for the November 2010 elections, a quiet force has been building behind the scenes.

Investigative reporter Carol Greenberg's work inside Obama's Organizing for America has already helped expose the OFA's connection to ACORN and its network of top Democrat party insiders. Greenberg's latest article explains the OFA plan to deploy rapid response teams to Ohio ahead of the elections.

Any liberal discussion of Ohio includes the sentiment that “Ohio is ground zero for the left.” Long a playground for groups like ACORN, they conducted voter experiments, filed lawsuits against the state and their voter fraud shenanigans led to a civil RICO suit brought by the Buckeye Institute. ACORN's settlement of the case required that it surrender its business license in the state.

Unfortunately for conservatives, the awareness of ACORN's network of organizations and mob like behavior come at a time when he same political workeasily be done by Obama's permanent campaign. A campaign that was absorbed into the Democratic National Committee after it ceased being Obama for America.

Obama's ACORN cronies designed a system that could be substantial from any number of leftist organizations, including the DNC.

“Apparently, ACORN and Project Vote were 'smack dab' in the middle of another one of Obama’s voter registration drives. According to ACORN reports, ACORN was Catalist’s first client. Let me be clear, the ACORN VBASE, is the archetype of the Obama campaign. ACORN’s technology combined with union money elected a president.”

Draft slides of a 2006 Project Vote PowerPoint show that Project Vote's method could produce the desired results to sway an election.

Critics of Project Vote and ACORN underestimate their effectiveness in contacting voters to move them on an issue or to the polls.

Other slides detail their plans to turn this Voter Mobilization Network over to the leftist friends (including the DNC).

The left may scoff at whether this connection exists, but Karyn Gillette, then development director of Project Vote, also gave me a copy of the 2004 DNC donor list to work from. Karyn Gillette came to Project Vote from Ohio where she was employed by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

“According to a court filing in Ohio alleging ACORN violated state Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, 'Project Vote, regularly advises Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (hereinafter “Secretary Brunner”) on election strategy, and recently issuing a news release claiming credit for Secretary Brunner’s directive restricting challenges to suspected unlawful voter registrations.'

"Maurice Thompson, the attorney handling the Ohio RICO action, told me late yesterday, 'Evidence of collusion amongst ACORN, Project Vote, the Obama Campaign and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner comes as no surprise to us -- these supposedly separate entities appear to have been co-mingling funds, trading political tips, and helping each other gain power for years now.'"

Here is a screen shot of the email Gillette sent to ACORN.org email addresses containing the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Though a number of news outlets like the New York Times had copies of the DNC donor list,  it was never made public, until today.

Click here to view the DNC major donor list ACORN used to fundraise for its voter registration drives.

The OFA's organizing machine can track millions of calls and mobilize countless volunteers and it would behoove the right to take notice. Twitter and Facebook may spread the message and connect folks but there is a serious need for some good old fashion grassroots door knocking. If conservatives are going to win in November there must be a combination of new and old organizing. In 2004 Ohio surprised the nation by going red for Bush. As many others have noted, there was initially a

...lack of outreach among African American communities. Karl Rove proved in 2004 with black voters in Ohio that persons should not assume that African Americans will consistently vote progressive."

Organizing for America has stopped the game clock with the unveiling of Vote 2010. November is the goal and they have the ball. Kickoff events are scheduled around the country for June 5th. Inviting emails with subjects like “What are you doing Saturday?” are making the rounds.

Conservatives, what are you doing this Saturday? If you want to win in November, it should be attending one of those kickoff parties. OFA, it's the new ACORN. Learn who they are and how they operate. Click here to find an event near you or to sign up for their updates. If the OFA can continue to organize to pass Obama's agenda and maintain the Congressional majorities, and all of the momentum of the past year and a half will be lost.

From the Columbus Dispatch, three staffers for Vote Today Ohio have plead guilty to illegally registering and voting in Columbus during the so-called Golden Week - a seven day period when Ohio residents could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time.

This will likely be a footnote it what was a monumental disaster perpetrated by the Ohio Secretary of State and supporters of Barack Obama.  But it highlights three important realities:

• The extreme vulnerability of Election Day Registration
• The enormous influence one highly partisan election official can have on the process
• The need to invest in ballot security programs

For those who have forgotten, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner unilaterally re-interpreted Ohio Election statutes governing the overlap of the voter registration deadline and the start of early vote to create a de-facto seven day window of Election Day Registration whereby residents could fill out an application and immediately cast a vote.

She ordered the unprepared and understaffed County Election Boards to set-up voting centers that would ensure a massive turnout. Then Brunner amazingly banned all pollwatchers from the vote centers.  Chaos without witnesses.

Many County Election Boards balked and the Ohio Republican Party unsuccessfully sued to stop her, but it was too late.

From the beginning, stories of fraud and misconduct were widely reported.  The Obama Campaign, ACORN, Vote Today Ohio, and Vote From Home were all linked to voter fraud during Golden Week. See here, here, here, here here here here here here here here 

But, as is the case when elections aren’t close, Obama’s victory overshadowed the widespread fraud of Election 2008.  But it happened in Ohio and it happened on a much larger scale then what is being reflected by three guilty pleas.  It will be interesting to see if any of the other groups named above will face similar charges.

This should be a wake up call to any state that is considering EDR without significant safeguards in place,  any political party that isn’t heavily investing in Secretary of State races, and any campaign that doesn’t have a ballot security program. 

The three who plead guilty are:

Amy Little, 50, of New York. (Ms. Little was a consultant for Congressman John Hall (D-NY) until news broke in October that she illegally voted).

Daniel Hausman, 32, of New York.

Yolanda Hipplesteele, 30, of California.

crossposted at www.electionjournal.org

Yesterday, a very important piece of information popped. The fundraising consultant for the Ohio Secretary of State in her 2006 election, Jennifer Brunner, is the Director of Development for Project Vote, Karyn Gillette.

It is easy to see how Brunner's strategy of turning of HAVA checks (and then suing to keep them off) melds nicely with ACORN/Project Vote's strategy to flood the voter rolls with fake people.

This suggests that Brunner is probably a creature of ACORN in some form. One wonders how many more Democratic Secretaries of State were backed by ACORN.

UPDATE: Brunner's office contacted me with a correction. I didn't mean to suggest that Gillette was still a consultant and I have clarified that.

Jeff Ortega, flack from Ohio Secretary of State's Jennifer Brunner's office, was just on WTAM-AM in Cleveland. After six minutes of trying to explain why you aren't actually "voting" when casting an early vote, he says "I have to go now" and hangs up on host Bob Frantz:

Listen to the absurdity below:

Fox is covering the voting issues in OH:

Transcript after the jump:

Early voting is taking place in Ohio. Through the end of the week, people can register and vote on the same day. The Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner argues that they are merely "casting their ballot" rather than "voting" so the fact that Ohio statute requires 30 days between registering and voting would not interfere.

 So here is what is happening today. People are showing up to register and vote. There is no affirmative evidence that these people have not registered or voted somewhere else. There is no control. Normally in an election, partisan election monitors are allowed into polling places so that they can police each other. But not in two counties, Franklin and Montgomery, in Ohio. Brunner also issued an advisory opinion to counties saying that they are not required to allow election monitors. Watch an election observer be turned away.

Now if you want to see what is actually happening on the ground? This video shows interviews with people who are voting in Franklin County, where Republican election monitors are not being allowed into polling places.

 My favorite is the quote:

It's a perfect opportunity for them to come in, register at a temporary address like a homeless shelter or a YMCA or something like that. They can register at that address because they don't know where they're going to be tomorrow or next week."

The registrar also doesn't know where they will be. And there is nothing stopping that person from registering at a different location tomorrow (or later today).

Note that Brunner cannot be said to be simply trying to protect the franchise. After all, she directed county officials to discard absentee ballot applications. These are just partisan hacks interested in winning elections. If that means stealing votes... I wonder how much that bothers her?