Vote Fraud

Its been said that Democrats have two growing electoral bases: trial lawyers and voter fraud.

Republican candidates who get screwed in elections by Democrat / Leftist / ACORN voter fraud is so common that its deserving of its own Wylie Coyote routine.

This year, its time we stand up and fight.

We can send Jon Corzine packing this year if we prevent him & the New Jersey political machine from stealing yet another election.

The same goes for a myriad of other races today.

So, today we fight back.

And we fight back with Web 2.0.

Here are four simple ways to report voter fraud:

Twitter | use #votefraud hashtag

YouTube | visit http://www.youtube.com/group/votefraud09

Flickr | visit: http://www.flickr.com/groups/votefraud

Facebook | visit: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=214486540096

 [UPDATE: 3:23 PST 11/3/09]:  John Henke requested that we add links to "prove" that vote fraud was occurring.  Or had occurred. 

I can't speak for this year's election (yet).  Hopefully as a result of Web 2.0, we won't have to.

But as for past instances of vote fraud, my definition of vote fraud INCLUDES vote registration fraud (some people differ).  Check these links out.  Also, John Fund has an excellent book that i highly recommend reading.

Everything in Congress hangs on 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, the Democrats have 57 Senators plus Joe Lieberman. They could get one more if the Minnesota recount in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is decided in their favor. It is beginning to appear that the Democrats are settling on a strategy of attempting to seat Franken after the state courts decide, regardless of where the underlying issues stand.

For example, check out this quote from Chuck Schumer in The Hill:

"We believe the law of Minnesota requires a candidate to be certified after all the state appeals are through, whether someone applies to the federal court or not," said Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

While Republicans are talking about this going to the Supreme Court, Democrats are playing that down. On Friday, Richard Hasen, who normally writes the excellent and critical Election Law Blog, argued at the blog of the American Constitution Society that SCOTUS wouldn't be likely to take the case. At dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of Democratic staffers and operatives, they all sang from this playbook.

This strategy seems calculated to avoid the hard question in this case.

Ben Ginsburg, Coleman's attorney, asks this question at Redstate

:

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

If the Democrats move forward on trying to seat Franken before the whole process winds down, they will be, in essence, short-circuiting the judgement of the court with "yes" answers to all these questions. Ultimately, the fundamental question that Democratic Senators will be voting that votes don't have to be treated the same everywhere.

They will be asserting that these kinds of facts should have no impact:

These voters remain disenfranchised because the Court changed the rules of the game on Friday, February 13th – long after the Election Day votes had been counted. Two and a half weeks into the trial and again yesterday, the court announced it would apply a “strict compliance” standard to judging the 11,000 unopened absentee ballots. That stands in contrast to the evidence at trial which showed that on Election Day, Minnesota’s counties and cities permitted ballots that “substantially complied” with the state’s laws to be counted. Altering the Election Day standard meant that thousands of ballots that would have been allowed on Election Day in most counties are now disallowed by the contest court.

ACORN is fighting back hard against the damage they're doing to the Obama campaign, and 2008's most entertaining special interest group--Journalists for Obama--is fighting back with them.

(You know that Journalists for Obama are part of the pushback when they start putting vote fraud in quotes, as in "McCain decries 'vote fraud'").

In Part II, I'll discuss why the reasons ACORN and their friends in the media are putting forward are both poor and irrelevant excuses for ACORN's conduct.

Right now, I just want to focus on those halcyon days not so long ago when the left and the DNC were against fraud.

It was 2004 and Ralph Nader was running for president. Still livid at Nader from the 2000 presidential fiasco, a cadre of Democrats and leftists led by Toby Moffett sprang into action. In state after state, Moffett tasked what was a team of ultimately 95 lawyers from 53 Democrat-associated law firms to get Nader kicked off the ballot in states where his name had already been certified by election officials to appear. The effort succeeded in 18 states and led to Nader's 2007 lawsuit, Nader v. the Democratic National Committee; SEIU and the Soros-funded America Coming Together participated in the anti-ballot access activities of Moffett's gang of election integrity lawyers.

The Democrats repeatedly told Kit Seelye, who covered the whole sorry debacle for the New York Times, that, aw shucks, they had no partisan motivation to kick Nader off ballots he'd already been certified for. No! They just couldn't sleep in their beds for the thought that some of the signatures on petitions might have been duplicates or forgeries and that's what motivated them to swoop into one Secretary of State office after the next to ruthlessly scrutinize signatures gathered on street corners for any little nit they could pick.

For example, in Oregon in 2004, "the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed Mr. Kerry, said that an initial examination of signatures filed there found that at least two-thirds were forged, had the wrong address or otherwise constituted what the union called ''overwhelming and systemic fraud'".  The horror!  Overwhelming and systemic fraud!

( Democrats' legal challenges impede Nader campaign )

To read the NYT's October Nader Ballot Petitions Present a Phone Book Full of Problems and compare it to the deification of ACORN one knows not whether to laugh or weep.

Try, "The Democrats, however, accuse Mr. Nader of knowingly committing fraud. While it is not illegal to pay people to collect signatures, lawyers argue that the campaign submitted signatures despite knowing that the people who collected them had simply copied names, alphabetically, from the phone book. "We think that signing papers to get someone on the ballot is a sacred process, and people ought to follow the law," said Efrem Grail, a lawyer on the team that disputed signatures in Pittsburgh. "Ralph Nader ought to know better. And you know what, he does know better."

Four short years later, and the mainstream media believes that voter fraud is just a tiny little problem on the margin, nothing to expose, and at worst the inevitable side effect of the heroic work of registering voters, whereas back in 2004, fraud was cause for grave concern and the work of signature collectors standing on sidewalks asking people to engage in the political process was close to a criminal enterprise.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking, and it doesn't end there.

Stay tuned.

Tuesday, my post 'ACORN's 15 State Strategy for Voter Fraud' provoked a great deal of response across the Interwebz. I don't believe it alone was responsible for the Left's development of talking points but said points were clearly in evidence. Discussion at The Next Right was most brisk with Leftist memes posted in abundance.

The short version? ACORN is the victim, not the criminal, so it can't be involved in vote fraud! ACORN has never been convicted of vote fraud so it can't be involved! ACORN reported its own fraudulent registrations so it can't be involved! ACORN cooperated with the investigations so it can't be involved! Real vote fraud only happens while casting a vote at the polls so ACORN can't be involved. Statements to the contrary are based on isolated incidents so ACORN can't be involved! ACORN isn't responsible for the actions of a few bad eggs who make them look bad so it can't be involved. It's the start of a multi-state victim strategy.

Of course this only works if the protests are legitimate. Let's take a look.

"Vote fraud can only happen at the polls!" would seem the most exonerating objection. But this is a straw man. After all, ACORN is an organization, not a person, so it cannot vote at all, fraudulently or otherwise. Yet ACORN is being investigated for vote fraud. How can that be? Because the law does not confine vote fraud to merely voting behavior.

While I've not spoken with all of them, I called election officials for the 13 states from Tuesday's post asking about vote fraud definitions. Those I spoke with agreed "vote fraud" was best seen as a single, general term covering several, specific crimes. Actually voting fraudulently is vote fraud as are any number of actions, including fraudulently registering voters, fraudulently registering to vote and more. Investigations of such behavior by ACORN, its employees or agents are vote fraud investigations.

Ditto for convictions. One ACORN apologist, Timothy, has continually asked me to produce a single conviction of ACORN for vote fraud. The Wall Street Journal says it happened in Wisconsin and Colorado. Timothy says he followed my links. Perhaps he missed the one for Washington state. Rotten Acorn notes in this case, "Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history." ACORN settled the case. The settlement agreement is here. It's all about what ACORN agrees to in order to avoid getting hammered.

ACORN's agreement addresses the next objection: ACORN isn't the bad guy; their self-policing makes them a good guy!. As with any such claim, the devil's in the details. King County gave ACORN a pass if they self-reported problem registrations within 14 days. Self-reporting from 15-30 days earned them a $250 fine per incident. Over 30 days brought a $1,000 per incident fine. The question isn't so much does ACORN self police as when. The WSJ's John Fund has some insight into the answer out of Kansas City.

Finally, in the King County settlement ACORN agreed (as did all the election officials I asked about this) they can be held liable for the actions of their employees. No longer can they hide, as they have before, behind the excuse a few bad eggs ruined their reputation. Prosecutors may, for reasons of their own, choose not to prosecute the organization, but it's a real option.

Washington state found ACORN's personnel oversight to be "virtually nonexistant." Their training seemed little better. King County demanded the same solution to the problem I suggested; change your business practices! Train and supervise your employees well. Tell them what breaking election law can mean. The King County case was last year, 2007. Why, then, is ACORN still having problems if all they are really committed to is, as Timothy says, conducting "... a very successful effort to register voters."

There are major elections every two years and scores of lesser ones every year. With all that's at stake, there will always be charges of fraud. But when one group routinely attracts accusations of wrongdoing, perhaps it's time to look at them. Regarding ACORN, I say, "Democrats, perhaps it's time to wash your hands of them." No voter registration organization has a track record even remotely close to ACORN's. And a rotten acorn can't produce a healthy tree.

It really is as serious as I make it out to be. Including the 13 states with ACORN problems this year, since 1998, the following states have had problems with ACORN. Beyond their 15 state vote fraud strategy, ACORN now has a 19 state victim strategy. And ACORN only operates in 38 states. This is big and getting bigger. If mighty oaks truly grow from little acorns, there's no surer proof than this. I think a call to the arborist is in order!

Arkansas / Colorado / Connecticut / Florida / Indiana / Louisiana / Michigan / Minnesota / Missouri / Nevada / New Mexico / North Carolina / Ohio / Pennsylvania / Texas / Virginia / Washington / Wisconsin.

Blue Collar Muse

Promoted. -Patrick

Much has been made of the Democrats 50 state strategy to win the election.  Who knew there was a fall back 15 state strategy to steal it if they couldn’t win it?

Americans who haven’t heard about ACORN and voter fraud haven’t been paying attention. Some have been hearing about it for years. Others are just now hearing after waking up to find elections upon us once again. Seems like every couple of years there’s an election and whenever there is, there’s talk about people trying to steal it.

This year is no different. But for the first time, the fraud seems massive and everywhere.  And most all the fingers are pointing at ACORN.  They are political activists, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. According to Wikipedia, ACORN ” … is a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, health care and other social issues.” Wikipedia has frozen further edits to ACORN’s page because people can’t agree; according to others, ACORN is a Liberal group committed to electing Democrats by any means possible, legal and illegal.

Prior to 2008, while ACORN was a player in terms of voter fraud, there wasn’t much to report.  My first memory is South Dakota from 2002. This year ACORN is under scrutiny in over a fourth of America’s 50 states.