voter registration

As patriots from across America prepare to descend on Washington, DC to protest the government takeover of health care, the Obama administration is touting the impending vote in the House of Representatives as “historic.” Progressive organizations have been preparing for the moment for decades and not even the outcry of millions of Americans will stop them from pushing their radical agenda through.

Ironically, the past week has been filled with numerous stories of how ACORN is disbanding across the country. News outlets from Politico to the New York Times run stories detailing the demise of ACORN. Of course, some are skeptical about whether ACORN is truly going away:

"In an age of lawlessness, rules for some out of government favor, and special privileges for special classes, racketeers and criminals need only change their suit and their hat and live another day to rob, steal, cheat, and engage in human trafficking... "

Conveniently for the Obama administration the “demise” of ACORN could not have come at a better time. As pictures of empty ACORN offices fill the news, Obama pushes forward with an ACORN planned and approved agenda.

In July of last year ACORN honored the work of Senator Charles Schumer, Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Rep. Maxine Waters at their 39th Anniversary celebration. The invitation email stated:

"P.S. ACORN’s grassroots leadership believes we are experiencing a once-in-a-generation opportunity and must not squander this moment. Your generosity is needed now more than ever. Thanks."

ACORN's socialist agenda has always included some form of universal health care and like many of its “campaigns” this is not the first time ACORN has pushed for national change. The group, which was founded in Arkansas 40 years ago, maintained friendly relations with Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas and then President. The result of this relationship was HillaryCare. Americans fought back and ACORN was forced to back down. However, ACORN was not defeated and began to put a set of conditions in place that in the right political climate, would ensure victory. Michelle Malkin explains a 2008 ACORN memo on why Obamacare is so important:

“Why do they want Obamacare? An internal ACORN memo I obtained from August 2008 makes the motives clear. 'Over our 38 years, health care organizing has never been a major focus either nationally or locally for ACORN,' wrote ACORN Philadelphia region director Craig Robbins. 'But increasingly, ACORN offices around the country are doing work on health care.' The goal: 'Building ACORN Power.' The memo outlines the ACORN/HCAN partnership and strategy of opposing any programs that rely on “unregulated private insurance” – and then parlaying political victory on government-run health care 'to move our ACORN agenda (or at least part of it) with key electeds that we might otherwise not be able to pull off.'

The objective, in other words, is to piggyback and exploit Obamacare to improve and protect their political health.”

ACORN's famous liberal experiments were never outwardly dubbed as socialist action items but within the ranks of employees we knew that what made ACORN great was “fighting capitalism.” By never using certain words with members and outsiders, ACORN painted a picture of the poor rising out of poverty and demanding their fair share. In 2006 ACORN partnered with SEIU on several healthcare campaigns across the country

In California, home of Maxine Waters, ACORN's healthcare campaign in San Francisco mirrors the same tactics used by Obama to pass Obamacare.

“Health: Last year (’05) we saved health clinics. This year we provided the field experience to win a form of universal healthcare. David Sharples staffed the leadership on the campaign with leader Gisselle Quesada. Using the tax program to survey people on health needs, we were able to build a quick base, identify members who could put a face on the problem, and move numerous members on multiple fronts to move the key supervisor and win the campaign.”

According to the 2006 report, ACORN has been working with hospitals to introduce "universal healthcare" at the local levels and that success was the precursor to Obamacare.

The excerpts above are from a 2006 report available here.

The report goes on to state that even ACORN's non-profit affiliate Project Vote was somehow involved in healthcare

"Our issue-based GOTV program targeted some 686,796 people for an average of three contacts each. For example, Project Vote’s GOTV workers knocked on 396,273 doors in Ohio alone. Similar to our Voter Registration work, canvassers relate participation in the elections to salient issues in low- and moderate-income communities, such as healthcare..."

Critics on the left will state that it is a coincidence that ACORN and Obama's old employer Project Vote are both advocating for government run healthcare, but all of the evidence suggests that Obama and Congress are settling debts with their old friends.

Before the ACORN embezzlement scandal and the prostitution videos ACORN was more open about its influence on Capitol Hill. The aforementioned 2006 report has another tidbit about the ACORN political machine:

Immediately after the 2006 mid-term elections when the Democrats took control of Congress members were made aware of who put them there. ACORN used its organizing and voter registration arms to set the stage for Obamacare. Newbies like Democrats Sherrod Brown and Claire Mccaskill were just as beholden to ACORN as long standing members of Congress from ACORN districts. The excerpt and screen shot can also be found in the 2006 report:

"Furthermore, we are working to make sure that key leaders in Congress fully understand the role that ACORN played in the 2006 elections: we are working collaboratively with the political department to ensure that the impact of our political work is widely known and appreciated."

According to insiders, before the 2008 election ACORN and SEIU were so confident that Obama would win that a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico had an agenda that included a session entitled: Emerging Strategies III: Healthcare – Regime Change Priority with Richard Kirsch, Executive Director HCAN: Health Care for America Now

Regime Change?  A quick look at Wikipedia gives us an inkling as to what ACORN and SEIU are up to:

"In politics, a regime is the form of government: the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc. that regulate the operation of government and its interactions with society. For instance, the United States has one of the oldest regimes still active in the world, dating to the ratification of its Constitution in 1789.

The term is also used to distinguish what is actually being enforced from what is considered legitimate. Enforcement of an unconstitutional statute would be a regime but not a law."

IIf one follows the money, one name (not surprisingly) emerges: George Soros. The Soros backed Democracy Alliance has pumped untold millions into groups that include ACORN and the architect of Obama's permanent campaign (Organizing for America), Harold Ickes's Catalist. The Democracy Alliance vision includes changing America through initiatives like health care.

With leftist billionaires lining up to ensure a permanent majority, the march towards socialism has been a well funded one.

"...George Soros and other wealthy liberals formed a loose-knit group to consider how to fund a political comeback. Their answer: Create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups—a kind of 'vast left-wing conspiracy' to compete with the conservative movement. The group they created –called the Democracy Alliance (DA)..."

Though the fall of ACORN was not anticipated, ACORN like the DA is a taxable nonprofit and its structure allows for such restructuring. Taxable nonprofit?  Matthew Vadum explains:

"Rob Stein explained the group’s legal structure to the Hudson panel:

'It is a taxable nonprofit. Think of it as a corporation that does not make a profit and doesn’t aspire to make a profit. We’re an association of individuals....'

"In other words, the DA has no interest in asking the IRS to register it as tax-exempt or to allow contributions to it to be tax-deductible. Were the DA to request tax-exemption as a 501(c)(4) lobby group or as a 527 political group, it would have to abide by a dizzying array of legal constraints. Members of the Democracy Alliance may want to impose Big Government bureaucracy and red tape on Americans, but the friends of George Soros are too rich to be bothered."

Was ACORN willing to go underground to save Obamacare? Is the Pope Catholic? ACORN's own 5 Year Political Plan describes a structure that is local in nature and prides itself on being that way.

ACORN's temporary fall from grace will allow it to go underground with the tacit support of the White House and use Obamacare to rally its base for a 2012 victory unless the ACORN roots of Obama's socialist agenda are exposed.

Part II of our inside look at Organizing for America was inspired by the investigative work done by Carol Greenberg Thank you Carol for getting involved and driving this story.

Anita MonCrief

From a tiny acorn, a mighty oak can grow. With ACORN's help, Barack Obama "grew" from an ACORN community organizer and instructor, to an ACORN lawyer and ACORN benefactor as a board member of donor organizations, to an ACORN-backed Illinois state senator, to ACORN's favorite United States Senator, to ACORN's candidate for President of the United States in 2008. This article shows how ACORN and its allies helped organize America to make Obama President in this, the computer age.

Barack Obama's meteoric rise from rookie Senator to President had man marveling at the efficiency and breadth of his campaign. Obama's ability to fund raise had seasoned experts playing catch up while his voter registration money machine operated in the background. In 2008, the New York Times explored a seemingly innocent tactic the Democrats were utilizing to elect Obama. The article stated several times that the Republicans had honed this technique and Democrats were just “borrowing the play.”

“For years, Republicans had the landscape to themselves. More recently, however, Democrats, along with such allies as trade unions and progressive groups, have poured millions of dollars into building two formidable databanks. One is managed by the Democratic National Committee and can be used by candidates up and down the ballot. The other is Catalist, a for-profit company headed by Harold M. Ickes, a Democratic political operative, that specializes in providing data for scores of liberal groups supporting the Democratic ticket as well as for the Obama campaign itself.”

Progressive organizations, trade unions and a for profit group run by someone who had been implicated in the radical Teamstergate saga of the 1990's? The crack reporting of The Times glossed over this toxic mix, and the Obama machine kept running.

Harold Ickes' company, Catalist, has been credited with creating this machine:

“Catalist collects and stores millions of pieces of information from public records and commercial sources. In addition to voting rolls and tax information, it also has data about voters' magazine subscriptions and their cars. Campaigns also contribute e-mails, cell-phone numbers and even times when people are likely to be home.

Ickes, 69, said that by using Catalist the Obama campaign is able to generate data as detailed as lists of swing voters who are home in the afternoon in a six-block neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. The list can even suggest which voters would be receptive to a pitch based on Obama's 'change' theme, and which may be more interested in his health-care or energy policies."

The origin of Catalist is intriguing and appears firmly rooted in the same community organizing spirit that has spread throughout the country.

“Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” -Barack Obama

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN spent a number of years perfecting an organizing model that resembled that of Catalist and the Obama Campaign. ACORN's close “affiliate” Project Vote detailed their efforts in a 2007 report:

“The Pilot Technology Project carried out during the summer and fall of 2006 was a first attempt to integrate the potential of high quality enhanced data developed for voter participation programs with on-going grassroots community organizing programs. Building upon the work of Catalist (formerly Data Warehouse LLC), Project Vote deployed an updated version of our online voter management system (VBASE) to enable local community organizations to access a robust voter file with enhanced phone numbers, geographic and demographic information for use in voter mobilization, membership development and organizational capacity building.”

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.

To understand the importance of Catalist to the Obama Campaign and later Organizing for America I have included the educational screen shot below.

The writer of the article above sums up the relationship this way:

"Think of MyBo / Party Builder / VAN Votebuilders as being the tool sets and interface for volunteers, staff and field organizers, and Catalist as being the organizer and repository for the data as it flowed in and out of various OFA systems.”

A 2005 Year End ACORN Political Operations PowerPoint further illustrates ACORN's involvement in the creation of the system that powers the President.

Matthew Vadum's profile on the OFA offers some background on the major players but the hows and whys have largely gone unnoticed. In addition to a payment made from Obama for America directly to an ACORN affiliate, Project Vote managed to secure the Obama 2nd 2007 donor list. After all, this cross sharing among campaigns, non-profits and unions appears to have been the goal of the ACORN VBASE. A 2007 report the the Beldon Fund regarding a $75,000 grant lays the groundwork.

“The reason that VBASE, a customized database system has such value in the work of Project Vote's field partners, such as ACORN, is because the model of groups like ACORN integrates year-round community organizing with heavy bursts of civic engagement work.”

ACORN insiders describe the Obama presidency as a “once in a generation opportunity” and ACORN was prepared to make it happen. Research uncovered details the concerted effort of a myriad of non-profit, 527's LINK and union organizations skirting campaign finance and IRS codes. While ACORN is not directly involved with the Voter Activation Network, ACORN affiliates/partners are. America Votes, SEIU, State Voices and even the DNC's owned VoteBuilder share information through this alliance.

In 2007, Project Vote was ready to launch their “beta” phase of the VBASE project and targeted a state that had been made friendly by the election of ACORN ally Ohioan Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner:

“The initial beta version of our 2006-07 database was piloted in Ohio by one of our local community partners. This pre-launch was a bug-testing period for the new system, addressing issues of file access, remote support, and appropriate server load.”

Brunner campaign consultant, Karyn Gillette was set to join Project Vote after successful work on the Brunner, Sherrod Brown and ACORN connected Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage campaigns. Meanwhile, Obama was running a massive campaign in Ohio and ACORN's partnership with Catalist allowed a for profit business to market their state of the art organizing technology:

"The success of this program is such that Project Vote will be incorporating it into its 2007-08 Voter Participation Program. While we are still wrestling with the details, we are committed to rolling out this sophisticated and robust system to support the civic engagement efforts of our local partners as they pursue voter registration and voter education programs and as they integrate those efforts into their on-going community organizing programs"

The perfect marriage of ACORN and Catalist was made possible by the deep pockets of the unions:

“Michael Podhorzer, Deputy Political Director of the AFL-CIO, has said: 'Catalist is an essential part of the foundation necessary for building progressive political power in our country. The labor movement relies on the state of the art political technology services provided by Catalist and we are proud to be an early subscriber.'

Discover the Networks goes on to explain the motivation behind Catalist:

"Reasoning from the premise that the United States is a nation rife with racism and injustice, Catalist notes its commitment "to using [its] talents and technology to nurture a vibrant, growing, progressive community, and to working with that community towards a more just, equitable and tolerant America.”

Obama has repeatedly denied any real ties to ACORN. If Obama is lying about organizing, could this mean that there is another purpose over at Organizing for America. Over the summer the nation witnessed the President call out this ready brigade to pass health care and stifle dissent. It's time for the mainstream media to focus on what ACORN is really doing.

The "history making" Obama machine was directly engineered by ACORN's voter database experiments. ACORN's sister organization, Project Vote, received tax exempt money to fund a venture with the for-profit Catalist. Catalist, the Voter Activation Network, SEIU and America Votes provided the needed cover that allowed ACORN to operate in the background.

Without regard for tax codes or campaign laws; candidates and groups like America Votes, SEIU, Project Vote and other "progressive organizations" at times share staff, resources and donors. ACORN boasts over 440,000 member families and Obama benefited from the free flowing data between the campaign and ACORN provided by Catalist.  America is now facing a progressive agenda backed by a ready army of paid organizers trained in ACORN tactics, and the name Organizing for America seems to be missing a question mark.

So we get the info babe on ABC (radio) NEWS broadcasting that ONLY EIGHTY FIVE THOUSAND jobs were lost last month. “The good news is that the recession has turned the corner”. WHAT?? WHAT!! Geez, give me some of what she’s smoking! How convoluted does your thinking and your grasp of reality have to be to spin that figure into something positive?

The Labor Department today revealed the really sad and frightening truth without intending to. Since His Emptiness Barack the First’s February stimulus, in the amount of THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY BILLION DOLLARS of your money, THREE POINT TWO MILLION PEOPLE are no longer in the workforce. That’s the bottom line figure. Three point two million jobs, in the face of billions and billions of precious national wealth taken and misapplied in a thousand different ways, sending the money into the hands of all the WRONG people for all the wrong reasons.

In the meantime, the BARACK HUSSEIN regime’s assault on the American people and the economic engine that actually drives job growth in this country, SMALL BUSINESS goes on unabated. It’s SO bad out there that 661,000 people stopped looking for employment in December, even as Obama was trumpeting that his administration had “created 4000 jobs”. Umm, let me guess Obama… GOVERNMENT jobs, right?

I’ve heard Rush Limbaugh postulate that Obama’s real agenda is to utterly destroy this country’s economy in order to better facilitate the imposition of an extreme leftist socialist agenda as visualized by him. I’ve heard several GOP leaders state their fears in the same vein. Then Newt Gingrich just recently said much the same thing in a different way. This has been something I had under my hat but was unwilling to unload on Obama, even given my undisguised dislike for him. Accusing him of out-and-out counter revolution, against the revolution that formed this greatest of all experiments into the freedom of man, property, thought and religion, would be tantamount to accusing him of blatant treason against the people and the Constitution of the United States of America. Frankly, in view of the cumulative evidence I’m less certain than ever that this man has the interests of the people and this country at heart.

Once again we have the issue: We are a people of laws and we seek redress through legal ballot – yet even now as I write, the ultra-sleazy Barney Frank is trying to put forth an automatic voter registration act that would guarantee the registration of potentially millions of illegal and illegitimate voters. Stealing the votes of honest taxpaying citizens. WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS…….

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

According to a report from Ohio today, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has asked the ACORN-tainted Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to investigation ACORN's voter registration work in the state.

“U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan has formally asked Ohio's secretary of state to look into allegations that ACORN had at least a preliminary plan to back Democrat candidates in key Ohio congressional races in 2008.”

The political plan was described in an October article as “having been scaled back,” and of course, ACORN denied any partisan activity.

“But to some, ACORN's early 13-page plan for the 2008 election reinforces what critics always assumed: The group's goal was never nonpartisan. The political plan and other ACORN documents show that the group was interested not just in helping presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom it urged its members to support, according to post-election Federal Election Commission reports. ACORN also was interested in Congress and the Ohio Statehouse.

"There's no question that ACORN strategized to figure out how its election efforts could maximize the benefit for selected Democratic candidates in the most competitive races," U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California told The Plain Dealer. “

An illuminating  fact not mentioned in either article is that ACORN prepared political plans for several key battleground states in 2006 and again during the 2007-08 election cycle. As evidenced by the draft plans developed in the Spring of 2006 by the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) of ACORN Political Operations, these plans were aimed at electing “progressives” and in some cases broke down the Congressional districts by race for maximum targeting. SWORD, which was staffed by Project Vote staff, including myself, worked with ACORN head organizers in FL, MD, MI, MN, OH, PA, and RI to create local documents for the ACORN field staff to implement and present to funders and/or various partner organizations.

A copy of the Maryland and Colorado draft plans from 2006 are available online. Key parts of the plans are the contact and Congressional district sections at the end. For example, in the Maryland plan, it calls for mailings and face to face contact. A screen shot of the type of mailing Marylanders received is shown below.

ACORN used Project Vote staff and computers to create the PowerPoint “Campaign for a New Congress." This PowerPoint was aimed at swaying the Congressional election in Maryland from Albert Wynn to ACORN ally Donna Edwards. Using the final political plan, ACORN canvassed voters and mailed pieces through its affiliate Communities Voting Together.

Campaign for a New Congress

Communities Voting Together has the same address as the Project Vote office in DC and its address on the screen shot above is the same Elysian Fields address where hundreds of other ACORN entities "reside.

As a 527 group, Communities Voting Together paid over 150,000 to Citizen's Services Inc, and contributed to Wade Rathke's Chief Organizer Fund. Jeff Robinson is listed as the contact for Communities Voting Together and some may remembered Robinson from the 2008 elections (emphasis mine):

"In fact, the Obama campaign paid an ACORN-run organization more than $800,000. In Federal Election Commission required filings, the Obama campaign reported that this money was paid for polling, advance work and event staging. After watchdog scrutiny called this claim into question, the Obama campaign revised its filing and acknowledged that CSI was paid for “get-out-the-vote” projects.

CSI Executive Vice President Jeff Robinson last August told Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter David M. Brown that CSI is a 'separate organization entirely' from ACORN. But as Brown reported, CSI has the same office address as ACORN’s national headquarters, ACORN itself described CSI in 2006 as its 'campaign services entity.' Coincidentally, the widely identified “national deputy political director for campaigns and elections” for ACORN is...Jeff Robinson."

ACORN's shell corporations make it easy for a political plan to become a partisan voter registration drive facilitated by thin veiled “partnerships.” The filing reports of Communities Voting Together raise a number of questions, including whether the misspelling of the name on the filing was intentional. The payments to various ACORN entities should give any astute lawmaker pause.

ACORN has been able to claim that it never worked in some recent elections including NY-23, but as this screen shoot illustrates, Communities Voting together was mailing and passing out door knockers in 2006 for Corzine in New Jersey (without a mention of ACORN).

Will ACORN backed officials like Jennifer Brunner (who has her eye on a Senate seat) and officials in Maryland and Colorado take notices of these obvious attempts to elect Democrats, or will they continue to turn a blind eye to ACORN in order to save themselves?

ARRA News Service - Dan Spencer reports that in Ohio, a state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit was against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The lawsuit alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN's dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities. According to the press release, Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN's actions deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process:

They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters. "The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right," Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said. "ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state's roles in the process," Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. "Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes," he added. In the complaint, Thompson cites an accumulation of evidence showing numerous instances of admitted fraud by ACORN employees, as well as individuals solicited by ACORN. "In light of its hiring, training and compensation practices, ACORN should have known its conduct would cause fraud," Thompson said. "It also should know that its conduct will cause fraud in the future." In addition, the complaint cites conduct by ACORN in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

TBlumer reports Obama’s name comes up at least three times in the complaint:

(Page 3) 18. Defendant is engaged in massive voter registration drives and political canvassing throughout the state of Ohio and the United States of America; some of this work is performed on behalf of current United States of America presidential candidate Barack Obama. (Page 3) 19. ACORN’s political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, and during the primary season, the Obama camp paid Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Citizen Services, Inc. and ACORN share the same board of directors. (Page 9) 69. In Texas, where ACORN’s affiliate, Citizens Services Inc., has provided contract work on behalf of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the Houston Chronicle reported on August 17, 2008 that “About 40 percent of the 27,000 registration cards gathered by ACORN from January through July have been rejected or placed in limbo pending the gathering of more information, according to the county” while “about 6,600 were filled out by people already registered, and many others contained insufficient information.” A full copy of the complaint is available here.

See also: ACORN Registers a 7 Year Old Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote Obama Invites ACORN To Shape Presidency Stop ACORN Now

This is a public service announcement.

Did you register to vote recently near Albuquerque? If so, you might have given your Social Security number, indeed all the information necessary to commit identity theft, to a child rapist. In particular, this guy.

You see, New Mexico ACORN hired this guy, along with a bunch of other criminals to register voters. In New Mexico, according to the Bernallilo County Clerk, where this happened, this is the infromation needed:

Name, gender, birth date, social security number, residence address, mailing address (if different from your residence) party affiliation, telephone number (optional), date and signature.  

Would you trust this information with a child rapist or any other kind of felon? No.

Then why does ACORN pay them? What the story on the evening news last night:

Note that one of these guys has actually been convicted on two counts of credit card fraud. Shouldn't there be some sort of background check for people who are paid to collect this information?

H/T to Election Journal.

Warner Todd Huston just wrote about ACORN embezzling issues. Thankfully, we just gave a criminal organization another chunk of change in the Housing Bill. Allegedly, it was to push more people into subprime loans, which they have been doing for the last decade or so. Of course, that was a bad idea.

Another big project of theirs is voter registration.  Like so many voter-reg groups, like the one below, they are premised on a business model that incentivizes illegality. Watch this:

If Barack Obama were to win Virginia by a handful of votes, this would be a fundamental part of how it happened. The Obama campaign, ACORN, and Congressional Democrats are planning for that.

Somehow it was a priority for Congressional Democrats to fund people illegally register voters, but it isn't to defend the right to vote for our soldiers.

H/T Election Journal.

  People in the Kansas City area can move across the state line and re-register to vote, and unknowingly become registered voters in both Kansas and Missouri. Such folks vote in their “new” state and are likely not even aware they are still registered in their “old” state. Legally, a voter cannot vote twice in both states, but it’s unclear whether such a voter accidentally registered in both states could vote in either their “old” state or their “new” state. And who would know if they did?

A prominent member of the Kansas City Star’s staff moved across the state line from Kansas to Missouri and re-registered to vote in Missouri, but is still an “active” registered voter in Kansas — more than 10 years later. For some reason, the Kansas City, Missouri Board of Election Commissioners never notified Johnson County, Kansas the voter re-registered in Missouri.

Meanwhile, the Johnson County, Kansas Election Office mails out voter registration cards to Johnson County voters at least every two years. Likely because family members still lived at the old address, as many as five mailings of voter registration cards were likely never returned as “undeliverable” by the post office, so the Johnson County officials never learned the voter now lives and votes in Missouri.

Federal Law requires that an election office keep a voter on the rolls until they have missed two presidential elections. The Kansas City Star staff member missed the last two presidential elections in Kansas (and all other elections, too, for over 10 years). It’s unclear why Johnson County officials, and other election offices, in Kansas are not more pro-active in removing such names from the list of voters. A Meadowlark article from early this year showed that over 50,000 voters in Kansas have not cast ballots since 1999 and could be removed from the rolls without violating Federal Law.

Acording to voter history from the Missouri Secretary of State, the Star staff member did cast a ballot in the last two presidential elections in Missouri (and a number of of other elections). But there’s nothing stopping this Star staff member from returning and voting in Kansas, since this person is an “active” registered voter in Kansas according to the list of voters recently obtained from the Kansas Secretary of State.

Several weeks ago, Gov. Sebelius vetoed a bill that would require a photo ID to vote in Kansas. This bill may have disenfranchised the Star staff member from voting in Kansas, but that person can still vote in Missouri. Why is it unreasonable to expect a voter to have an ID to vote in Kansas? Why is a voter ID check-and-balance too unreasonable to vote, when one must have two IDs just to work in the U.S.?

In late April the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID Law. In Kansas, we should vote for legislators this year are willing to protect the integrity of our elections, especially with the large number of voters on the list of voters who likely should not be on the list. In the next legislative session, we need sufficient legislators to pass this bill again, and override any veto by Gov. Sebelius, if necessary.

[editor’s note: The Kansas City Star staff member has not returned two E-mails requesting information for this article. The person will not be identified by name, without permission, since the person has done nothing to warrant public scrutiny about voter registration. This Kansas-Missouri “connection” was discovered by accident while researching another project.]

From the Kansas Meadowlark, June 6, 2008.

Related:

• Kansas May Have About 190,000 Phantom Voters: Could Voter Fraud in Kansas Be Relatively Easy?, Kansas Meadowlark, Jan 13, 2008.
• Can Google Street Views Be Used to Find Registered Voters at Empty Lots in Wyandotte County?, Kansas Meadowlark, Feb 21, 2008.