election fraud

While CT's had it's share of scoundrels elected to office through the years, the actual mechanics of elections here have been pretty clean. The exceptions have been urban Democratic areas where dead people have maintained their franchise via absentee ballot fraud. But first we had ACORN and their wave of spurious registrants in 2008. And now similar practices may be seeping into the Republican primary in the 5th District. 

Enter Mark Greenberg. At some point Mark Greenberg entered CT from NY after making lots of money in Gotham real estate. Mr. Greenberg took no role in local affairs besides contributing to an animal shelter. He never worked for a local Republican campaign nor wrote any checks to any of our candidates. No letters to the editor supporting Republican causes or candidates either. At some point after Scott Brown's victory speech Mr. Greenberg became convinced an outsider should be CT 5's next Congressman and he would spent over a million dollars to do that. His platform is boilerplate GOP rhetoric unleavened by any data points of performance. 

Unfortunately for Greenberg, by that point State Senator Sam Caligiuri and State military liason Justin Bernier were already in the race and gaining endorsements and grassroots support.  So at the June convention, having convinced virtually no party activists to support his bid, Greenberg said he'd get on the primary ballot against Caligiuri and Bernier via petition.  Maybe a campaign noted only for push-polling the candidates in the race simply turned people off.

CT law allows someone without support at a party convention to qualifiy for a primary ballot by getting 2% of party members to sign a petition. In CT 5 that's about 2,000 names. CT law is also very specific about who is supposed to circulate petitions; they have to be circulated by a registered party member. And this person is supposed to personally witness each signature on the petition to prevent fraud.

Mr. Greenberg didn't feel the need to follow the traditional way to do business as, lacking a true base of local support, he hired out-of-state vendors to corral signatures. And this is where the train jumps the tracks.

A single Greenberg supporter claims on the petitions to have personally witnessed 975 of the over 2,000 Greenberg signatures. He claims he personally circulated petitions in 25 of the 33 district towns where signatures were collected.  CT 5 is a sprawling district running about 60 miles from end to end; and mere mortals cannot ascertain how the space/time continuum was bend to enable this to occur.  

Occam's Razor tells us this is simply ACORN style chicanery.  The simplest explanation is Greenberg gave the petition forms to folks hired from Nevada and Colorado, sent them off to town greens and strip malls to get names, and then had the forms returned to his one local zealot so he could fraudulently affirm he personally witnessed the signatures.

(Apparently a Southbury Republican saw one of the petitions being circulated by a dude from Las Vegas, and recognized the name on the form as the alleged circulator as being a guy from Woodbury, CT; whom the Nevadan admitted he was not)  

The State Elections Enforcement Commission is presently trying to ascertain if there's enough fire here to take action. But only the most credulous person would fail to see the billowing smoke.

Mark Greenberg couldn't get on the ballot at the convention. He doesn't have enough real local Republicans supporting him to get legitimate petitions signed. So like a liberal Democrat he bent the rules and threw money at the problem so he could pretend it was addressed. Following the law must be a mark of being a terrible political insider.

Sorry Mark, maybe that's the way people get on the ballot in NY but in CT we like to support people who take the rules seriously and play by the rules. And if you won't play by the rules in your campaign, it's pretty obvious that in the unlikely event you were to be elected to Congress you'd be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

To paraphrase Alabama candidate Dale Peterson, "we're Connecticut Republicans, we're better than this.". Mark Greenberg ought to take no for an answer, and stand down before the full scope of his ACORN style ballot fraud gets fully exposed.

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.

A number of former DoJ officials have sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasy asking why the DoJ is not enforcing the law and correcting the record regarding a previous letter sent by another set of former attorneys. The key passages seem to be:

As these cases show, in more than four decades of operation, the Civil Rights Division has never hesitated to fulfill its responsibilities by filing lawsuits to enforce federal voting rights laws that govern access to the polls and the administration of elections even on the very eve of Election Day. Against this backdrop, the Division’s recent failure to act in the case filed by a private party against the Ohio Secretary of State in which two federal courts, including the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, have specifically found that the Secretary of State is not complying with the verification requirements of Section 303 of HAVA, is difficult to fathom. Its similar lack of action in Wisconsin, where the state election board has also admitted that it is not complying with this provision of HAVA, is equally perplexing. This appears to be a dereliction of the Department’s obligations to enforce federal law.

Full letter after jump

So we know that fake people are registering to vote, via the AP:

The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls — in Nevada.

We know that sometimes, fake people vote fraudulently (note that it was by absentee. Hard to vote as Mickey Mouse in person, but it is really easy by absentee):

Republicans released details for 10 of those votes. The registration cards that were filled out had no social security numbers, drivers license numbers or birthdates for the voters.

We know that sometimes, fake people give to campaigns fraudulently.

Two thoughts. The first is that there should be accountability for this. As Patrick  just noted, Barack Obama raised $150m last month, and only half of that money is disclosed. Now, I seriously doubt that Obama's campaign is engaged in fraud. But they seem  uninterested in identifying it.

They should, like the McCain campaign, put all that information online, regardless of how much was given, including all the information about address, employer, etc. It's not that hard. They have the technology to do it. When he is getting $75m in a month from sources that are not publically identified, that's a problem. In theory, these are all different people, but given the possibility for fraud (temporary credit card numbers can make it even harder to check), this does create yet another kind of crisis of legitimacy surrounding this election.

Second,  Obama has destroyed the public financing system, handing conservatives a win on the policy, even if a substantial loss on the politics. Democrats said Republicans would do it, but they did. This is a good thing, long-term, and it should be replaced by full-disclosure of contributions within 24 hours of receipt of the donation. The easiest thing in the world with today's technology. And it would allow individuals, groups, and the press to address the legitimacy issues in Obama's donations (and others in the future).

Fox is covering the voting issues in OH:

Transcript after the jump:

Given the things going on in Ohio over the next couple of days, perhaps Barack Obama shouldn't be comparing the Ohio election process to the Chicago machine:

Transcript:

SUPPORTER 5: i would like to know what you can say to reassure us that this election will not be rigged or stolen? [applause] -- or stolen? [applause]

SEN. OBAMA: it helps in Ohio that we have democrats in charge of the machines.  but, look, i come from chicago. some want to be honest, it is not as if it is just republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. sometimes democrats have, too.

Turns out that there's even some overlap between the Chicago and Ohio machines:

"Who are you voting for?" I asked another homeless man. "Baraaaack," he replied. "I want him to do his thang, you know, do his THUG THIZZLE, you know..."

As I started interviewing the homeless men, it became clear that their "buddies" who drove them to the polls were pushing quite an agenda. The homeless guys were being bribed with rides, food, and who-knows-what to go "vote."

My new THUG-THIZZLE friend told me that he wasn't even from Ohio and that he was getting on a Greyhound to go back to Chicago. Yet he was voting in one of the key battleground states? How was that fair?

And how was he going to get to the Greyhound station? His "friend" that had brought him to the poll promised to take him wherever he wanted... the only problem was, his friend appeared to be long gone.

At this point, I was disgusted that the organizations seemed to be exploiting the homeless. But I was even more disgusted when they flat out admitted it.

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?

Evidently from tiny ACORN's huge scandals grow. The latest sighting was in yesterday's Democratic primary in Bridgeport, CT's largest city.

ACORN Worker Committing Voter Fraud in Bridgeport?

by Genghis Conn · August 13th, 2008 · 7:23 pm · That’s what the Bridgeport Republican registrar of voters, Joseph Borges, is saying.
 

This opens up the chance that we will see the kind of election fraud that made Milwaukee infamous http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/15982077.html and while CT's 7 electoral votes are probably not going to be decisive, stuffed ballot boxes could put Congressman Shays and State Senator Russo out of a job, as well as allow a swing seat in the lower house to fall to a liberal criminal defense lawyer.

Of course, thanks to the "Tommy Republicans" http://www.thenextright.com/ironman/the-tommy-republicans the Mortgage Bailout Bill contains a $500 million annual subsidy to groups like ACORN http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080618/20080618006023.html?.v=1.

Nice work, guys!

Media Matters is providing cover for Obama against David Freddoso's new book, The Case Against Barack Obama.   I'll leave it to Freddoso to defend against the charges, but I would like to note what Media Matters said about Barack Obama having all of his opponents removed from the ballot in 1996.

In fact, Obama's opponents in the 1996 Democratic primary for the 13th district Illinois state Senate seat were removed from the ballot for failing to adhere to election laws -- the Obama campaign challenged the signatures his opponents had collected to get their names on the ballot, and the signatures were deemed ineligible for a variety of reasons. On page 2, Freddoso undermines his own claim by quoting a 1996 Chicago Weekend article explaining that some of incumbent Sen. Alice Palmer's signatures were disqualified because the voters who signed lived outside the 13th district -- something more than a mere "technicality":

I, for one, welcome Media Matters' sudden concern about election integrity and voter fraud.  It's a nice change of pace from their usual argument that election fraud isn't such a big deal. 

In case they're as interested in defending ballots as they are in defending Obama, I'm sure our friends at Election Journal would be willing to help them out with a bit of evidence.

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.