The First Arrest for Voter Registration Fraud. Happy Now?

John McCain's campaign has directed $175,000 to the firm of a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states.

Sam Stein

According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.

In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/mccain-employing-gop-oper_n_136254.html

ACORN followed law on suspect voter registrations
Voter group is required to turn in all forms it collects, told officials of dubious ones

ACORN, the liberal-leaning community activist group, followed the law when it notified authorities that some of the voter registration applications it submitted in Lake County apparently were fraudulent.

What's not clear is whether canvassers acted alone when they created those fraudulent registrations -- a felony officials say they will prosecute -- or whether ACORN might have played some role in their creation.

But ACORN said it had nothing to do with producing the registrations and pointed out it is barred by law from destroying any applications. It also said it is required to turn them in even if it thinks the registrations are fraudulent.

[emphasis added to help conservatives zero in on the important portions]

Election officials confirmed ACORN's responsibility under the law.

Also, an independent voting law expert dismissed concerns that the application flap creates a significant opportunity for voter fraud in Indiana.

Nathaniel Persily, a Columbia Law School professor, said registration fraud is very different from actual voter fraud, which occurs at the polls.

"The effect is not going to change the outcome of the election or allow imaginary people to vote," he said.

ACORN said it took steps to ensure officials knew some of the registrations it turned in were potentially bad.

"We ID'd those applications as questionable," Charles D. Jackson, spokesman for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said of the Lake County applications.

"We turned them in three separate stacks: ones we had been able to verify, ones that were incomplete and ones that were questionable or suspicious."

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081018/NEWS0502/810180457

I wonder how much media coverage this one will get. Probably close to none.

You know, them damn liberal newspapers only talk bad about the republicans.

Armies of Lawyers Are Ready to Roll

With Florida 2000 never far from the surface, both sides are ready for one or more sequels. Obama, in particular, has assembled what is de facto the nation's largest law firm, with 5000 lawyers ready to sue at the drop of a ballot. The challenges have already started, with multiple voter-registration cases in the courts right now. It makes one pine for the old days when elections were decided by the voters rather than by judges, as in 2000 and very possibly in 2008.

If the story is true, then yes I am happy about it.

Now lets round up every other person in the country that is committing vote fraud and prosecute them also.

Calfornia's Prop 2 was put on the ballot by HSUS. HSUS is known for hiring out of state companies to do petition drives for signatures to get their animal rights numbnutshit proposals on ballots around the country.

Will this force California to review and possibly dismiss Proposal 2? I hope so.

Your mindset is one that makes those trying to be productive just shake their heads in bewilderment. Thanks to you, the country is fucked, as are the markets. Welcome to the hippy reality.

Agreement in Colo. lawsuit helps purged voters

DENVER " Thousands of Colorado residents who had been scratched from voter registration rolls will be allowed to cast ballots on Election Day and their votes will be given special protection to ensure they are counted, following the resolution of a federal lawsuit filed against the state.

Colorado Common Cause and other groups alleged in a lawsuit filed last week that the state illegally removed an estimated 27,000 people from the voter list during the 90 days leading up to the August primary.

The groups argued that federal law prohibits any systematic removal of names from voter rolls within 90 days of an election with three exceptions: voters who have been convicted of a felony, have died or have requested removal.

Lawyers for the Colorado attorney general's office countered that the names were removed to correct voter registration records, in some cases because the voter had moved or was registered more than once. No eligible voter would be denied the right to vote, they said.

Under an agreement reached by both sides late Wednesday, the state will generate a list of voters whose registrations were canceled before the August primary. Those voters will have to cast provisional ballots on Election Day, but their ballots must be counted unless election officials can prove the voters were ineligible.

Many states typically require those who cast provisional ballots to later provide proof of eligibility. The Colorado agreement places the burden of proof on state election officials.

"We believe the settlement protects the voters of Colorado, and that was our mission," said Penda Hair, one of the attorneys representing the groups that sued.

Secretary of State Mike Coffman, whose office purged the voters from the registration rolls, maintained that the removals conformed with federal law.

U.S. District Judge John Kane gave both sides of the lawsuit a chance to reach the agreement after listening to about five hours of testimony Wednesday. He told lawyers he thought there were circumstances in which the state was "out of bounds" in purging voters but that he didn't want to impose any changes that could result in long lines and other problems at the polls next week.

In Michigan, a federal appeals court handed a similar victory to 5,500 people who had been thrown off the voter registration rolls.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday that state election officials should not remove registered voters from the rolls, even if their voter ID cards were returned as undeliverable.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based court said Michigan voters are properly registered when applications are approved and names are added to the rolls " not if they receive a card in the mail.

The court said poll workers still can require people to show proof of residency when they ask for a ballot Tuesday.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the United States Student Association Foundation and the Michigan branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.