I have chastised McCain before for choosing to attack Obama on subjects where:
1) Obama did not do what is alleged
and
2) McCain DID do what is alleged
It simply doesn’t make any sense for McCain to do this…
Well, it appears that the latest installment of our ongoing “pot-meet-kettle” series involves VOTER FRAUD.
For weeks, McCain and friends have been hitting the subject of ACORN very hard. McCain went as far at the last debate as to say the organization has committed “one of the greatest frauds of voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy in this country.” McCain linked Obama to this group through past support (including financial contribution), and McCain points out that Obama once legally represented the group.
So what is ACORN? The group works to register minorities and poor people to vote.
What is Obama’s involvement with them? He served on a board that gave grants to ACORN, and his campaign has indirectly given money to the group. Also, when ACORN faced opposition in Illinois to the Motor Voter program, Obama (along with the U.S. Justice Department) fought on their behalf to see that the Motor Voter program was implemented.
What horrible fraud have they committed? Turns out, a few of their lazier workers decided they could get out of work by just writing some bogus names on a few registration forms. You know…hard to spot bogus identities like “Mickey Mouse.” Even the Republican governor of Florida dismissed the issue as trivial: “Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there’s only been a scattering of isolated incidents. Crist said in the closing days of any campaign “there are some who sort of enjoy chaos.” There may be more of that going on than fraud, he said.”
This didn’t stop McCain from preemptively blaming the loss of Florida on ACORN:
Now…are you ready…because here is the fallout that ensued:
1) The Department of Justice is now potentially going to broaden its investigation of the GOP. That’s right…turns out the GOP operatives pushing the DOJ to investigate ACORN…well, they are the same ones who improperly pressured the DOJ to investigate phony voter fraud complaints against ACORN in 2006. And John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has issued a release indicating that there is data to suggest that the reason the GOP is out to get ACORN (and willing to further politicize the DOJ to do it) not as much because they tend to register Democratic-leaning voters…but because ACORN has a long history of opposition to the SUBPRIME LENDERS who are friends with the Republican Party! Wow…this ties together the current overblown charges against ACORN, the previous false allegations against ACORN, the improper firings of the U. S. Attorneys (because they didn’t want to pursue the bogus charges), and the current lending crisis. Attorney General Mukasey has been asked to expand Special Prosecutor Nora Dannehy’s investigation into the attorney firings so that she also investigates these bogus claims and their political roots. This could get interesting…
Bob Bauer, counsel for Obama, said in his request:
“The Dannehy investigation concerns, most fundamentally, abuse of the law enforcement process to advance, in the name of combating “voting fraud”, a partisan political agenda. The appointment of a Special Prosecutor was required because the Department’s leadership was the focus of the investigation and unable to credibly undertake an independent, professional and credible inquiry.Now, on the emerging evidence of recent conduct undertaken by Bush Administration officials, Republican party officials, and representatives of the McCain-Palin campaign, it appears that further misconduct of the same nature, directly relevant to the work of the Special Prosecutor, requires that the scope of the Special Prosecutor’s assignment be expanded.Accordingly, I request that Special Prosecutor Dannehy’s inquiry included a review of any involvement by Justice Department and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee (“RNC”)’s systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud. It is highly likely that the very sort of politically motivated conduct identified in the Department’s investigation to date, necessitating the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, is repeating itself, and for the same reason: unwarranted and politically motivated intervention in the upcoming election.”
2) Mark Anthony Jacoby, the owner of Young Political Majors, was arrested and charged with perjury and voter fraud.
What is YPM? A voter-registration group, not unlike ACORN, hired by the California Republican Party to obtain signatures…and paid extra for each GOP registration.
McCain’s association with the group? YPM is a subcontractor for the California Republican Party, but the bonuses for GOP registrations are actually paid by Steve Poisner, the California co-chairman of the McCain campaign. And McCain was aware of both YPM’s current troubles and past ones: “Mark Jacoby is based in Arizona where a number of ballot initiatives may not be on the ballot after YPM gathered signatures for them and some of those signatures failed to pass muster with local election officials. And YPM was publicly accused of vote slamming before. In 2004 in both Florida and Massachusetts. ”
What REAL fraud have they committed? “Vote Slamming.” This is where people are registered as Republicans without their permission or through deception…for example, a number of people in California claim that YPM signed them up as Republicans after telling them their signature was for a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.
3) The managing partner of Lincoln Strategy, Nathan Sproul, is also being investigated (AGAIN) for voter fraud.
What is Lincoln Strategy? A political consulting and lobbying group.
McCain’s association with the group? McCain’s campaign directly employed Lincoln Strategy and paid the group $175,000 in June for “registering voters.”
What REAL fraud have they committed? They have been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away or destroying registration forms of Democratic voters, and trying to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket. It has been alleged that they told workers to only accept Republican registrations, and have even destroyed Democratic forms in some states…can you imagine the effect? They potentially “registered” thousands of Democratic voters…then destroyed the forms…and when those people went to vote they were turned away from the polls.
So…
I know that talking about voter fraud isn’t “sexy“…but voter supression cost the Democrats BOTH of the last two elections. In Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, the examples of voter suppression were clear and unforgivable. And it is only through our attentiveness and our refusal to accept it that we can prevent it from happening again. That is another reason why McCain makes a terrible mistake in bringing the subject up…if they had kept quiet and sprung it suddenly upon us on November 4th, it could have been devastating…but McCain does us the favor of reminding us of what the GOP has done before, and is attempting to lay the groundwork for again.