Okay, *now* I understand the Republican fascination with ACORN

[catsittingstill]

It's to legitimize massive voter suppression efforts.  I hate the way my own government is making me feel like a paranoid conspiracy nut but...

Scary excerpts from a _Rolling Stone_ article here.

Short version. We don't just have to win, we have to win big. Because the Republicans have apparently been quietly disenfranchising Democratic voters with both hands, for quite some time. Some quotes:

- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.

- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging” ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters.

- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls." Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.

If that 10 million voters thing is right, and there are about 72 million registered Democrats, the Republicans have purged about 1 in 7 Democrats from the rolls. Probably mostly in swing states; I voted this morning in Tennessee and had no trouble.

This may be tougher than I thought.

The actual Rolling Stone article is here.

More about it here.

Has any other Democrat out there tried to vote yet? Did you have any trouble? Did you see any one having trouble?

Comments

[telynor.livejournal.com]

I've sent in my absentee ballot, which I know this article advises against (I have no choice).

I've checked my registration online, and it appears to be valid.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, if it looks valid online it probably is. I suspect that the purged voters would appear as invalid all through the system.

Did they ever settle which address they wanted?

[telynor.livejournal.com]

Yes; I finally got through to someone with a clue on Thursday. They wanted the registration address, my former GA address.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I finally got through to someone with a clue on Thursday

Yay!

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

It's to legitimize massive voter suppression efforts.

If ACORN is engaging in major voting fraud, how would you (if you were President or Attorney General) deal with the situation save by purging the phony voters from the rolls? I'm sure that, since you disapprove so strongly of what the A-G is doing, you must have a better solution, and I'd love to hear it.

Or do you disbelieve the reports of the ACORN voter fraud?

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

Allow me...a repost from a reply I made in Tom Smith's journal.

The Republican effort to fix this election seem to be true, but their allegations of voter fraud are not. Even the Supreme Court sided with Ohio.

Repost:
Some good news, perhaps, from Keith's show this evening. Obama and his campaign are starting an all out offensive BEFORE the election to prevent Republican efforts to keep Democrats from voting. I tried to embed the video, but it didn't work. Here's the URL:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/

The first two videos for Oct. 17 address this issue. Rachel Maddow then did a couple of segments on the same issue:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27245790#27245765

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Alas, I'm on dialup and won't be able to see the videos.

I'm glad the Obama campaign knows what's up, though

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

Transcripts here:

http://thenewshole.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/17/1562897.aspx

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

[patoadam]

this post says it better than I can.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

yes, I saw that one a few days back. I thought it explained things clearly.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

If ACORN is firing people they believe to be giving them fraudulent names, and then turning the documentation over to the authorities according to the law of the State that documentation was collected in, flagging everything they believe to have been incorrectly (whether fraudulently by the worker or by honest mistake), then ACORN, as an organization, is not committing fraud of any kind.

I've variously read that ACORN hired 8,000 or 13,000 people. Either way, when you hire that many people, it's not surprising that a few will try to cheat the system and need firing or even prosecuting as criminals.

I wonder, does anyone know the percentage of, say, McDonalds workers who commit fraud on the job? Even with a supervisor looking over their shoulder all day?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My thoughts pretty much parallel yours.

Individuals committed voter registration fraud; if it is reasonably feasable they should be found and, if it was done intentionally, punished for wasting the Election Commission's time.

ACORN has, as far as I know, done nothing wrong as an organization.

But none of this involved actual *vote* fraud.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

And sending false information to a poor neighborhood about the place and date of the election may not be "vote" fraud, but it is fraud that creates a less than fair election. Admittedly, I have not heard that this nasty trick has been perpetrated for this presidential election, but other things (like the plan to challenge the votes of everyone whose house had foreclosure papers filed) have happened. And the ones that are most likely to change the result of the election aren't the odd individual who votes more than once or in the wrong place (actual voter fraud), it's the systematic attempts to discourage or prevent eligible voters from voting, or from having their votes counted.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

And sending false information to a poor neighborhood about the place and date of the election may not be "vote" fraud, but it is fraud that creates a less than fair election

I've heard about this dirty trick, and it makes my blood boil. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if it were to surface again in this election.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Voter *registration* fraud is deliberately supplying untrue information on a voter registration form. It is not a big problem. You can register Mickey Mouse in every state in the country but he's never going to show up and cast a fraudulent vote.

Some people working for ACORN's voter registration drive committed voter *registration* fraud. These people, if practical, should be found and punished commensurately with wasting the election commission's time. I'm sure there were standards for prosecuting this before the Bush administration went crazy over it; those are the standards that should be used. In any case, unless there is actual *evidence* that ACORN as an organization was involved in some sort of conspiracy with these individuals to commit voter *registration* fraud, ACORN should be left alone.

*Vote* fraud is when you cast fraudulent votes--if I were to get six different voter cards and vote six times (presumably in different districts; I could never carry this off if I tried to vote six times at one polling place), that would be *vote* fraud. *Vote* fraud could actually affect the election outcome. The Bush administration's Department of "Justice" spent five years hunting diligently for polling-place *vote* fraud and found practically nothing.

Therefore there is no serious problem with *vote* fraud. The procedures in place before the Bush administration went crazy were perfectly adequate. Those are the procedures we should use.

In no case would I purge 7 million Democratic voters from the rolls. The suspect *registrations* are a tiny fraction of the 1.3 million voters ACORN has registered, and 1.3 million is a tiny fraction of 7 million. Purging 7 *million* voters from the rolls is insane.

Or a transparent attempt to steal the election.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Of course I disbelieve the silly reports. They are nonsensical on their face. Pure Republican spin.

Or do you really think that someone showing up at the polls on election day and claiming to be Micky Mouse will be told to just go ahead and vote, no questions asked?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, Mr. Mouse, you'll have to wait until Mr. Duck is finished with the voting booth.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

No, but I think that better-thought-out voting fraud can pass, and pass in large numbers. There are districts in Chicago with more registered voters than living adults.

There's nothing new about this, either, though the scale may be increasing. Read a history of the 1960 election.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That kind of vote fraud is not handled by false voter registrations; it's handled by suborning the people who *count* the votes.

Republicans own most of the voting machine companies. Purely coincidentally.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

By the way, you're using the term "spin" incorrectly when you say:

They are nonsensical on their face. Pure Republican spin.

If they were "nonsensical on their face" they would not be "spin." "Spin" is when one puts one's own (possibly dishonest) emotional connotation on a genuine fact.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

It's good to see quality quibbling.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

If ACORN is engaging in major voting fraud....

Reading a commentary on this subject from someone who is unclear on the distinction between registration and voting is rather like studying a plan for a perpetual-motion machine invented by someone who is unclear on the distinction between power and energy.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Err... *I'm* unclear on the distinction between power and energy. I think. Is energy equivalent to work--force cross distance?

(Not that I'm planning on designing a perpetual motion machine...)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh darn, wait a moment--is work force *dot* distance instead?

I'm so confused...

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Work is the dot product of the force and distance vectors, yes.

Energy is the capacity to perform work, or the result of work having been performed upon an object -- for example, by raising a stone against gravity, I perform work upon it and store within it gravitational potential energy.

Power, on the other hand, is merely the rate at which energy is expended.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for helping me get it straight:-)

So work is newton(meters squared) and power is...(newton(meters squared))per second?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Um, I'll try not to make an ass of myself--I've been teaching astronomy and not physics for a lot of years, but I don't think you got it exactly right. Work and energy would be measured in Joules, which are newton-meters, or Kilogram-meters² per second².

Power would be measured in Joules per second, or newton-meters per second, or Kilogram-meters² per second³.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining :-) I got confused and included an extra factor of meters in both.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Palast and Kennedy often overstate their case and use questionable data, but there is a real problem. Unfortunately, the extent of the problem will probably not be known until election day. Meantime, I draw everyone's attention to Election Protection, The Democracy Campaign (they need volunteers), and The National Campaign for Fair Elections. (These are actually all connected.) Check your own registration, use a provisional ballot if you have problems voting, know the rules in your state (Election Protection is a good site for this), and encourage friends and family to do likewise. And spread the word!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

thanks for the links.

[jenrose]

We received all five of the ballots we expected to receive in our house. My husband will drop all of them off at elections headquarters.

I LOVE VOTE BY MAIL.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Great!

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

"A new scandal broke today in the American presidential election when Senator Edna Mae Fernbugle (R-Minnehaha) alleged that the housing cooperative WALNUT was allowing real people to register their vote.

"'This is the death knell of democracy in this state,' the Senator said today. 'Everyone knows real people cannot be relied upon to vote correctly. Our administration is founded on a firm mandate from dead bodies, cartoon characters and clones. If these radicals have their way I could be out of a job soon and have to sell three or even four of my SUVs.'

"'This is a grim warning to the rest of the country. Keep real people in the factories and convenience stores where they belong. Don't on any account let them near the ballot box.'

Senator Fernbugle is 94."

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

(snicker)

Republican registration fraud

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Here.

Also, Republicans working with ACORN.

If they accuse us of it, they're probably doing it, or thinking about doing it.

Re: Republican registration fraud

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Okay, now we'll see if Jordan suggests massive purges of Republican voters, including county election officials, as the solution to this.

Re: Republican registration fraud

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Henh, henh.

Re: Republican registration fraud

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he can't. He gets 3 comments per post of mine. He's hit that limit.

Re: Republican registration fraud

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

True enough. I was largely joking, but perhaps the bear-baiting was in poor taste anyway. Mea culpa.

The links keep rolling in

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

From the WaPo, which usually does decent fact-checking.

Making lemonade

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"QDC" over at Balloon Juice points out that these shenanigans are a perfect excuse for victorious Democrats to implement an awesome registration system. I like that idea.

Re: Making lemonade

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Blast you, Cat! This post cost me real money. The link pissed me off enough to make me donate money to the DNC. Harrumph!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to have cost you money, but glad you donated. Thank you for doing something to help.

I have donated some too, but money is tight--I wish it could have been more. So I'm grateful to you for donating and letting me know.