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Irony Alert: GOP Political Consultant Arrested For Voter Registration Fraud
For all the outraged Republican claims of rampant voter fraud we've seen in the last few weeks, it's worth noting that authorities have had enough evidence to arrest only a tiny number of people in connection with the problem, almost all of whom were street-level canvassers suspected of duping their supervisors with phony registration cards in order to boost their bonuses.
But over the weekend, a professional political consultant, who owns a firm that's been registering hundreds of thousands of voters and gathering petition signatures, was added to the list. The only problem: it's a Republican firm that had contracted with the California GOP.
The LA Times reports:
State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California.
This is the second black eye for Jacoby and his firm, Young Political Majors (YPM) in the last few days. Last week, the same paper reported claims by dozens of Californians that they were asked by YPM canvassers to sign a petition to toughen laws against child molesters, then later found they had been duped into registering as Republicans. YPM, which was paid $7-12 for every Californian it signed up for the Republican party, denied the allegations.
The paper adds:
YPM has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics across the country. Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit.
Ironic that, for all the GOP-generated sturm und drang over ACORN in the last few weeks, it looks like it's in fact a Republican firm against whom there's actual evidence of systemic fraud.
Josh
Zachary
Bwahahahaha!
Hehe *snicker*..... Bwahahaha!
Oh hell...
Glass houses and all that...
Bwahahaha!
October 20, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess we should have been expecting this, since the standard Republican modus operandi seems to be:
Loudly accuse your opponents of your own worst offenses!
What a bunch of idiots.
October 20, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Block the Vote
Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/assault-democracy#comment-889433
Friends don’t ask friends to vote on Provisional Ballots!
October 20, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmmm....maybe this is why they're such experts on the subject of election fraud.
October 20, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Man, for all of the voter REGISTRATION "fraud" that's being touted by the elephant in the room, are there any that claim potential voters were tricked into phony party affiliation for Dems?
October 20, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
More voter suppression, where the Michigan Republican Party settles their case and "acknowledges the existence of an illegal scheme by the Republicans to use mortgage foreclosure lists to deny foreclosure victims their right to vote":
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/10/20/mi-republicans-admit-to-illegal-foreclosure-scheme-surrender-to-democrats
You guys need to Front Page this, not just put it on the Much. With the SCOUSA turning down Ohio and this massive admission in Michigan, there's a chance to continue to turn the Narrative away from ACORN IS TUH EVEEL!!! that we initially saw.
JOhn
October 20, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
"State and Local investigators..."
What??? No FBI Raid - covered by massive TV news?? No Anonymous Bushie DOJ reps leaking this investigation to the MEDIA????
What??? Oh it's about republicans. IOKIYAR.
HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
October 20, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Ironic that, for all the GOP-generated sturm und drang over ACORN in the last few weeks, it looks like it's in fact a Republican firm against whom there's actual evidence of systemic fraud."
It's not ironic - it's typical. It's another case of what I like to call Republican Projection Syndrome. If they accuse you of doing it, it's probably because they're doing it first (or at least planning to). Voter registration fraud, corruption, lying, association with inappropriate lobbyists.... the list goes on.
October 20, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like Rovian tactics to me...accuse your opponent of doign what you, in fact, are doing.
October 20, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is worth noting that YPM's offense, which they are not being charged with, is virtually identical in motivation and effect to that of the ACORN canvasser's.
Being registered under the wrong party affiliation could be very annoying to the voter, and could affect what races they could vote on if they didn't notice the change before the next primary, but has no effect on their ability to vote for anyone they want in the general election. So the Republican Party is only paying YPM to register Republicans, and the company is tricking people into doing so to get money from their employer. Just as there is no advantage to ACORN to receiving in fraudulent voter registration forms, but a small number of their canvassers are doing so in order to get paid without doing any actual canvassing.
However, there are two major differences that make this case WORSE than the accussation against ACORN. First, as Zachary notes, this case involves the owner of the company, not street-level canvassers, submitting a falsified registration for himself in order to be eligible to vote in a state where he is not a legal resident. And even if he had no intention to commit vote fraud, which would be at least possible in his case unlike those of fraudulent registrations in the names of fictional characters or of famous out-of-state individuals, he was getting a specific advantage through his false registration.
Second, note that the Republican Party is only paying for Republican voter registrations. ACORN, and as far as I know the Obama voter registration drives, make no effort to screen out voters by party affiliation. They focus their efforts on particular demographic groups by virtue of where they conduct their registration drives, but then sign up anyone in those areas who wants to register.
October 20, 2008 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
"First, as Zachary notes, this case involves the owner of the company, not street-level canvassers, submitting a falsified registration for himself in order to be eligible to vote in a state where he is not a legal resident. And even if he had no intention to commit vote fraud, which would be at least possible in his case unlike those of fraudulent registrations in the names of fictional characters or of famous out-of-state individuals, he was getting a specific advantage through his false registration"
I'm a California resident and from what I know California law requires that you have to be a California resident/registered voter to sign other residents up to vote in California. Therefore, the owner of YPM committed a fraud when he submitted a falsified registration for himself using a California address that he no longer lives in, not to vote in California himself but to conduct his business of signing other people up illegally.
October 20, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Zachary mentioned that in the main post. That is whay I meant when I said he was getting a specific advantage from his fraudulent registration even if he didn't plan to use it to actually vote. But having registered fraudulently, we have no idea whether he would have used that registration to vote fraudulently. And unlike the canvassers who turned in forms in Nevada with the names of Dallas Cowboys players, it is at least possible that he could have done so if he hadn't been caught.
October 20, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink