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Nevada GOP Contacted State About ACORN Before Raid
The Nevada Republican Party raised concerns with the Secretary of State's office about potential voter fraud in ACORN's voter registration efforts before Tuesday's raid by state authorities on ACORN's Las Vegas office, according to the party's executive director.
Zachary Moyle told TPMmuckraker that the state party has long seen ACORN's voter registration work as a "red flag," and that the contact with the
office of Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, which took the lead in ordering the raid, occurred over the summer. Moyle stressed that it's far from unusual for the GOP to raise concerns over voter fraud, and said that it has also been working closely with the Clark County registrar of voters on the issue.
The Secretary of State's office has said in an affidavit that the raid was triggered by evidence that ACORN has filed fraudulent registration forms, though it has not yet said how widespread the problem is.
Josh
Zachary
Unfortunately, there may be truth to the charges. The Republican ops so desperately need ANY example of the "widespread" fraud they insist the Democrats are up to, that they've been rabid and painstaking in the pursuit of the needle in the haystack.
How else are they going to justify all of the Rovian tactics (let alone the vote flipping via machine that we can't yet prove) that suppress votes likely to be progressive. We've even had testimony in congress about caging by political hacks in high office. (They were forgiven because they didn't KNOW what caging was, per se. Ooopsie.)
As Rove said to the Republican attorneys association as he railed about the cancer of vote fraud that his opponents supposedly employ, he who stuffs best wins. He thereby declared the Republican manifesto for the ballot box..."Stuff, stuff, stuff."
October 9, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, here's a lovely link from the NYT and the current front page of TPM:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
The article purports that there is no indication that one party or another has generated the purges. Wanna bet that ain't so?
October 9, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
A drop of truth if any.... the New York Times 10/08/2008..has an excellent article on what is really happening, the GOP is (illegally)using social security numbers to "purge" hundreds of thousands of legal voter from the voter rolls in at least six (swing) states...while diverting your attention, to ACORN...the New York Times story is the one that needs to be promoted...
October 9, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
John McCain brought up ACORN in his townhall in WI today... Coincidence?
October 9, 2008 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't be surprised if the person(s) involved in the fraud were moles whose intent was to deliberately sabotage the organization.
October 9, 2008 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nah. ACORN has been caught at this kind of thing before. They pay their people bounties for each new registration they get. So guess what happens? They turn in fictitious registrations to make more money. Who would be surprised?
However, registration fraud is not the same as vote fraud. No matter how many fictitious registrations are turned in, if no one casts a vote, it turns out to be pretty harmless.
ACORN needs to smarten up and stop the practice of paying bounties per registration. All they're doing is providing justification to the voter suppression efforts of the Republicans.
October 9, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPM reporting of the Nevada actions against ACORN has been, to put it mildly, underwhelming. There's been absolutely no presentation of ACORN's response to the raid on their offices, no background, no detail on the federal task force with which Nevada's "Democratic" secretary of state and A.G. appear to be cooperating enthusiastically. The AP story did a better job than TPM, which is shameful.
Nevada is the state where the local party seemed to think it would be a good idea to have Fox host a primary debate, so it wouldn't surprise me that some of their elected officials are DINOs. But I expect this site to pose a few more probing questions about such a clear GOP "see, voter fraud is real" operation in a swing state.
October 9, 2008 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the AP story:
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Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, said the group has been working with election officials to weed out fraudulent forms from those submitted by the canvassers it hires.
"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans," Lewis said.
"For the past 10 months, anytime ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual," Lewis said.
She said ACORN had turned in 46 problem applications submitted by 33 former employees to election officials in the Las Vegas area, where it has registered 80,000 people.
...
"The fact is, this is hard work and there were some people that probably sat down on a couch and filled out names out of a phone book," said Matthew Henderson, Southwest regional director for ACORN. "That's really what we're talking about here -- not an attempt to steal an election."
[Secretary of State] Miller said no one had been charged or arrested in Nevada.
His spokesman, Bob Walsh, said investigators were using information from various sources, including the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Nevada.
"You don't have to read too many cop novels to know that sometimes people will tell you a grain of truth to try to hide the rest of the truth," Walsh said. "I'm certainly not suggesting that ACORN is that nefarious, but at the same time just because they handed over 50 to you doesn't mean there aren't 150 others out there."
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No alarm bells set off by the use of the FBI and the USAtty's office for something on this puny and ridiculous in scale?
No charges, no arrests; this is entirely for press political effect, to provide "balance" as news of GOP purging and vote suppression across the country gets reported.
October 9, 2008 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
She said ACORN had turned in 46 problem applications submitted by 33 former employees to election officials in the Las Vegas area, where it has registered 80,000 people.
That is NOTHING people...if quality control at GM or any other vehicle manufacturer could hit those numbers we would never have vehicle recalls for crying out loud.Its not even a blip on a map!
Thanks Nell for posting that..I was getting ready to. ;)
October 9, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The SOS is working off a theory picked up in "cop novels"? =)
October 10, 2008 4:57 AM | Reply | Permalink