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What's Behind the Feds' ACORN Probe?
It's worth noting, in response to the news that the FBI has launched an investigation into whether ACORN was involved in a nationwide voter-registration fraud scheme, that the launch of the probe comes at a time national Republicans at several different levels have sought to make an issue out of ACORN -- in some cases calling for just such an investigation.
Last week, John McCain told a Florida crowd:
"There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America. They must be investigated." The GOP standard-bearer has continued to sound the alarm over ACORN since then, and brought it up at last night's debate.
GOP House leader John Boehner last week called in a statement for ACORN to be de-funded -- it is currently eligible for federal housing funds -- and charged that over the years, ACORN "has committed fraud on our system of elections, making American voters question the fairness and accuracy of the exercise of their most fundamental right under the Constitution."
Last week the RNC held at least five separate conference calls with reporters to stoke fears of voter fraud connected to ACORN.
And numerous state- and local-level Republicans have also in the last few weeks called publicly for authorities to look into ACORN.
There's something else that's worth keeping in mind as we learn more about what's behind the current investigation.
At a summer 2007 hearing on the U.S. attorney firings, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) questioned then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual.
As TPMmuckraker reported at the time:
The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions -- no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election. "Two and possibly three of the fired U.S. attorneys were fired because they didn't bring those small cases that might affect an election," [Feinstein] observed. "Something's rotten in Denmark."
The recent inspector general's report on the U.S. attorney firings concluded that the failure to pursue voter fraud allegations as aggressively as the Bush administration wanted was a factor in several of the the firings.
We laid out the details to the changes in the manual at the time of Feinstein's questioning.
Josh
Zachary
Is there any chance that some of the people who submitted false voter registration records (and were or were not fired) were Republican ringers or operatives??
October 16, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would not surprise me in the slightest if that were the case.
October 16, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
More Rove rat-*ucking campaign thuggery.
October 16, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The seriousness of this cannot be overstated.
The phony FBI "investigation" of the bogus charges against ACORN is designed to lay the groundwork for Republican lawsuits aimed at overturning close Obama victories in swing states.
This fraudulent "investigation" is yet another 21st century Jim Crow assault on the integrity of the electoral process by the career white-collar criminals who run the Bush Justice Department.
It is a key part of the Republican Party's plan to steal the third presidential election in a row with voter disenfranchisement, intimidation and fraud on a scale that will dwarf the Republican crimes of Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004.
If the Republican Party cannot steal the election they are prepared to destroy the election and plunge the country into chaos rather than allow Obama to become president.
October 16, 2008 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I totally agree.
Everybody who cares anything at all about preserving the right to vote in this country needs to get on this and expose it for the sham it is. Congressional Democrats need to mobilize, local Democratic party people need to mobilize, and every Democratic candidate ought to be pounding on this message until the MSM can't ignore it any longer.
If we lose another election to this BS, we won't have a country anymore.
October 16, 2008 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pure and simply Republican voter suppression.They got away with it in 1000 and 2004.They will not this year.Urge challenged voters to refuse a provisional ballot and to stand up for their right to vote.
October 16, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
"They got away with it in 1000 and 2004."
Wow...I did not know they have been at this for so long...no wonder they were/are pretty good at stealing elections. :)
October 16, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Repugs know that they are headed the way of the Whigs (due to evolving national sensibilities and demographics), so disenfranchisement is their only hope for survival at this point.
At some point, the wave of history will democratically wash them away. Their only hope at that point would be to enforce a totalitarian police state a la the Afrikaners of South Africa. Even that would fall in time.
Any way you look at it, they are doomed.
October 16, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Karl Rove's dreams of a "permanent republican majority" in the Congress are reminiscent of Hitler's "thousand-year reich." In more ways than one. Their kind of power grab always results in over-reaching--abusive,arrogant and unabashed overreaching. I like to think that there's enough left of our constitutional system to prevent its going any further than it already has. But I'm not sure.
October 17, 2008 8:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who says Michael Mukasey isn't a Justice Department-politicizing loyal Bushie?
October 16, 2008 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mukasey are Joe Lieberman are two lobes of the same dehumanized obscenity.
October 17, 2008 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
But he IS a loyal Bushie.
In his confirmation hearing, he paraphrased Nixon's "If the president does it, then it is not illegal" in regards to Bush delegating torture.
I kept writing to my (Dem) senator, that they should have presented Bush with a list of AG nominees that would pass the committee, and allowed a vote. It would be a lost of the 8 USAs that Rove fired. They had all proved that they would NOT break the law for the sake of GOP loyalty.
This would have been a GREAT political move, too.
But NOOO, they had to push Shumer's neocon, Federalist, unitary executive believing crony!
.
October 17, 2008 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the real voter registration fraud: States failing to register voters, as required by federal law, as disability, military recruitment, and food stamp, wic and medicaid offices:
http://projectvote.org/index.php?id=43
Quote: "An equally important but less well-known provision of the NVRA is the requirement that states offer voter registration opportunities to clients and applicants of public assistance programs. Programs covered by the NVRA include Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Medicaid. Public assistance offices are in a unique position to increase voter registration rates among low-income citizens, furthering the intent of the NVRA to increase registration among populations underrepresented on the voter registration rolls.
Thirteen years after the NVRA went into affect, only a handful of states are consistently complying with the requirement to offer voter registration services to clients and applicants of public assistance programs. In fact, voter registration applications from public assistance agencies has declined by 79 percent between 1995-1996 and 2005-2006. The NVRA Implementation Project was created to address this problem.
The Project is a joint effort by Project Vote, a leading nonpartisan, nonprofit provider of voter engagement services and Demos, a national voting rights and election reform policy organization. The Project assists states, social service agencies, and election officials with implementation of public agency registration. In addition to technical assistance, the Project documents noncompliance and, when necessary, initiates litigation to enforce the NVRA."
Where's the press coverage on this? One memo on that page estimates that about 2 million low income registrations should have been filed, had the law been followed!
PS (How do I do the cool block quote thing? It didn't work to use "[blockquote]".)
October 16, 2008 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink