This past weekend, Americans from across the country gathered in Richmond, V.A. for the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Convention. Attracting conservative leaders and activists alike, the gathering featured training from a number of organizations including American Majority.

However, many participants may have been unaware of the quiet smear campaign that has been spreading for weeks by Obama’s old employer, Project Vote.

“As what is purported to be one of the largest Tea Party gatherings in Virginia gets underway in Richmond this weekend, a new poll clearly shows that Tea Party sympathizers hold minority views on most issues regarding government, government spending, and the budget.

What Happened to Hope and Change? A Poll of 2008 Voters was conduced by nonpartisan voting rights group Project Vote, surveying 1,947 randomly selected Americans who cast ballots in 2008. The poll is unique in that it not only surveys the historic 2008 electorate as a whole, but also includes special samples of black voters, low-income voters, and youth voters, and compares these groups to self-identified Tea Party sympathizers.”

The press release clearly attempts to characterize the convention as a “whites only” event for  angry Tea Partiers to complain.

“Contrary to the claims made by event organizers that the Tea Party frustrations are shared by a wide cross section of America, the results of the new poll show that Tea Party sympathizers — who are overwhelmingly likely to be white, older, and more affluent — are out of touch with the views of both average Americans and the surge voting groups who so decisively increased their participation in 2008.

‘Black voters, low-income voters, and youth voters together represent roughly a third of the electorate, and they will play an increasingly important role in American politics in the years to come,’ says Project Vote’s executive director Michael Slater. ‘Yet over the past two years the opinions and values of these populations have been drowned out by the anti-government rhetoric of more affluent, older, and mostly white Americans who have organized under the Tea Party banner.’”

Project Vote’s report was released in mid-September to much fanfare and liberal media attention. A conference call was planned,  and among the featured participants was Frances Fox Piven. Piven is a professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York. Piven and her husband Richard Cloward are the same socialists responsible for the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

This reporter listened in on the conference call as elitist liberal whites claimed to understand the concerns of “real” voters, the blacks,  and other minorities Project Vote used for this “study.” Piven was praised for her insight and her socialist connections were never mentioned. During a brief question and answer session, one caller expressed some dismay about the availability of the information that Project Vote had accessed. This comment was laughed off by Project Vote’s Michael Slater.

Sensing an opportunity, I inquired as to how Project Vote had obtained the information of all those voters. Micheal Slater had admitted that some of it was public information, but the rest? Slater refused to answer a directly if the list had been obtained through officials connected with Obama’s administration or his campaign. The call was quickly ended and all callers placed in a conference or holding status.

Project Vote uses the tried and true standard of the Left: instigating racial animosity. According to the report, a minority of whites are controlling the national debate and silencing the true majority, progressive and liberal blacks and Latinos. Among their findings:

“Together, the three “surge” groups represent a larger portion of the electorate than those who self-identify with the Tea Party. Project Vote’s analysis reveals that black voters, low-income voters, and young voters have starkly different views about the role of government, federal spending priorities, and the budget deficit than Tea Party sympathizers, and in fact are far closer to the views of the 2008 electorate as a whole. Key findings include:

• Nine in ten Tea Party sympathizers are white; they are predominantly older, more affluent, and more conservative. Their views on the role of government and government spending are not only starkly different from black voters, young voters, and low-income voters, but from the majority view of a representative sample of all 2008 voters.

• Tea Party sympathizers, while almost universally dissatisfied with the way the country is going, report they themselves are doing very well: more than three out of four say their personal economic situation is fairly good or very good. 76% are married; 78% went to college; 84% are working or retired.

• Majorities of black voters, young voters, and low-income voters, as well as a majority of all voters, support spending the same or more on income support programs such as Food Stamps for less well-off Americans. Two-thirds of Tea Party sympathizers support spending less.

• Strong majorities of black voters, young voters, and low-income voters agree that government should work to provide for the needs of all citizens. Half of all voters agreed with that sentiment, while only one in five Tea Party sympathizers agreed.

Democrats, like the Chair of the South Carolina Democrat Party, are taking these “findings” to heart:

“These studies found that young and minority voters will be a key factor in the midterm elections.

According to Project Vote, the policy preferences of African-American, low-income and young voters are more closely aligned with the mainstream than with the far right and the tea party.

This segment of the electorate turned out in record numbers in 2008. I believe they will turn out again to support candidates who can put partisanship aside and turn our state around. They are tired of Republican hypocrisy and ready to move South Carolina forward with Democrats”

Project Vote and ACORN have a great deal of help from the media who are always willing to carry water for the group. Lefty blog sites like the Raw Story couldn’t resist jumping on the story with a racially charged headline, an obligatory attack on Fox News, vulgar references, and ending with pinning the blame on Bush:

“The findings seem to indicate that corporate networks like Fox News have largely ignored majority views in America, instead dedicating large amounts of time to covering the wealthy, vocal tea party minority.

‘Analysis of the findings from around the net also underscores what we’ve long argued,’ blogger Brad Friedman opined. “[The] Tea Baggers don’t actually give a damn about ‘the deficit’ or even the Constitution. If they did, they wouldn’t have waited until after Republicans lost the elections in 2008 to start marching and decrying the deficit explosion (and supposed concerns about Constitutional rights) brought about under the previous Administration.”

The liberal bloggers are not the only one demonizing the Tea Party movement. Over at The Nation, a writer laments about Obama’s “forgotten base” and paints the Tea Partiers as pessimistic when compared to this courageous and put-upon demographic.

“We’ve all spent so much time dwelling on the slights and accusations of the Fox News crowd, there’s been shockingly little attention paid to the views, frustrations and convictions of what we might call the forgotten electorate, otherwise known as Obama’s base.

“Which is why a new poll from Project Vote of 2008 voters is such a refreshing corrective. According to the poll, Tea Party sympathizers constitute 29 percent of 2008 voters, while black voters, those under 30 and those making less than $30,000 a year together make up 32 percent….

That is the tragic and perilous irony of this political moment: the people with the most faith in the president and the Democratic Party are the hardest hit by the continuing economic disaster; it’s this brute fact that’s driving the so-called enthusiasm gap between liberals and conservatives.”

The fact is most Americans understand the liberal slant of the media and tend to overlook such attacks. The report published by ACORN “affiliate” Project Vote started off as a quiet murmur among bloggers, but the message was clear. It’s time to paint ordinary Americans as selfish, angry and out of touch with reality. By inciting racial and class divisions Project Vote uses a classic Alinsky technique, marginalizing the enemy.

For a long time, the Left was unable to address the issues of the Tea Party and thus resorted to name calling and derision. When that tactic failed, the liberal elitists at Project Vote – presumably with the encouragement or help of Piven – decided to change the dialogue.

The Washington Post was careful not to be seen endorsing the ACORN-tainted story, but was quick to produce one of its own, as evidenced by Project Vote’s “victory” blog posting.

“Yesterday the Post reported that their own new survey finds—as Project Vote’s poll did—that there is strong support for government programs that provide a social safety net and protect ordinary people from the predations of the market.  Although Republicans, and many Democrats, have tried to demonize Washington,’ write Jon Cohen and Dan Balz, ‘they must contend with the fact that most major government programs remain enormously popular…’

According to the Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University poll, large majorities among the public say that Medicare (96 percent), Social Security (95 percent), food stamps (82 percent), federal aid to public schools (91 percent), unemployment benefits (91 percent) and environmental protection (89 percent) are important government programs.”

You can bet that in a few days this story will be accepted as fact and repeated by the likes of Rachel Maddow. However, the biggest danger is in how ACORN/Project Vote has decided to frame the message. Acting as agent of misinformation, Project Vote tries to pretend that the mainstream media has been anything but a willing helper in pushing Obama’s unwanted agenda.

“But it has been a difficult story to convince the media to tell. For more than a year now, the media’s fascination with an apparently ‘angry’ public rising up against alleged government tyranny has seemingly taken priority over the first principles of responsible (objective) journalism. The spectacle of older white people dressing up in Revolutionary War garb and railing against  ‘Obamacare,’  has held many in the mainstream media hostage to their own prejudices. And the herd mentality of our modern, 24-hour news cycle has only made things worse.

By locking in the distorted-but-dominant media frame on the Tea Party as representative of the electorate, the skepticism we expect from good journalism has been locked out. As a result, the mainstream media has not just reported or investigated the news: in beating the drum, it has unwittingly emerged as a vital supporting player, playing in the rise of the Tea Party movement itself.’

That said, we are encouraged by the Washington Post’s initiative in digging beneath the surface of apparent voter anger to independently confirm our findings about attitudes toward government.

The preceding statement will rankle any American who has witnessed the distorted reports, downplayed crowd sizes and hostility towards the Tea Party movement. Project Vote actually credits the mainstream media with the rise of the movement. Their statements are an insult to those who have labored tirelessly for the cause.

In the days leading up to November 2^nd, groups like ACORN and Project Vote hope to tap into the well of racial discontent and class warfare to once again divide this country for their own political goals. And, as usual, will be aided by the mainstream media.

Late last month when the RNC announced that it would cut its get out the vote (GOTV) program, conservative groups around the country adjusted and decided to run their own GOTV programs. But what does the RNC’s decision really mean?

“The Republican National Committee has decided against sending Congressional staffers out on the campaign trail for traditional get-out-the-vote efforts, focusing its resources instead on mailings and other last-minute pre-election efforts, the committee confirmed Tuesday.”

Lately, it seems the RNC has gone the way of the Obama administration in ignoring the will of the people. With serious missteps in key races and a national morale problem, the RNC really doesn’t get it.

Dana Loesch reports that after a few posts on Twitter that the RNC responded:

“Shortly thereafter I got an email from RNC spokesman Doug Heye about the matter asking me to call him…

In light of the recent criticisms against the RNC, with the Hawaii conference, Steele’s cross-country tour, I can see why the RNC would want to rectify an ineffective and expensive program to ward off further accusations of wasteful spending – so long as the money saved stays with their GOTV efforts, which Heye explained that it would.

Heye discussed the RNC’s other GOTV efforts.

‘We have 352 victory offices funded by us throughout country. We’ve crossed the 20 million contact threshold – contact in messages left, door knocks, phone calls. We’re ahead of where we were in 2008 and in the next five weeks we’ll have a minimum of two million more contacts.’”

Does the RNC only read the New York Times? Have they paid attention to the countless articles by conservative journalists, bloggers and organizational leaders? GOTV is key the winning an election. A copy of the “proprietary and confidential” “After Action” report from the data company used by the DNC, ACORN, SEIU, Obama for America/Organizing for America contains startling facts and figures that need viral attention fast.

The Background

As previously reported:

“The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN spent a number of years perfecting an organizing model that resembled that of Catalist and the Obama Campaign. ACORN’s close ‘affiliate’ Project Vote detailed their efforts in a 2007 report:

‘The Pilot Technology Project carried out during the summer and fall of 2006 was a first attempt to integrate the potential of high quality enhanced data developed for voter participation programs with on-going grassroots community organizing programs. Building upon the work of Catalist (formerly Data Warehouse LLC), Project Vote deployed an updated version of our online voter management system (VBASE) to enable local community organizations to access a robust voter file with enhanced phone numbers, geographic and demographic information for use in voter mobilization, membership development and organizational capacity building.’”

In 2008, years of coordination between leftist groups like SEIU, ACORN, Emily’s List and Obama/Organizing for America, resulted in a turbo charged election cycle unlike any other.

“Get-out-the-vote operations mounted by the Obama campaign, the Democratic Party and progressive organizations mobilized more than one million dedicated volunteers on Election Day. But it was buttressed by a year-long, psychographic voter targeting and contact operation, the likes of which Democrats had never before participated in. In 2008, the principal repository of Democratic data was Catalist, a for-profit company that acted as the conductor for a data-driven symphony of more than 90 liberal groups, like the Service Employees Union — and the DNC — and the Obama campaign.”

While The Atlantic reported on the story, many on the Right may not understand the total impact of the body of work from these so-called progressives.

A look at the Numbers

According to the report:

Progressives completed over 127 million contacts to over 49 million unique individuals. Of these individuals, 28 million voted on Election Day, representing over 20% of all votes cast

Progressives attempted to contact over 106 million people, meaning that over 46% of the U.S. adult population were targets of communication from the progressive community.

82% of progressive activities occurred in 16 highly contested states. Individuals contacted by progressives accounted for 37%6 of all votes cast in these states.

The dialogue during the 2008 election cycle was one of change and blaming the outgoing administration for America’s troubles. This message was not only reinforced by the media, but also with a barrage of emails, calls, visits, etc. from progressive organizers in the weeks before the election. Obama’s margin of victory was born out of these contacts.

“The number of votes cast by new voters who were registered by progressives exceeded Obama’s margin of victory in four states: OH, FL, IN, and NC. “

Voter Registrations

The massive voter registration drives that many were made aware of in 2008 generated over 7 million new applications with the report stating that at least 76% from groups not directly affiliated with a candidate or campaign. The report also notes that only about 5.5 million made it onto the voter rolls. The left calls them “true registrations.” What about this other two million cards? Duplicates? Fraudulent registrations? Ineligible voters? While the left tends the downplay voter registration fraud, the type of activities that garner over two million bogus registrations should be investigated.

Get Out The Vote

Progressive groups have proven to be ahead of the curve in regards to voter contact and the numbers show that their efforts pay off at the polls. According to Catalist:

“ Among all sporadic voters (which include Democrats, Independents, and Republicans), progressive contact is correlated with a 10-point increase in turnout. Among just Democratic sporadic voters, progressive contact shows an 11-point difference.”

RNC are you listening? Face-to-face contact, not paid media or mailings resulted in at least a 10-point increase in turnout.

The Usual Suspects

Though Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is now under investigation regarding a pension scandal and the activities of former leader Andy Stern, they had a banner year in 2008.  By far, Stern earned the privilege of  frequent White House visits and the president’s ear by delivering big numbers for Obama in 2008. With tens of millions of dollars invested in Obama, the SEIU ground troops worked feverishly to turn voters out to the polls.

SEIU Activity Report

• Over 5.2 million direct contacts were made to almost 4.5 million voters.
• 2.5 million pieces of response data was collected from over 1.2 million voters.
• SEIU used high concentrations of live phone calls (64%) and in-person contact (24%) to target voters. In both cases, this is approximately 50% more then the average (as a percent) of all progressives.
• In Indiana, over 40% of all independent progressive contacts (not including federal) were unique to SEIU. In Virginia, over 35% of all independent progressive contacts were unique to SEIU. SEIU also had large shares of unique contacts in other highly contested states, including New Mexico (over 30%), New Hampshire (over 15%), and Oregon and Colorado (over 10%).

The stark reality is that the left is better organized and their leadership more motivated in getting boots on the ground. With their sophisticated micro-targeting, the left is able to identify individual voters in precincts that are more likely to vote for their cause/candidate. This means that folks on the right are rarely contacted and may not be aware of the scale of these operations. By flying under the radar, the left has a guaranteed tactic to sway elections their way. Don’t allow yourselves to be blindsided this November.

Who’s working in your community? Not the RNC, but this year, like 2008, you can bet that progressive groups are on the ground spreading their message of racial divisions, big government and more spending.

The arrest of an 81 year old woman in Bexar County, Texas provides a prime example of the need for more states to implement key provisions of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

“Bexar County deputies Monday night arrested a woman accused of using her long-dead sister’s identity to vote twice in the 2008 general election.

Mary Ann Comparin, 81, was released from Bexar County Jail on Tuesday after posting $10,000 bail, officials said. She faces one count of illegal voting…

The Texas Department of Public Safety’s image verification system matched the photo on Comparin’s driver license to the one on the “Collins” license, according to the affidavit.

The system, about five years old, routinely scans 24 million images from licenses and identification cards, and compares them using an algorithm, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said.”

Cue the ACLU to enter stage left and sue the state for some violation resulting from the use of this new technology. Since the passage of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) many states have maintained a questionable history of compliance at best. When states do try to enforce the law, they are often stopped by lawsuits or accusations of racism. How many more cases of voter fraud would one find if all states utilized sophisticated technology to verify the identify of voter registration applicants?

DOJ Whistle-blower J. Christian Adams offers his take on the problem and a possible solution:

“Motor Voter struck an important balance — it sought to increase voter registration, as well as ensure voter integrity. Welfare offices and motor vehicle offices became voter registration centers. But the law also required states to conduct list maintenance to ensure ineligible names don’t pollute the voting rolls. Dead people, ineligible felons, and people who moved away must be removed from the rolls by state election officials….

The decision of the Holder DOJ to ignore the integrity provisions of Section 8 is deliberate and corrupt. In November 2009, political appointee Julie Fernandes told the entire assembled DOJ Voting Section that the Obama administration would not enforce the list maintenance provisions of Section 8. Section 8 ‘doesn’t have anything to do with increasing minority turnout,’ Fernandes said. ‘We don’t have any interest in enforcing that part of the law.’ End of story.

Adams points out an important provision of the NVRA that EVERY American should be aware of: private action.

“Now, Americans are left to clean up the voter rolls on their own. Thankfully, Motor Voter provides a private right of action — that means private citizens can bring lawsuits against states and voter registrars who are allowing dead and ineligible voters to taint the voter rolls…

Using this private right of action, I have given sixteen states the legal notice required to alert them that they have violated Section 8 of Motor Voter. I am working with private citizens across the nation to help ensure that the elections in November aren’t plagued by ineligible voters. If the states don’t fix the problem, private lawsuits may follow. The sixteen notice letters rely on publicly available data and describe problems in the voter rolls.

Every two years, states must report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) information about their voter rolls. The latest report is troubling. South Dakota, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana report in excess of a dozen counties with more registered voters than living people old enough to vote. Having more voters than living humans tells you something is wrong. In West Virginia, one county reported 113% of the voting age population was registered to vote. Baltimore, Maryland, reported 104% of voting age citizens on the rolls. Iowa and North Carolina also reported counties with more voters than living citizens of voting age.

All of these states received a notice letter.”

Over the past two decades groups like ACORN and Project Vote have used ligation to chip away at the integrity of our electoral system. States like Ohio, and Maryland have been sued in order to ensure minorities access to voter registered in welfare offices (not surprisingly, a majority of those receiving public assistance tend to vote Democrat and therefore there is a partisan slant to this selected enforcement).

A review of some of the cases brought before the states show this selective enforcement and the tendency of these leftist groups to disregard measure put into place to protect the entire voting process.

ACORN v. Levy (formerly ACORN v. Scott) is a lawsuit filed in Kansas City, Missouri charging Deborah Scott, director of the Missouri Department Social Services (DSS), and Janel Luck, director of Family Services, with failing to fulfill their obligations under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to implement voter registration programs in public assistance agencies.

Harkless et. al. v. Brunner et. al. The lawsuit filed in Ohio by ACORN, along with two individuals, charges Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State in Ohio and Barbara Riley, Director of the Department of Job and Family Services with failing to fulfill their obligations under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to implement voter registration programs in public assistance agencies

ACORN vs. Cox – The lawsuit challenges a Georgia State Board of Election rule that states: No person may accept a completed registration application from an applicant unless such application has been sealed by the applicant. No copies of completed registration applications shall be made. The complaint claims the regulation violates the National Voter Rights Act and free speech and associational rights under the First Amendment by creating an undue burden on an organization’s right to assist applicants complete and submit voter applications to election officials. T

Florida NAACP v. Browning – In 2007, Florida law stated that a voter application would be considered invalid unless the state performed a successful database match or otherwise verified the applicant’s identifying number, leaving it to the voter applicant to prove otherwise. This troubled voting rights groups, which filed suit that year. Plaintiffs argued that this law effectively transformed the government function of assigning each voter a unique identifying number into a barrier to registration and voting.

It seems like groups like Project Vote and ACORN care little about electoral integrity and have even pushed litigation that would make it easier for illegal immigrants to vote in Arizona.

Gonzales v. Arizona – In this case registered voters in Arizona and voters’ rights groups including Project Vote challenged Proposition 200, an Arizona law that imposed proof of citizenship and voter ID requirements, which Plaintiffs argued disparately impact Latinos. Plaintiffs sought a Preliminary Injunction preventing the enforcement of these voter identification requirements.

Fortunately for voters, the case was dismissed with prejudice.

One has to wonder why there are not more organizations out there that are willing to litigate to really protect our elections. Adams was right, Americans do need to take matters into our own hands and utilize the private action clause of the NVRA. Dozens of states are not in compliance and weak or complicit Secretaries of States have stood in the way of upholding the law. Where does your state stand?

With less than thirty days left before the critical mid-term elections, Democrats may find themselves wishing that they had done a better job of controlling the media and deflecting attention from their desperate campaign tactics. With ACORN “dissolved” and no longer openly working as an unofficial arm of the Democrats, their candidates are left to do the dirty work.

Last month the New York Post broke a story about a local Brooklyn politician who had resorted to harassing voters directly in order to intimidate them.

“Assemblyman Vito Lopez bullied and cajoled eight little old ladies during an arm-twisting session aimed at getting them to back his candidate in a Brooklyn judicial race, a shocking audiotape obtained by The Post reveals.

‘I’m not a fool or stupid, all right?’ the Democrat railed at the elderly community leaders. ‘I can’t always give and get smacked, give and get smacked . . . I am the political leader.’

The May 2005 conversation, captured on a hidden recorder, not only exposes the 69-year-old Lopez’s heavy-handed tactics in dealing with his core elderly supporters but also offers a rare glimpse into the backrooms of bare-knuckle Brooklyn politics where Lopez reigns. “

According to Wikipedia:

“Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all”

Wikipedia also defines voter intimidation as a form of electoral fraud or voter fraud. Though Democrats and a host of groups, including ACORN’s Project Vote, will insist that voter fraud does not exist, and is a product of an attempt to silence voters. However, as ACORN’s  “ground troops” are no longer available, it appears that desperate times have Democrats openly engaging in suspicious election activity.

Lopez plumbed the depths of corruption by hiring addicts (sound familiar?) to organize Get-Out-The-Vote for his campaign.

“Dozens of addicts living at a Brooklyn rehab facility funded by Assemblyman Vito Lopez clocked 16-hour shifts door-knocking, passing out fliers and singing songs of praise to help the embattled lawmaker get re-elected as district leader last month, sources told The Post.

‘They had them work from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. passing out fliers and going door to door’ on Primary Day, Sept. 14, said Alejandro Hermida, recently discharged from the Williamsburg facility, El Regreso.

Diana Torres, who was campaigning outside PS 50 for her boyfriend — Lopez’s opponent Esteban Duran — said: ‘It was a spectacle. At one point, they had drums. They were singing. It was loud.’

‘We saw people from their campaign bringing them cigarettes, telling them to be loud and rowdy,’ Torres said. “They were chain-smoking, very jittery, aggressive people.’

Lopez and Pagan did not respond to requests for comment.

Lopez won by a landslide, 74 to 26 percent.”

Workers being paid in cigarettes? Recovering drug addicts given cash under the table? These are not just ACORN tactics, they are the tactics of what appears to be a party hijacked by radicals. Vote-buying is also considered a form of voter fraud. It is unclear if any of these “workers” were eligible to vote or  if they did. It is also unclear if they urged others to vote for Lopez with incentives like the ones they received. While such blatant actions should be denounced, the complicit media complex is still mourning the death of their beloved ACORN.

One such article pushes the idea of the “myth” of voter fraud :

“One of the tactics Republicans favor for deflecting attention from their voter suppression efforts is launching unmerited accusations of fraud on the part of pro-Democratic groups and individuals. For a glimpse of how this works, check out ‘Despite Dearth Of Evidence, Right Wing Voter Fraud Fear Machine Carries On’ by Ryan J. Reilly and Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo. The authors recount the smears against ACORN and the phony charge that the New Black Panthers were intimidating voters, and then explain how these incidents are being regurgitated in the latest fear-mongering campaign…

The fear-mongering about fraud and the attack against ACORN has worked depressingly well for Republicans. They succeeded in destroying one of the most successful organizations dedicated to registering poor and minority voters.”

Lopez, who has close ties to the ACORN backed Working Families Party, has also been engaged in suspicious ACORN-like housing fraud.

“A federal housing scandal that left thousands of New Yorkers living in ramshackle homes turned out to be a pot of gold for a not-for-profit group closely linked to powerful Assemblyman Vito Lopez, The Post has learned.”

Unfortunately for New York, Lopez is not only working to undermine the electoral system, but he has also silenced the voice of the people through judicial cronyism.

In a city brimming with talented lawyers with sterling résumés, the word is that Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez is set this week to deliver a Supreme Court judgeship to an attorney whose chief qualifications include being the brother of Lopez’s girlfriend. The fix, as they say, is in.

This gross exercise in cronyism is calendared for Friday at the party’s judicial nominating convention, a rigged affair that will blatantly violate the constitutional rights of the borough’s voters. The federal courts have so ruled, but Lopez is proceeding smarmily apace, party insiders say.

And the bosses will violate the constitutional rights of the voters with every judge they make, screened or not. And all those judges will knowingly take their seats in violation of the Constitution. And the worst of the bunch, Lopez and Battaglia, will long stand as symbols of shamelessness – if, that is, they hold to form.

Lopez is an example of the systemic corruption that has been allowed to run rampant on the local level. Instead of working to protect our electoral system, certain groups and media outlets would rather raise the tried and true racial issue. By working in poor minority communities, these groups hope that you will look the other way while granny is intimidated and those same poor people are used as political pawns.

Washington, DC plans to move ahead with a system that they hope will make it easier for citizens overseas to voter. Last week the District announced a new pilot project.

“The Board of Elections and Ethics today announced that the public examination phase of the Digital Vote by Mail pilot project for overseas voters will begin on Friday, September 24.

Digital Vote by Mail is a first-in-the-nation use of open source technology to provide a secure means for overseas voters to obtain, print and mail their ballot – and, if the voter chooses, also digitally mark and return their ballot. After testing is completed, the service will be made available to overseas voters, who often do not have enough time to receive and return their ballot by mail in the few weeks between the September primary and the November general election. Prior to Digital Vote by Mail, the only option for these voters was to sacrifice the secrecy of their ballot by using e-mail or fax.

During the test period, which will continue through Thursday, September 30, individuals who wish test and comment on the technology and usability of the application will be granted access to the application, a complete system architectural diagram, and access to the underlying source code.”

Information about the project can be found here, and below is a sample invitation letter from the site (click to enlarge).

Testers are given access to the source code for the program and must answer a survey about the program. A review of the questions doesn’t inspire confidence in the overall security of the system, and one may find themselves wondering why the questions are so vague. Screen shot below (click to enlarge).

Apparently, some of the applicants for this pilot program had the same idea and were able to hack into the voting system in under 48 hours.

“I assembled a team from the University of Michigan, including my PhD students, Eric Wustrow and Scott Wolchok, and Dawn Isabel, a member of the University of Michigan technical staff.

Within 36 hours of the system going live, our team had found and exploited a vulnerability that gave us almost total control of the server software, including the ability to change votes and reveal voters’ secret ballots. In this post, I’ll describe what we did, how we did it, and what it means for Internet voting.”

The author of the post points out some well intentioned reasons for exploiting the voting system, and the most disturbing part of the article is that it took two days for DC to take down the program.  It was only after other testers noticed the University of Michigan fight song had been inserted. Who is overseeing this program? It appears that a lot of trust was placed with the testers and as previous elections have shown, there are a number of folks out there who would do terrible things with such access.

Here is a description of what the hackers were able to do:

Our demonstration attacks

D.C. launched the public testbed server on Tuesday, September 28. On Wednesday afternoon, we began to exploit the problem we found to demonstrate a number of attacks:

• We collected crucial secret data stored on the server, including the database username and password as well as the public key used to encrypt the ballots.
• We modified all the ballots that had already been cast to contain write-in votes for candidates we selected. (Although the system encrypts voted ballots, we simply discarded the encrypted files and replaced them with different ones that we encrypted using the same key.) We also rigged the system to replace future votes in the same way.
• We installed a back door that let us view any ballots that voters cast after our attack. This modification recorded the votes, in unencrypted form, together with the names of the voters who cast them, violating ballot secrecy.
• To show that we had control of the server, we left a “calling card” on the system’s confirmation screen, which voters see after voting. After 15 seconds, the page plays the University of Michigan fight song. Here’s a demonstration.

The testers plan to submit a paper based on their findings, but they do offer some conclusions based on their interactions with the online voting system.

“Based on this experience and other results from the public tests, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has announced that they will not proceed with a live deployment of electronic ballot return at this time, though they plan to continue to develop the system. Voters will still be able to download and print ballots to return by mail, which seems a lot less risky.

D.C. officials brought the testbed server back up today (Tuesday) with the electronic ballot return mechanism disabled. The public test period will continue until Friday, October 8…

It may someday be possible to build a secure method for submitting ballots over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today’s security technology.”

Here is the bland response from DC election officials:

“The program originally allowed voters to digitally return their ballot but that option has been removed and voters will have to either e-mail or fax their ballots.

‘The Board determined, with the assistance of the public examination community, that the current iteration of the ballot return feature did not meet our security and file integrity standards,’ the board said in a statement.”

Thank goodness this test was done now and the system was not allowed to compromise the November elections. As with all laws concerning voting or voter registration, citizens must be wary of such online voting systems, especially if one of the testers or designers is dishonest and chooses not to report found security lapses in the system. Such holes in the software security have the potential of allowing the integrity of the system to be compromised.

While our servicemen and women have trouble ensuring that their votes are counted, we must be diligent and not be fooled by alternatives that only sound safe and fair.

Voters in Pennsylvania have not heard the last of ACORN. In 2009, ACORN workers were charged with several counts of voter registration fraud. Also, in Nevada last year ACORN employees  and senior staff were indicted amid charges of fostering an environment that led to voter registration fraud. When the news broke, ACORN officials at first denied use of a quota system, but after proof surfaced in the form of a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, ACORN decided to go on the offensive.

“Despite repeated denials of a quota system, a 2004 manual utilized by the activist community organization ACORN advises managers that workers who do not produce a set number of voter registrations per day should be fired.

‘If a person performs at less than standard have them come to another training, send them out with a team leader. If they still perform poorly then re-train once more, then fire,’ the 2004 management document states.

‘Anyone who performs at less than three voter registrations per hour SHOULD NOT BE ON THE STAFF,’ the directive states.

A quota system for voter registration drives is barred under state law and has been cited as a major factor in pending criminal cases in Pittsburgh. Seven people, all with ties to ACORN, have been charged by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., with violating state election laws and submitting fraudulent voter registration applications. Those cases are pending.”

ACORN and its voter registration arm, Project Vote, operated massive incident filled voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives in a number of states. The 2004 map below gives voters an idea as to the scale of its operations.

ACORN’s denials of a quota system rang hollow especially with evidence like its own handbooks and the screen shot below, which is from ACORN’s Political Operations department:

Additionally, the unmodified documents shown below are from a 2005 Citizens Consulting Inc. presentation on payroll and accounting, and they reference incentives twice. Also referenced is payroll allocation forms for incentives. Below are screen shots of these documents.

ACORN has possibility committed felonies in several of the states where these drives were held. But in a bold move that illustrates the problems in the system, ACORN decided to file a federal lawsuit.

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and ACORN’s get-out-the-dead-people-to-vote affiliate Project Vote filed a federal lawsuit today in an effort to snuff out the Keystone State’s anti-election fraud law.

According to the ACLU the law has been misapplied by Allegheny County’s Democratic District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., who filed seven charges against former ACORN workers for falsifying voter registration forms. After preliminary hearings, all seven have been ordered to stand trial.

In a press release, the ACLU said the law has been misapplied ‘to prohibit an organization from using flexible productivity standards and goals to manage paid canvassers.’

Translation: efforts to crack down on election fraud are bad because, well, they crack down on election fraud.”

Last week, a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that ACORN is allowed to proceed with their lawsuit.

“A federal judge rejected a motion by state Attorney General Tom Corbett to toss out a portion of a lawsuit filed by the community group ACORN challenging the constitutionality of a law barring the use of quotas to pay voter registration workers.”

While some may argue that ACORN no longer exists, lawsuits like the one progressing through the court system in Pennsylvania should remind all voters of the continuing threat to our electoral system.

An article posted at the site Texas GOP Vote highlights the close connection between State Representative Kristin Thibuat and ACORN:

“The Republican Party of Texas today unveiled a new website, kristiworksforacorn.com. The site documents Democrat state Rep. Kristi Thibaut’s sordid past and her involvement with the notorious leftwing organization ACORN. Thibaut is the incumbent in House District 133.”

State House District 133 encompasses Harris County, Texas the site of massive ACORN-like voter registration fraud and where a mysterious fire destroyed most of the voting machines in the county last week.

“Another blow has been dealt to voters in Harris County, Texas just days after the Harris County Voter Registrar Leo Vasquez released a 72 page PowerPoint on voting irregularities from a local group similar to the infamous ACORN.

‘The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes,” Vasquez said at a 2 p.m. press conference at his office, where he also released copies of applications in some of the most egregious cases.’

[Friday], voters are waking up with the news that the Harris County Election Technology Center was the site of a massive three-alarm fire early this morning.”

As the site kristiworksforacorn.com points out, Thibaut, actively worked for ACORN for a number of years, and was even a paid lobbyist for the group. Screen shot below. Click to enlarge.

By the way, yes, there was money flowing back and forth between Thibaut and ACORN.

A meeting was held yesterday in Harris County regarding purchasing new voting machines or other options regarding the upcoming elections.

Considering the current political climate and the impending sense of doom that most Democrats are experiencing, a situation is emerging it Harris County Texas and it reeks of corruption. Will voters have a chance to have their voices heard or are political players stacking the deck?

Cross-posted at my new site Emerging Corruption