Democrats: Voter Fraud for Thee, but not me

Despite a tumultuous history of outright racism and an affiliation with the Klu Klux Klan, the Democratic party has laid claim to all minorities and become the so-called “champion” of the oppressed. Of course, this path requires an unlimited supply of victims and, apparently, a disregard for the law.

With less than two weeks remaining before the mid-term elections, Democrats have stepped up their concerted effort to paint the Right as racists seeking to stifle minority voters, while ignoring clear violations of established standards and practices regarding voter fraud.

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Voting rights activists said tea partiers’ efforts to obtain voter registration records could have a chilling effect on turnout, potentially undercutting Democrats and swaying the outcome of the Nov. 2 elections.

Activists on Wednesday noted that dozens of tea party-aligned groups have sought records and are planning to visit polling places on Election Day to enforce their own “voter protection” programs…

‘We are worried this year that we could see large-scale efforts to challenge voters at the polls,’ said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan public policy and law institute based at New York University.

Gloria Montano Greene of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials also cautioned that the persistent anti-illegal immigrant fervor could drive down turnout or unfairly target those who appear to be immigrants.

Black voters, too, are likely to face challengers, activists warned.

‘We know that we continue to face stark levels of voting discrimination around the country,’ said Kristen Clarke, co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund’s voter project.”

Stark levels of voting discrimination? In case you’re wondering, the writers are not referring to the New Black Panther Party case, but to efforts to maintain the integrity of the electoral system. Amazingly, while Democrats were sounding the alarm, First Lady Michelle Obama was in Chicago demonstrating the administration’s disregard for our electoral system.

“First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law — when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place!

The drama began after Mrs. Obama stopped off at the Martin Luther King Center on the south side of Chicago to cast an early vote…

After finishing at the machine, Obama went back to the desk and handed in her voting key.

She let voters including electrician Dennis Campbell, 56, take some photos.

‘She was telling me how important it was to vote to keep her husband’s agenda going,’ Campbell said.

According to a pool reporter from the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES at the scene, the conversation took place INSIDE the voting center, not far from the booths.

Illinois state law — Sec. 17-29 (a) — states: “No judge of election, pollwatcher, or other person shall, at any primary or election, do any electioneering or soliciting of votes or engage in any political discussion within any polling place [or] within 100 feet of any polling place.”

Michelle Obama’s actions are inexcusable. The Obama administration is notorious for planting seeds of division around the country and the First Lady directly appealing to a black voter inside of a polling place should cause alarm. Democrats depend upon the black vote to survive and they are not above stoking the fires of racism to incite passion among voters. There is an obvious conflict of interest among those who claim voter fraud does not exist and then push for legislation that benefits their target population. This year the black vote is even more critical.

“Energizing black voters for midterm elections has always been a challenge for Democrats. This fall the Democratic National Committee plans to spend more than $2 million in outreach ads and direct mail to black voters, more than 10 times the amount spent in 2006, said Derrick Plummer, who heads up African American affairs for the DNC…

On Wednesday, President Obama spoke on Baisden’s program, warning that low turnout could allow Republicans to take power on Capitol Hill and stymie his agenda.

“Everybody in the barbershops, the beauty shops, and at work — everybody’s got to understand: This is a huge election,” the president said.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, agreed that black turnout would play a particularly important role at a time when the national political momentum has shifted from the “Yes We Can” crowd to the conservative “tea party” movement.

“Look, without a strong African American vote on Nov. 2, Democrats can kiss the House goodbye, and maybe the Senate, too,” Sabato said. “It’s just that critical.

The black vote is so critical that Michelle Obama is campaigning inside polling places and even the White House has defended her actions by trying to make light of the situation.

A top Illinois State Board of Elections official tells the DRUDGE REPORT that Mrs. Obama — a Harvard-educated lawyer — may have simply been ignorant of the law and thus violated it unintentionally.

‘You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?’ the official explained late Thursday. “I mean, she’s pretty well liked and probably doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

WHITE HOUSE DEFENDS ELECTIONEERING

When questioned about the brazen nature of Mrs. Obama’s campaigning, press secretary Robert Gibbs defended the action.

‘I don’t think it would be much to imagine, the First Lady might support her husband’s agenda,’ Gibbs smiled.

Considering the First Lady’s crusade against fat, her garden and the carefully crafted image presented to the public, it’s hard to imagine that she is not aware of the law. Democrats routinely attack Republicans for minor mistakes regarding voter and voting fraud. Ann Coulter and Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk are among the recent targets.

“One of the biggest stories in Illinois right now (bigger than Rahm Emanuel’s every move and thought) is how Congressman Mark Kirk, running for President Obama’s former senate seat, was unknowingly caught on tape telling state Republican leaders that he is funding “the largest voter integrity program in fifteen years for the state of Illinois.” The plan, he explained, is to place election monitors in certain precincts that are, according to Kirk, especially susceptible to voter fraud. Those precincts are in places like the Southside of Chicago and the Westside of Chicago–i.e., areas that happen to be composed mainly of Democratic and African American voters unlikely to vote for Kirk.

The Kirk Campaign has defended the program, saying it has nothing to do with race and is merely an effort to cut down on ‘…voter fraud that is well-known in Illinois….’ It’s nothing you haven’t heard from the Republicans and their allies before; accusations of voter fraud, particularly in minority-heavy districts, have been rampant ever since Obama seemed poised to win the presidency in 2008* and continue to proliferate now. But what you may not have heard is that the type of election stealing that conservatives claim to be stopping seems to be exceedingly rare”

Voter fraud in Chicago? Never. Congressman Kirk must be a racist. Sarcasm aside, a pattern begins to emerge among those claiming that voter fraud does not exist. Most of those groups are tied to ACORN. The article below quotes two partners of ACORN’s Project Vote to prove the claim that Kirk’s actions are racially motivated. Please also note the disclaimer.

“A few years ago the Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University, undertook an exhaustive analysis of voter fraud allegations–everything from reports that people were voting twice to stories of dead people casting ballots. The vast majority of allegations turned out to be baseless and, in a 2007 report, the Center’s Justin Levin wrote that “It’s more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” More recently, in a 2010 book called The Myth of Voter Fraud, Barnard political science professor Lorraine Minnite did her own analysis based on state government records. She reached the same conclusion. According toMinnite, between 2002 and 2005 there was only one case of voter registration fraud and five cases of people voting twice. That’s a total of six cases within a three year span.

That’s not to say election stealing never takes place: As the blogger Archpundit notes, there have been documented cases of absentee ballot fraud and phone jamming to interfere with get-out-the-vote efforts, just to name two. But Kirk’s “integrity” campaign won’t deter that sort of trickery. The only thing it will deter is turnout in communities likely to reject Kirk.

Gee, could that be the whole idea?

*Disclaimer: My father is a lawyer with a nonprofit that worked with ACORN, which has been the target of a lot of voter fraud claims.

A quick Google search returns numerous articles that try to convince the reader that voter fraud does not exist. Of course, many of those articles also cite the far left Brennan Center for Justice, an organization that has partnered with ACORN and Project Vote on countless lawsuits. The ACORN connection should give anyone pause, especially considering that the most egregious cases of voter registration fraud have been committed by ACORN employees.

As DOJ Whistle blower J. Christian Adams points out, Michelle Obama’s actions are systematic of the larger problem plaguing this administration and the Democrats.

“What does a ban on electioneering have to do with election integrity? It prevents people from being bothered, coerced, or badgered. A blanket ban on electioneering in the polls prevents both what happened in Chicago today and the thuggery that characterized elections throughout our history. Michelle Obama should step up and admit a mistake, and talk about the importance of laws ensuring election integrity. To do otherwise tells us what we need to know how much they respect election integrity safeguards.”

More disturbing is the fact that lawlessness committed by the Democrats has become so common that even the White House laughs it off. How can a republic have free and fair elections when all activities aimed at improving or protecting the system are labeled “voter suppression” or “voter intimidation.”

One can not ignore America’s civil rights history, but among the freedoms that many fought and died for was the right to vote. To dilute that vote with organized voter registration fraud and high level shenanigans.

“A four-year wave of attacks on voter registration drives, both in terms of state laws that either shut down voter registration drives or made it too onerous to do it, and other public attacks have certainly had an effect,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Project.

And while voter registration drives have languished, state governments aren’t picking up the slack. Voting rights advocates argue that many states aren’t adequately complying with requirements in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to register voters automatically at state agencies and keep their addresses up to date when they move. The result is a gaping hole in the country’s voter registration efforts that threatens to undo the positive strides that have been made over the last decade and a half.

The most obvious cause for the decline in voter registration is the shuttering of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. At its height, ACORN had a budget of close to $35 million and was credited with registering approximately half a million voters in 2008 alone.

The article fails to mention that ACORN and Project Vote turned in almost a million cards in 2008 and yet only half were valid voter registrations.

As Democrats try to once again change the debate over voter fraud, it is up to ordinary citizens to protect our voting systems. However, the deck seems to be stacked against Republicans and others on the right.

When did it become okay to commit voter fraud when your party designation is Democrat? How long will courts and secretaries of state allow laws that only benefit the Democrats and their quest to maintain the coveted black vote?

Below are examples of real voter fraud. Voter registration fraud harms everyone and can dilute or suppress real votes.

North Carolina — State Board of Elections officials have found at least 100 voter registration forms with the same names over and over again. The forms were turned in by ACORN. Officials sent about 30 applications to the state Board of Elections for possible fraud investigation.

Ohio — The New York Post reported that a Cleveland man said he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times. The complaints have sparked an investigation by election officials into the organization, whose political wing has supported Barack Obama. Witnesses have already been subpoenaed to testify against the organization.

Nevada — Authorities raided the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now on Tuesday October 7, 2008, after a month-long investigation. The fraudulent voter registrations included the Dallas Cowboys starting line-up.

Indiana — More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana’s Lake County filled out by ACORN employees turned out to be bogus. Officials also stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

Connecticut — Officials are looking into a complaint alleging ACORN submitted fraudulent voter registration cards in Bridgeport. In one instance, an official said a card was filled out for a 7-year-old girl, whose age was listed as 27. 8,000 cards were submitted in Bridgeport.

Missouri — The Kansas City election board is reporting 100 duplicate applications and 280 with fake information. Acorn officials agreed that at least 4% of their registrations were bogus. Governor Matt Bluntcondemned the attempts by ACORN to commit voter fraud.

Pennsylvania — Officials are investigating suspicious or incomplete registration forms submittedby ACORN. 252,595 voter registrations were submitted in Philadelphia. Remarkably, 57,435 were rejected — most of them submitted by ACORN.

Wisconsin — In Milwaukee, ACORN improperly used felons as registration workers. Additionally, its workers are among 49 cases of bad registrations sent to authorities for possible charges, as first reported by the Journal Sentinel.

Florida — The Pinellas County Elections supervisor says his office has received around 35 voter registrations that appear to be bogus. There is also a question of 30,000 felons who are registered illegally to vote. Their connections with ACORN are not yet clear.

Texas — Of the 30,000 registration cards ACORN turned in, Harris County tax assessor PaulBettencourt says just more than 20,000 are valid. More than 250 people claim a homeless outreach center as their home address. Some listed a county mental health facility as their home and one person even wrote down the Harris County jail at the sheriff’s office.

Michigan — ACORN in Detroit is being investigated after several municipal clerks reported fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications coming through. The clerk interviewed said the fraud appears to be widespread.

New Mexico – The Bernalillo County clerk has notified prosecutors that some 1,100 fraudulent voter registration cards were turned in by ACORN.