Without ACORN’s ground troops, local Democrats Resort to Questionable Voter Outreach Schemes

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.