As Brad Friedman of Bradblog notes, the GOP, running scared, is off and running on its bogus pursuit of 'voter fraud.' The 'voter fraud' non-starter, of course, has been going on for several years. Unlike the giant ills and cruelties of genuine election fraud--vote suppression via bogus campaign rhetoric; putting around fliers telling people the wrong place and time to vote or telling them they will be subject to arrest for traffic violations if they show up; sending too few voting machines to overcrowded precincts; mounting challenges to voter rolls using the U.S. Postal Service; contracting malfunctioning voting machines or manipulable vote counting technology; etc--the statistically minuscule occurrence of individual fraud has been avidly pursued by Republican officeholders. When it comes to voters waiting patiently in line, for hours, in inclement Ohio weather, they tend not to care so much . . . to our shame as a nation.
As mentioned, this has been going on for a while; it is analogous to the ongoing pursuit of individual insurance fraud by the justice system--right, as far as it goes--while the same justice system turns a blind eye to contractual bad faith and malfeasance by the giant insurance industry. Now there are two new wrinkles: The GOP dark-underside campaign against the respected civic organization ACORN has ramped up; and the rightwing blogosphere is hinting big-time that the office of US Attorney in Chicago Patrick Fitzgerald is engaged in pursuing ACORN. Hinting? --Wrong word, actually. It's an outright claim.
Brad gives the run-down on the govt raid of ACORN in Nevada:
"Today's incredible raid of an ACORN office in Las Vegas --- in hotly contested Nevada, as coincidence would have it --- has forced me to push this to the top of the heap right now. I've also posted ACORN's statement on today's nonsense in Vegas at the end of this article. . .
Doubtless you've heard the smears by now: that ACORN is committing "voter fraud," on behalf of Obama, in hotly contested swing states. The media have been all too happy to pass that garbage on, without bothering to note that, in fact, the organization attempts to authenticate every registration form its workers submit and by law they must turn in every form to election officials --- even if they find a registration to be fraudulent when they call the phone number submitted on the form, or if the forms are otherwise suspect or incomplete.
They do so, and they flag all questionable registration forms as being suspect before turning them in to officials.
The thanks they receive for registering millions of new voters that nobody else has bothered with, and for notifying officials about questionable registration forms when they turn them in, is that the GOP's democracy-hating propagandists and election officials run to the media shouting, "ACORN is committing voter fraud! . . ."Brad is right: Thus far, the key points here--1) that ACORN flags the suspect forms, as required; and 2) that ACORN is legally required to turn in all forms--have been omitted from media reports.
I respect ACORN, and this nonsense may well induce me to join up, paying them some dues, maybe as soon as I get back to town from checking on relatives in another city (this written in a rush). Meanwhile, though, I myself have another minor item to add to this sorry saga:
Today my inbox has at least six emails generated by separate individuals all expressing a hope or a certitude that US Atty Fitzgerald is pursuing ACORN or Obama himself in a 'ten-state RICO investigation.' The sources for all of these happen to be rightwing. They are the same people who criticize Patrick Fitzgerald balefully for having indicted Scooter Libby; or who blame him for having 'let Obama bin Laden get away' or for failing to get Ali Mohamed for good, as a counterterrorism official in NYC; or who start by saying things like, "Rumour has it that Patrick Fitzgerald (who, I must admit, I despise for having prosecuted Conrad Black) is leading . . ."
Stumble It!