As reported by Democracy Now on Wednesday…
There are new developments in the scandal over the Bush administration’s firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. One of the dismissed prosecutors has revealed that he was pressured by Republican officials to target the advocacy group ACORN for voter fraud. ACORN was working on a voter registration drive in low-income and largely minority neighborhoods in New Mexico. David Iglesias told Newsweek that he found no case worth bringing against ACORN. But that apparently did not please the White House. Last week Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s ex-chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson testified that during the run-up to the mid-term election White House adviser Karl Rove complained that Iglesias and two other U.S. Attorneys had not done enough to prosecute so-called voter fraud.
Ah yes, the always reliable GOP “vote fraud” scammers’ “ACORN canard” rears it’s ugly (and unsubstantiated) head again. The NEWSWEEK article referenced above is here.
ACORN is the “Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now”, a group which has successfully run voter registration drives across the country in low-income and minority areas.
As we reported back in December of 2005 — when high-level GOP operative James Tobin was actually found guilty of jamming Democratic ‘Get out the Vote’ phone lines in order to keep voters away from the polls in 2002 by “orchestrating an election day phone-jamming plot against New Hampshire Democrats” — the ACORN nut had already fallen off the Republican’s “vote fraud” tree.
ACORN had “been vindicated of the various bogus charges, as virtually all of the frivolous lawsuits and investigations the GOP liars made so much noise about had simply collapsed by then,” as we reported at the time in linking to ProjectVote.org’s coverage.
And yet, the scam, built deep in the heart of Texas (by Rove and his slimy, democracy-hating operative buddies at the phony ACVR), just kept rolling…
New Mexico attorney John Boyd, who was working with state Dems at the time, had a front-row seat to the bogus 2004 “voter fraud” charges in the state, and wrote about it, in some detail, for BRAD BLOG a few weeks ago.
It’s always been about undermining democracy for these jerks. From 2000 on up to 2008, the quest for power trumps the people in the minds of the wretched GOP evil doers.
to this republican, I must admit my feelings of shame at how our party has been hijacked.
To me, this fraud, perpetrated on hundreds of thousands of Americans is worthy of Treason charges and life without parole in supermax.
And this is our President’s “senior advisor” for the love of God.
It’s all about the money, corporate interests, Greed and lust for power.
I’m not a Republican but I sure feel your shame Dan. The treason you speak of has taken over control of my country.
My “conservative” views are ridiculed today in neocon circles.
Brad – Thanks for your post–it is right on the money.
An added point: If there is anything that bothers these attack dogs more than hundreds of thousands of African American and Latino citizens joining the voter rolls it is when those citizens have the audacity to USE their right to vote on ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage. ACORN’s leadership on wage increase initiatives provoked especially nasty attacks in Florida in 2004, for example–although the organization was utlimately vindicated in court where the Chamber of Commerce operatives had to admit that their charges were completely false.(St. Petersburg Times, “Voter fraud charges collapse” 12/15/05).
The same thing took place in Missouri last year–where it was the Republican Board of Elections Chair in St. Louis who was ultimately rebuked by the Secretary of State for voter suppression tactics (including illegally demanding a photo ID at the polls FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE herself! (see the project vote report, link above).
In both cases, however, the intimidation tactics were in vain–the wage increases passed by huge margins.
Learn more at ACORN’s website.
They envision no less than a Stalinist mechanism which gives full life to Stalin’s “it is not who votes that counts, but rather who counts the votes” paradigm.
I have often wondered why the republicans in power now, even tho in the minority in the congress, continue to repeat certain lies. Then I remember:
(see Joseph Goebbels link below).
And I remember that the object mission is the mythical nirvana type realm “success”, which is what the republicans repeat so often lately … for instance when speaking of Iraq. It figures:
(Joseph Goebbels, a famous neoCon). And of course “success” means grasping and holding one thing … power … regardless of its corrupting effect on the holder.
ACORN in Arizona registered 66,000 new voters before the 2004 election; however 2/3 (44,000) of these new voters for one reason or another were denied the right to vote in the 2004 election. ACORN was confronted and accused by Maricopa Recorder Helen Purcell of turning in fraudulent voter registrations. The (44,000) registrations were not processed till after election. No problems were found.
Fact is that ever time Nathan Sproul got in trouble the GOP would try to turn it around and blame ACORN.
Justice is supposed to be blind and NOT politically inspired.
Likewise – criminal investigations are supposed to be fair and unbiased. The intent is to discover the truth.
If ACORN is guilty of committing fraud so be it and they should be investigated/prosecuted. If they are not, using political biases to determine prosecution is shameful.
This voter fraud distraction keeps coming up in Karl Rove’s playbook! Thanks Brad, for being persistent in keeping us on track on where the REAL fraud has been happening and is potentially more damaging where this canard isn’t.
It looks like the source of this “anti voter fraud” strategy of Rove’s has been potentially exposed as coming from a Wisconsin state GOP official. It looks like he was complaining about their own prosecutor who found as most of the rest of us might expect, that these concerns about voter fraud were baseless. It looks like he wanted Steve Biskupic fired along with those other prosecutors too.
Certainly seemed to fuel Rove’s election strategy of dealing with our complaints of election fraud every place!
The plot thickens when one considers the question: “What did the US Attorneys who were not fired do to keep their jobs?”.
One case in point tells us:
(US v Thompson, emphasis added).
How great would it be if ACORN got as much positive publicity now that it has been vindicated of voter fraud charges as it did before the elections when Karl Rove was ginning up false charges?
This week’s Newsweek story, “Rove: A Moving Target,” as well as other recent news reports, have quoted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson’s testimony that “during the run-up to the midterm elections,” A.G. told him Rove “complained” that David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, and two other federal prosecutors, were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud””a top GOP priority. Iglesias told Newsweek he had been pressured to prosecute ACORN workers who were registering voters in minority neighborhoods, but Iglesias had found no cases worth pursuing.
In 2006, ACORN volunteers and staff helped more than 540,000 low-income, young and minority citizens to apply to become registered voters. ACORN has helped more than 1.6 million people register to vote since 2003.
So-called “voter fraud” is a myth used to suppress the minority vote. A report, “The Politics of Voter Fraud,” released in March by Project Vote found that fraudulent voting is extremely rare.
An analysis of federal government records concluded that only 24 people were convicted or pleaded guilty of illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year.
ACORN President Maude Hurd said: “While ACORN members are disturbed to learn that helping African Americans and Latinos register to vote invites harassment from the White House, ACORN will continue to fight for the right to vote for every American citizen and spare no effort to encourage voter participation in our communities.”