Inevitable

by digby

They are going back to their roots. I would look for this in Arizona and New Mexico, but it could crop up in any of the western states and Florida too.

——– Original Message ——–

Subject:	Stop Obama’s Aunti and 10 Million Illegal Alien Voters
Date:	Sun, 2 Nov 2008 11:54:37 -0600
From:	MinutemanHQ

National O Minuteman Poll Watch 2008 Stop Obama’s Aunti and 10 Million Illegal Alien Voters Report Voter Fraud

7558 W. Thunderbird Road Ste. 1 PMB 622 Peoria, AZ 85381 &nb sp; Phone (520) 829-3112

ALERT: All Minutemen, Minutemen Supporters and Patriots Operation “Poll Watch 2008” We Need Minutemen at your Local Polling Places Tuesday, November4th – All Day and Night Call Your Local Campaign Office TODAY Ask Them if Obama’s Aunti Is Registered to Vote? Tell to Keep Illegal Alien Away for the Polls as You Will Be Watching Is Obama’s Illegal Alien Aunti Zeituni Also A Registered Voter? According to the AP story : ‘Obama aunt from Kenya living in US illegally’ By EILEEN SULLIVAN and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judg e who denied her asylum request. I must ask the question – If experts believe there could be more than 10 million such illegal immigrants in the United States – does that also mean that 10 million illegal votes could be cast as a result of incompetence and or blatant fraud? I have received so many positive responses to our call to civic duty – as Minuteman poll watchers. We discover we have many Minuteman volunteers who are officially inside the polls as watchers and many others who will be positioned outside the 75-100 ft. neutral zone that surrounds polling locations. Just as a neighborhood watch, civic minded Americans will be working to keep our polling locations safe and secured to those who have the right to vote in our elections. Along with illegal alien workers who display blatant disregard for our laws to enter the U.S. we also know that last year alone in the just the Tucson sector of Arizona over 46,000 arrested and convicted murderers, sexual predators, drug dealers and violent criminals re-entered our country after they committed crimes in the U.S. and were removed by deportation. Could they have also cast a vote in your state? We know millions of illegal aliens who have stolen identities of U.S. citizens could also be casting illegal votes. Not only should we stand vigilant to ensure the rights of all who have a legal right to vote to do so in safety and assurance of the integrity of the system. When you vote, please insist that your poll worker asks for and checks your I.D. The right to vote is precious and the future of our democracy hangs in the balance. Protect yourselves with video cameras and spend a few hours at your local polling places and be vigilant to document anything that may be out of the ordinary or suspicious especially the busloads of people who will arrive at many locations around the country. Please wear your MCDC hats and shirts and follow the SOP – no verbal contact, just quiet and vigilant observation and documentation. Remember that in 2004 the Columbus Dispatch reported that illegal alien Nuradin Abdi—the suspected shopping mall bomb plotter from Somalia—was registered to vote in the battleground state of Ohio by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a left-wing activist group. Also on the Ohio voting rolls: convicted al Qaeda agent Lyman Faris, who planned to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge and had entered the country fraudulently from Pakistan on a student visa. [“Long gone but still registered Ohio’s Election Day rolls include people who couldn’t—and shouldn’t—vote, October 24, 2004, Jon Craig The Columbus Dispatch”] There are many more documented accounts of rampant voter fraud from Wisconsin to Florida but thankfully not here in Arizona, voters made sure of that by passing prop 200 in 2004. However in many other states fraud is actually encouraged and many organizations will likely aggressively oppose basic ID requirements at the polls. And they have legions of attorneys standing by to protect people potentially voting illegally from election officials who ask for proof of I.D. who will be accused of harassment and intimidation. They will be accused of disenfranchising the poor and the minorities—never mind the damaging effect of unchecked voter fraud on law, order, and the integrity of our electoral system. WHO: Thousands of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Volunteers WHAT: Operation “Poll Watch 2008”- A national muster to make sure legal U.S. residents and registered voters are allowed to vote. WHEN: November 4th, Nationwide WHERE: On Duty at Local Polling Locations in Every City and Town in the United States. Our Government is still NOT DOING ITS JOB! On November 4th Minutemen will be on duty to be sure you get to vote. YOU can make a REAL DIFFERENCE. So, for your sake, for the sake of your children, your grandchildren, and for generations to come, please help MCDC continue its fight to protect and preserve the United States of America and defend our Constitution. Select Here to Donate to the November Operations Support Fund https://secure.conservativedonations.com/minutemanhq/? a=1854 Sincerely for these United States, Chris Simcox, President Carmen Mercer, Vice President

Registered Voter By Birth

by dday

As the last of the lawsuits against ACORN gets laughed out of court, and as Republican Secretaries of State grumble about having to reinstate voters to the rolls, it’s clear that, no matter what happens in the election, this insanity around voter registration and zombie lies about voter fraud has to stop. Exhibit A is the fact that John McCain’s own head of his “Honest And Open Election Committee” can’t name any evidence of voter fraud.

But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said in an interview that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.

“Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can’t cite one, chapter and verse,” he said […]

Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor’s report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and “someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen’s] name.”

Michaelson, who served for 27 years as executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections, said the sharp exchanges over registration fraud have undermined voters’ confidence in the electoral system.

“The fact that so many of these illegal registrations are being made public raises a perception in the minds of people,’’ he said. “That’s more of a general concern. You don’t want to perpetuate the idea that our election process is lacking integrity.”

Asked whether his own party was responsible for fostering that perception, Michaelson said, “Well, it doesn’t help. It has captured the attention of a lot of people.” Why do it, then? “Maybe it’s because there’s nothing else to talk about,” he said.

Boy, he is part of a committee with the word “honest” in it, isn’t he?

This is one of those “problems” that actually has a solution, a very smart and nonpartisan solution that would be simple to implement and would eliminate a lot of unnecessary labor. Rick Hasen asks for America to nationalize voter registration.

The solution is to take the job of voter registration for federal elections out of the hands of third parties (and out of the hands of the counties and states) and give it to the federal government. The Constitution grants Congress wide authority over congressional elections. The next president should propose legislation to have the Census Bureau, when it conducts the 2010 census, also register all eligible voters who wish to be registered for future federal elections. High-school seniors could be signed up as well so that they would be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. When people submit change-of-address cards to the post office, election officials would also change their registration information.

This change would eliminate most voter registration fraud. Government employees would not have an incentive to pad registration lists with additional people in order to keep their jobs. The system would also eliminate the need for matches between state databases, a problem that has proved so troublesome because of the bad quality of the data. The federal government could assign each person a unique voter-identification number, which would remain the same regardless of where the voter moves. The unique ID would prevent people from voting in two jurisdictions, such as snowbirds who might be tempted to vote in Florida and New York. States would not have to use the system for their state and local elections, but most would choose to do so because of the cost savings.

There’s something in this for both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats talk about wanting to expand the franchise, and there’s no better way to do it than the way most mature democracies do it: by having the government register voters. For Republicans serious about ballot integrity, this should be a winner as well. No more ACORN registration drives, and no more concerns about Democratic secretaries of state not aggressively matching voters enough to motor vehicle databases.

Finally, universal voter registration is good for the country, not only because it will make it easier for those who wish to vote to do so, but because it should end controversy over ballot integrity that threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our election process. If President McCain or Obama makes this a priority, we can have the system ready in time for the president’s re-election.

Of course, Republicans aren’t serious about ballot integrity, and their opposition to this would prove it. They just want something to carp about and undermine confidence in elections. In addition, there’s a credible concern, given how the current government has politicized the Department of Justice and the General Services Administration, that giving over voter registration to them might have dangerous consequences.

But of course, there are Republican Secretaries of State doing that politicization right now. And wouldn’t it be nice to create an election system where people don’t have to turn in a form or remember to vote at an old precinct if they missed the cutoff, a system designed to make voting easier instead of harder?

This is but one possible innovation in elections (like expanding early voting access, making Election Day a weekend or a holiday, instant runoff voting, a mandate for paper ballots, abolishing the Electoral College, etc., etc.), but it certainly would help to defuse this massive hissy fit we hear every four years like clockwork. I’d love to see Republicans oppose the concept of registering every American to vote.

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Looks Like Some Good News

by tristero

Yesterday, dday sounded the klaxon that Bush was gonna have the Justice Department intervene in an Ohio voting rights case. As dday wrote,”This is attempted voter suppression at the highest levels…”

Looks like good news:

The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers.

The decision comes about a week after an unusual request from President Bush asking the department to investigate the matter and roughly two weeks after the Supreme Court dismissed a case involving the flagged registration applications.

Federal law requires states to verify voter registration applications with a government database like those used for driver’s licenses or Social Security cards. Names that do not match are flagged for further verification. But the law provides little guidance on how these flagged registrations should be handled and discrepancies corrected.

Ohio Republicans had sought the lists to challenge voters, but the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, refused the request, saying that numerical errors or misspellings are the probable reason for most of the discrepancies. Forcing these voters to cast provisional ballots would possibly disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters, she said, since these ballots are easier to disqualify.

Republicans then took their request to court, but were unsuccessful. The Justice Department has been in contact with Ohio election officials since early October and this week its lawyers determined they would not pursue litigation before the election, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.

Most studies by non-partisan groups have found little evidence that voter fraud is a wide-scale problem or that fraudulent or duplicate voter registration applications lead to ineligible voters casting ballots.

Voter Suppression Watch

by dday

I’m still a little stunned that it isn’t a bigger story that a sitting US President is ordering his Attorney General to intervene in a voting-rights case in Ohio – a case already decided by the US Supreme Court – just a week away from the election to pick his successor. This is attempted voter suppression at the highest levels, with the President essentially aiding an abetting the nominee from his own party. And if it’s so much as hit page D-38, I’d be surprised. Only the ACLU appears the least bit worked up about this:

With the election one week away, this kind of intrusion represents partisan politics at its worst. In addition, challenging — or purging — lawfully registered voters in the days before the election invites chaos and undermines the integrity of the democratic process.

The whole letter is here.

Why is this not the talk of Democratic circles? Ohio may not hold the key to the election the way it has in years past, but injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as the saying goes. My biggest fear is that after the election, if Democrats win there will be a strong pull to say “Oh well, the system worked” and not to enact the structural reforms that are needed at so many levels, whether that means instituting the National Popular Vote or same-day registration or automatic registration through Social Security numbers or a ban on e-voting machines and a paper ballot requirement or instant runoff voting or a federal voting standard or making Election Day a holiday. The catch-22 is that a win breeds inertia and a loss means the loser has no access to the levers of power.

But when people like this have a large bearing on how elections are run, there is a serious problem afoot and it doesn’t matter if the eventual conclusion seems correct.

Yesterday we told you about an effort by Indiana’s Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, to press federal and state authorities to prosecute ACORN for voter fraud. Rokita had said a review by his office of forms submitted by ACORN found “multiple criminal violations.”

But it turns out that Rokita hardly has a reputation as a non-partisan public official. In October 2002, the South Bend Tribune reported (via nexis):

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush’s campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush’s favor.

In other words, Rokita was part of the team of ambitious young Republican operatives who flew down to Florida to help out on a bid to stymie the recount effort — remember the “Brooks Brothers riot”? — and ultimately put George Bush in the White House.

This is a partisan operative, one of Roger Stone’s freshly scrubbed protégés, and a McCain campaign co-chair, using his office to attempt to pervert the election process. At some point, this must be fought, regardless of who wins and who loses on November 4.

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All The Way To The Top

by digby

This statement should be the basis for serious congressional investigations:

The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC’s election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. “We took over 100 complaints,” from the GOP, he told us, “We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico.”

Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. “They were looking for politicized — for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases.”

There will never be a better opening for the Democrats to fix the electoral system and expose the sophisticated GOP vote suppression and propaganda program than now. The US Attorney scandal was never fully dealt with and it needs to be if we hope to have fair elections in the future.

The Republicans have a very well funded, professional operation, developed over years, to keep Democrats from voting and to brainwash local election officials. If the race isn’t close enough to win it by vote suppression and intimidation, they will have laid the groundwork to call the legitimacy of the outcome into question to justify total obstruction of the mandate. (And they have the nerve to say that ACORN is destroying the fabric of democracy.)

One of the purposes of having political power is to use it to ensure your future political survival. It doesn’t have to be underhanded or illegal — indeed, in this case protecting the franchise protects the Democratic Party. If that weren’t true, the conservatives wouldn’t work so hard to keeping people from voting. The Democrats are suckers if they don’t take the opportunity of an historic win, with no sour grapes involved, to clean this up. This meme about “voter fraud” is taking hold and if they don’t put a stop to it right now they will regret it.

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Beware The Lame Duck

by digby

You’ll recall that the Republican Party took the Ohio secretary of state to the state Supreme Court over minor mismatches in voter registration. After the lawsuit was dropped, John Boehner and his Republican cronies sent a letter to the Bush administration asking that the Department of justice intervene.

It seemed insane that Bush would actually do anything like that. After all, one of their most infamous scandals was the US Attorney firings, which were proven to have been political in nature but never actually proved presidential involvement. This would lay it right at Bush’s feet.

Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog writes:

Roll Call offers this important report ($), which begins: “President Bush is asking the Justice Department to look into whether 200,000 Buckeye State poll-goers must use provisional ballots on Election Day because their names do not match state databases.”

Wow. Here is what I said earlier this week: “The idea that the DOJ would get involved in the Ohio election now to force Sec. Brunner to produce the mismatch list on voter fraud grounds seems remote. The political uproar would be deafening.” See also this AlterNet report.

There should be a political uproar but in the blaring noise of the last few days of the election campaign people may not hear about it.

The president ordering the Department of Justice to look into this is a stunning violation of DOJ guidelines and ethics. But why should he care? He’s out the door and the worst thing that happens is that somebody accuses him of doing something after the fact. He didn’t care about it when he was still pretending to be a president. He certainly doesn’t care about it now.

Republicans tend to lose their moorings when they have nothing left to lose. Unpopular lame duck Republicans are downright dangerous.

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Win By Losing

by digby

Paul Rosenberg lays it out:

Anyone who remembers the Clinton years knows what this means. The Republicans never accepted Clinton as President, and the Democrats failed to crush the Republicans for this outright disloyalty to the democratic process. The media, in turn,normalized this state of affairs. Unlike any other President, Clinton had no “honeymoon” period, and was subjected to a continual witch-hunt designed to cripple him and drive him from office. They came very close to acheiving their ultimate goal, and were quite effective at keeping him hamstrung. One consequence of this may well have been 9/11, as their demonic politicization of everything under the sun impeded the full-scale focus on combatting terrorism generally and al Qaeda in particular. And, of course, the impeachment of Clinton significantly damaged Gore’s chances of winning the presidency in 2000, hardening the media’s hostility against him for failing to join in their witch-hunt.

So this is what we’re fighting against now: the pre-emptive undermining of everything we’re fighting for in this election.

This is correct. It’s true that the Republicans are on the run and their movement is crippled by the epic failure of the Bush administration. But they have a permanent character assassination apparatus, funded by extremely wealthy aristocrats, devoted solely to the destruction of liberalism. They aren’t closing up shop and taking up needlepoint. Indeed, they are much more active when the Republicans are out of power than when they are in.

It’s not inevitable that Obama will not have a honeymoon or that the press will become the willing love toys of the rightwing as they did in the 1990s. But it pays to remember that the media were quite in love with Bill Clinton during the last half of that campaign and they turned on a dime once the wingnuts started working the refs in earnest. (You see, as with John McCain, the conservatives didn’t care for Bush Sr and were actually quite happy that Clinton won so they could purge the party of its moderates and focus on its “revolution.” For them, the way to real power is in being a ruthless opposition.)

So, as Rosenberg writes, this voter fraud nonsense is about legitimacy. Regardless of whether Obama wins a clear victory, the story doesn’t stop the day of the election. Indeed, they will be recycling the left’s complaints from 2000 almost verbatim making us sputter in rage about the absurdity of such a comparison. And they’ll build a powerful myth of victimhood around the phony belief that Democrats steal elections. Lack of faith the in the electoral system serves conservatives far better than it serves liberals.

Here’s a great movie by ACORN and Brave New Films which you should send around to any skeptics you know and keep bookmarked for future use. you may need it.

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McCain Concedes The Race To The Lawyers?

by dday

I know we’re all supposed to be somber and work like we’re 10 points down, but I don’t know how else you can characterize this strategy, if it’s accurate:

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada … And here is the biggest risk of all — yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

New Mexico and Iowa were always done; it’s fine for McCain to concede those. But it doesn’t leave him much of a path to victory, and giving up on Colorado leaves him with basically one path. The Upper Midwest is fine for Obama, and the Pacific Coast is fine. He’s really sinking everything into Pennsylvania.

Despite polls showing him trailing Democrat Barack Obama by double digits in Pennsylvania, John McCain continued to treat the state as if the whole election depended on it.
Yesterday, his wife, Cindy, made four stops in Philadelphia and Yardley, speaking at two rallies, visiting a hospital, and meeting the mothers of men and women in the military.

Today, the Republican nominee has three appearances in Pennsylvania, starting with a morning rally in Bensalem. He made two visits to the Philadelphia suburbs last week, and running mate Sarah Palin was in Lancaster over the weekend.

“It sure doesn’t sound like a campaign that’s pulling up stakes,” said Chris Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

All the McCain activity is happening in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1.2 million, double from four years ago; where Obama, flush with cash, is outspending McCain on television by several orders of magnitude; and where the Democrats have an organizational advantage.

(Irrelevant note: I grew up in Bensalem)

And not only Pennsylvania. McCain has to in addition pull off wins in SEVEN states that are tight right now:

Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia

If he took Pennsylvania he could afford to lose one or maybe even two of those – but the idea that McCain’s going to come back in Pennsylvania doesn’t seem plausible. The polling is extremely static:

I’m just not seeing what makes Pennsylvania the firewall state, other than process of elimination. But perhaps it’s this:

The state Republican Party filed an injunction Friday against Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and ACORN, alleging a fair vote on Nov. 4 is impossible because of rampant voter fraud.

The injunction signals a step up in action against ACORN, which for weeks has been the recipient of attacks from the state GOP and John McCain’s presidential campaign.

At a press conference in the Capitol, state GOP Chairman Bob Gleason Jr. said the sheer number of registrations submitted by ACORN has overwhelmed many county election offices and the state department has not provided the local bureaus with enough support.

“I am not confident we can trust the results of this election,” Gleason said.

We all know this is absurd, completely absurd. But maybe it’s the last thing McCain can cling to. Consider that:

• Pennsylvania does not have early voting, and absentee voting is restricted.
• Unlike Minnesota and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania doesn’t have same-day registration.

So voting is concentrated on Election Day, and the state GOP is trying to make the election illegitimate.

Not much of a glimmer, but perhaps all they’ve got.

…Alternatively, the McCain campaign could be banking on racism.

…Chris Bowers says there’s less than meets the eye here. Giving up on Colorado would be insane.

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Squeezing Every Last Drop

by digby

… of power.

Somebody needs to tell the twits at CNN about this. They’ve been flogging this ACORN story as if it features fellatio or something. It’s been totally wild and irresponsible. And, naturally, they’ve missed the real story.

From TPM:

A former top Department of Justice voting rights official — who once worked with John McCain in defense of the senator’s campaign-finance reform bill — has added his name to the growing chorus that is denouncing the department’s investigation of ACORN as a shameful and inappropriate politicization of Justice along the lines of the US attorney firings. Speaking to TPMmuckraker, Gerry Hebert described the investigation, word of which was leaked off the record to the Associated Press less than three weeks before the election, as “a continuation of injecting DOJ into what has clearly become a political issue.” He continued: “That’s really not the proper role for the DOJ, and why their policies counsel otherwise.” To demonstrate that point, Hebert provided TPMmuckraker with a copy of the department’s Manual on Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses. Under a section headlined “Investigative Considerations in Election Fraud Cases”, the manual reads:

When investigating election fraud, three considerations that are absent from most criminal investigations must be kept in mind: (1) respect for the primary role of the states in administering the voting process, (2) an awareness of the role of the election in the governmental process, and (3) sensitivity to the exercise of First Amendment rights in the election context. As a result there are limitations on various investigative steps in an election fraud case. In most cases, election-related documents should not be taken from the custody of local election administrators until the election to which they pertain has been certified, and the time for contesting the election results has expired. This avoids interfering with the governmental processes affected by the election Another limitation affects voter interviews. Election fraud cases often depend on the testimony of individual voters whose votes were co-opted in one way or another. But in most cases voters should not be interviewed, or other voter-related investigation done, until after the election is over. Such overt investigative steps may chill legitimate voting activities. They are also likely to be perceived by voters and candidates as an intrusion into the election. Indeed, the fact of a federal criminal investigation may itself become an issue in the election.

I’m sure CNN could call this fellow and get him on the air. And there are others:

… House Judiciary chair John Conyers, and, in an interview with TPMmuckraker, former US attorney David Iglesias, have … also connected the FBI’s ACORN investigation to the kind of politicization exposed in the firings saga.

And finally, (thank you!) the Obama campaign has engaged on this:

“With this voter fraud [investigation], we’re seeing an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics,” Bob Bauer, an elections lawyer with the Obama camp, said on a conference call with reporters just now. Bauer compared the decision to launch the investigation with the US attorneys scandal, in which several US attorneys were fired for their unwillingess to pursue politically charged cases, including voter fraud, with sufficient aggression to satisfy the Bush administration. Bauer released a letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling on him to have the issue taken on by Nora Dannehy, the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the US attorney firings.

Maybe now the media will take a closer look at what’s going on here. They have been actively helping the Republicans breathlessly frame this election as illegitimate based on nothing more than right wing propaganda. Events are driving the election to a possible big win in a couple of weeks, but this is the sort of thing that could deny Obama a much needed mandate to do what needs to be done. That’s part of the plan.

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Thanks Josh

by digby

This is one guy who has some credibility to talk about this.

From TPM:

David Iglesias says he’s shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election. “I’m astounded that this issue is being trotted out again,” Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. “Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it’s a scare tactic.” In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted — one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General. Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI’s investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a “boogeyman” out of voter fraud. And he added that it “stands to reason” that the investigation was launched in response to GOP complaints. In recent weeks, national Republican figures — including John McCain at last night’s debate — have sought to make an issue out of ACORN’s voter-registration activities. As we noted earlier, last year, Sen. Diane Feinstein publicly highlighted changes made to DOJ’s election crimes manual, which lowered the bar for voter-fraud prosecutions, and made it easier to bring vote-fraud cases close to the election. Speaking today to TPMmuckraker, Iglesias called such changes “extremely problematic.” The way in which the news was revealed today — Associated Press sourced its report to two “senior law enforcement officials” who “spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election” — is also raising eyebrows. Both Iglesias and Bud Cummins — another of the U.S. attorneys who, according to the IG report, was also fired for political reasons — told TPMmuckraker that DOJ guidelines do allow US attorneys to speak publicly about an investigation, even before bringing an indictment, if it’s to allay public concern over an issue. But that certainly wouldn’t cover anonymous leaks. “If you can’t say it with your name on it, it’s fair to say you should not be saying it,” Cummins told TPMmuckraker. Earlier this afternoon, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) released a letter he sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI director Robert Mueller, which connected today’s news to the U.S. attorney firings, and to recent GOP efforts to stoke fears over voter fraud.

It’s way past time for the mainstream media to start connecting some dots here. The US Attorney scandals and this ACORN nonsense are pieces of the same story.

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