I was going to write something of this but John Atlas has done me one better with his post at www.salon.com.  Atlas writes:

“Last summer, I reported…on the Republican-directed vendetta against voter registration, orchestrated from the White House against those, like the grass-roots anti-poverty group ACORN, who have a history of working to register poor and minority voters. The vendetta backfired and helped lead to the firing of New Mexico’s U.S. attorney David C. Iglesias, who infuriated state GOP operatives for failing to go after voter-fraud allegations with sufficient zeal.”

But wait!  There’s more…

“The GOP voter-fraud vendetta might have remained exactly where Bush loyalists wanted it—below the radar of the press—had it not been for the scandal surrounding the firing of eight U. S. attorneys, including David C. Iglesias of New Mexico.”

Uh Oh!

“As the 2004 election approached, then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft launched a broad initiative to crack down on supposed voter fraud in battleground states, including Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and New Mexico, where ACORN was making headway registering voters. In all of those states, Republicans filed suits against ACORN for voter fraud, and, in every case, ACORN was exonerated.”

Back to the drawing board…

“After Al Gore beat George W. Bush in New Mexico by just 366 votes in 2000, the state became the site of a bitter battle over voter registration. By the fall of 2004, as the race between Bush and John Kerry tightened, ACORN had signed up more than 35,000 voters statewide. But one of the new voters turned out to be a 13-year-old son of a Republican policeman. State Republicans filed a lawsuit against ACORN.”

Interesting… Don’t want to sound too paranoid, but could the kid have been a plant by the GOP?

“The suit was dismissed for lack of evidence, Iglesias announced at a press conference that he would look into the matter, declaring, “It appears that mischief is afoot, and questions are lurking in the shadows.” But, by January 2005, Iglesias concluded that his voter-fraud task force had not turned up enough evidence to bring a fraud case against ACORN. By early December 2005, he had been fired.”

If he can’t nail Jello™ to the wall we’ll find someone who can.

Right .  Out of 1.6 M voters registered by Acorn in the last two elections, none of the contested/fraudulent registrations have been found to be prosecutable. 

In one case a recent fraudulent registration attributed to ACORN can only be described as blatantly so, where the ‘voter’ was the name and address of a hotdog stand, (saw this on CNN tonight, but couldn’t find a link). 

OK.  So my conjecture is This:   In the era of Rovian/Machiavellian politics, is it inconceivable that the fraudulent registrations were planted by GOP operatives infiltrating ACORN?  I’m trying not to be overly paranoid. Talk me down.