Times Online reports:

John McCain paid $175,000 of campaign money to a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, it has emerged.

Nathan Sproul, in his various corporate incarnations, has been previously accused, by former employees, of dirty campaign tricks that have included setting up registration tables at public libraries that purport to be for non-partisan voter registration drives, then throwing out all democratic party registrants' cards.

In May this year, both ACORN and Mr Sproul were discussed at a hearing of the House subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. One Republican member, Congressman Chris Cannon, concluded: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

Darn that ACORN!

I've noticed Sen. McCain saying, "I come from a long line of McCains who have served this country" quite regularly recently.

The intent, I believe, is to emphasize ancestry over character or to suggest that ancestry is character: like those tired old 19th century novels that pitted the noble aristocracy against the crass nouveau riche. The Senator sees himself as the patrician who has earned his wealth, position and power the old-fashioned way, by marrying it. He seeks to remind us that he is the regular, white American; and his opponent is The Other.

It's just another, more subtle way of playing the race card.

You've heard the legal aphorism "grandfathered," meaning that some new rule will apply to new situations but people who started out under the old rule can continue under the old rule?
The origin of that name for that legal practice is the Jim Crow South. One way they kept black people from voting without using a more overt racial bias was to qualify voters on the basis of whether their grandparents voted.

If your grandfather voted, you could vote. If your grandfather was a slave, well, sorry ... nothing against you.