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.
