We heard a lot about ACORN and voter fraud before the election. Now, we hear virtually nothing. Are we just going to let voter fraud go unchallenged? It seems so.

Right before our eyes, it appears Al Franken is stealing the election in Minnesota*: (Emphasis mine)

When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only 477. As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn't even begun.

The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which election officials are obliged to double-check their initial results. ... In a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways. Instead, nearly every "fix" has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.

For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.

Up in Two Harbors, another liberal outpost, Mr. Franken picked up an additional 246 votes. In Partridge Township, he racked up another 100. Election officials in both places claim they initially miscommunicated the numbers. Odd, because in the Two Harbors precinct, none of the other contests recorded any changes in their vote totals.

According to conservative statistician John Lott, Mr. Franken's gains so far are 2.5 times the corrections made for Barack Obama in the state, and nearly three times the gains for Democrats across Minnesota Congressional races. ...Franken's "new" votes equal more than all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the Presidential, Congressional and statehouse races combined (482 votes).

 ...The Franken campaign has also been wrapping itself around Barack Obama's popularity to increase its recount potential. Minnesota has a voter intent law, which means that election officials can take a second look at ambiguous ballots. Mr. Franken's people are already arguing that a vote for Mr. Obama certainly indicated a vote for Mr. Franken. This can't possibly be true, ... on Election Day he [Franken] trailed [Obama] by 12.2%.

After 100% of votes counted in Minnesota, they find  519 more for Franken before any recount even begins? Can you believe that? I guess if your party wants a 60 member filibuster proof majority, anything is possible.

Other cases of voter fraud: 100,000 registered in Georgia, Florida and Ohio:

Georgia's Secretary of State has launched a full investigation and may seek criminal charges against three Georgia men who appear to have early-voted twice.

“This is extraordinarily disturbing," said Secretary of State Karen Handel.

A team of investigative journalists from WSB-TV in Atlanta, WFTV in Orlando and WFTS in Tampa and WCPO in Cincinnati compared Georgia's voter rolls with those in Florida and Ohio and found more than 100,000 people who appear to be registered to vote in more than one state, with no government oversight to catch it.

Closer to home, Milwaukee, Two Votes, One Lame Excuse: 

Her name is Edna Byrd, 51 years old, and she admits she voted absentee days before the election and then showed up on Election Day.  She was given a ballot and voted again.

She committed a felony.  Do you charge her, or not? WISN video

If we would ever get a handle on voter fraud, double voters would be felons. Felons aren't allowed to vote for a time!
 

*Who is instigating this stretching of the rules? Is it Al Franken's campaign itself or the officials in charge of the election process? In this case, it's Franken.   Franken seeks access to rejected absentee data

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Would these 13 be some of those campaign workers Biden was proud of? In fairness, the McCain campaign was warned too, but I have not seen details about numbers of them withdrawing their ballots. (My emphasis throughout.)

BAM Staffers pull their bogus Ohio ballots Oct. 25, 2008

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can't vote in the battleground state.

A dozen staffers - including Obama Ohio spokeswoman Olivia Alair and James Cadogan, who recently joined Team Obama - signed a form letter asking the Franklin County elections board to pull their names from the rolls.

The letter - a copy of which was obtained by palestra.net, a Fox News affiliate - came a day after prosecutor Ron O'Brien publicly urged out-of-state campaign workers for both Obama and John McCain to "examine your conscience" before the elections board beings begins opening absentee ballots today.

Earlier in the week, O'Brien spoke with lawyers for both camps and urged them to make sure their staffs met permanent-residency rules, or face possible felony charges.

...

On Thursday, O'Brien cut a deal with 13 out-of-staters, including four from New York, who tossed out their already-cast ballots and admitted they didn't meet residency requirements.

In an earlier article, Both Sides Warned on Ohio Ballots Oct. 22, 2008,  other illegal voters are being investigated besides the official campaign workers.

O'Brien said he is "hoping to work out a fair agreement" with both camps - as well as other out-of-staters unassociated with the campaigns who also registered in Ohio.

Among the scenarios: tossing out the already-cast ballots of non-permanent residents and denying the absentee ballot requests of others. Early voting in Ohio began Sept. 30.

Also yesterday, O'Brien said he and elections officials are looking into people from other states who appear to have parachuted into Ohio to vote.

They include several members of Manhattan-based pro-Obama group Vote Today Ohio. Its founder, New York resident Tate Hausman, registered and voted in Columbus, records show, and is among those under scrutiny.

Workers might have been in the state early enough to have registered 30 days in advance, but according to O'Brien, they failed to meet the other criteria of "you have to have a bona-fide intention of staying permanently."

Why does this permanency matter? If the worker doesn't vote at home, he is just casting one vote, right?

The reason it matters is because a campaign could flood a swing state with campaign workers, cast their votes there, thus tipping the outcome of a tight election. (If the workers came from solid red or blue states, their home state would never miss their votes.)

There are so many opportunities for voter fraud with early voting. Absentee ballots were originally created as a courtesy to those who are infirmed or who knew they would be out of town on election day. Now they are an avenue to stealing elections.

People: Don't you just love them! 

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An interview of Sen. Joe Biden by Barbara West at Florida's WFTV caused quite a stir over the weekend. She asked several very blunt questions about ACORN, the international crisis Biden forecasted if Obama was elected, and is Obama a Marxist? HotAir dubbed West's interview,  Comedy gold: WFTV interviews Biden: (Video link included)

Barbara West began the interview with,

...But aren't you embarrassed by the blatant attempts to register phony voters by ACORN, an organization that Barack Obama has been tied to in the past? 

Without missing a beat, Biden replies, (My emphasis)

I am not embarrassed by it. We are not tied to it. We have not paid them [ACORN] one single penny to register a single solitary voter. We have the best get out the vote operation in modern American history. We register the voters ourselves and so there is no relationship... ...I am not embarrassed by our operation...

Maybe he did not read the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending?

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now [ACORN] for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects...

Sen. Joe Biden's denial, "We've not paid them one single penny" reminded me of Pres. Clinton's denial, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I guess when you are used to denying the truth, you do it with ease.

OK, Obama's campaign hasn't paid ACORN a single penny, but how about 80,000,000 of them! (80,000,000 pennies = $80,000)

Watch the interview. It prompted the ire of the Obama campaign enough to cancel a scheduled interview with Mrs. Biden. Interviews from Barack Obama's past where he states very Marxist ideals are bubbling up to the surface too. As for Biden being proud of his own get out the vote operation, there is a new development there too.  Stay tuned.

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Remember the song, Raindrops keep falling on my head? I'm thinking we need a new version: ACORNs keep falling on my head! (Sing along to the original song's last refrain.)

ACORNs keep falling on my head,

And just like the guy who keeps reg-i-st'ring the dead,

No one seems to care,

'Cause, we're never gonna stop the fraud by complainin'

Because they're free-e-e,

No one's checkin' their ID 

I'm sure we could come up with alternative lyrics to the whole song with a different theme for each stanza: multiple registration, fictitious name, underage, felon, non-citizen registrations--you name it, but you get the idea. 

Here are just a few newsworthy rotten ACORNs. 

Missouri officials suspect fake voter registration:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

1 VOTER, 72 REGISTRATIONS: 'ACORN PAID ME IN CASH & CIGS': 

CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

Local 2 Investigates Dead Voters: (And Texas has a voter ID law!)

Texas Watchdog compared Harris County's voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches -- registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.

...Auditors identified 49,049 registered voters state-wide who may have been ineligible to vote. Approximately 23,576 may have been deceased and another 23,114 were possible felons. And they found more than 2,359 duplicate records.

Many convicted felons remain on voter rolls, according to Sun Sentinel investigation. The video clip interviewed one convicted felon who was registered by the Democratic party. (ACORN was not mentioned in this case.)

Since January 2006, more than 1.6 million new voters have registered in Florida. FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] identified more than 124,000 possible felons.

...Elections workers are now reviewing more than 3,800 possible felon voters but have more than 108,000 others still to be checked. "We've not touched those records yet," Browning said.

Yesterday, the 3rd person [was] charged with election fraud in Wisc.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A third person in Milwaukee faces charges of election fraud after prosecutors say he turned in 54 fake registrations, including one for a man who died 16 years ago.

Frank Walton, 29, submitted the inaccurate voter forms to the city Election Commission, according to a criminal complaint, with errors that also included fake driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers.

Walton faces one count of falsely procuring voter registration and faces up to 3 1/2 years in prison and $10,000 in fines if he's convicted.

And, let's not forget that even Mickey Mouse Tries to Register to Vote, The cartoon character's application, which included a stamped logo of ACORN, was rejected by Florida elections officials over summer. 

Florida elections officials rejected Mickey's application this summer. It is unclear whether Mickey tried to register as a Democrat or a Republican. But the application included a stamped logo of ACORN, the community organizing group that is facing accusations of voter registration fraud.

At least Mickey is a Florida resident! 

There are so many incidents of ACORN and other fraudulent voter registration stories, that it is difficult to keep up with them. There is little that can be done at this point because we have not accurately maintained our voter registration rolls and Democrats are unwilling to help remedy the situation. (Remember how the Wisconsin Democrat Senators wouldn't bring Voter ID to a vote last spring? My Senator, Jim Sullivan*, cast a key vote in keeping that measure from the floor.)

Sickening.

*I will help the next conservative Republican State Senate candidate's campaign. How about you? 

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An Ohio woman explains how ACORN workers pushed her to vote multiple times. "Even if you tell them that, 'I've already registered,' they'll be like, 'Well, just sign your name and give us the the last four of your social and we'll do the rest."

From Fox News: (My emphasis)

An Ohio man said he registered to vote 77 times in a year and a half. Another says activists in the group ACORN pursued him until he registered 10-15 times and now the group is publicly admitting they cannot stop fraud in its ranks because they just don't have the resources.

Investigations are going on in 12 states, including Wisconsin. Surprisingly Texas is one of the 12. According to a couple I met at the recent McCain / Palin rally, Texas does have a voter ID law. You either use a drivers license or state issued voter ID.

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I was just thinking...could Congress enact some sort of emergency legislation for a nationwide voter ID requirement, and if a voter did not have one, their ballot be cast provisionally. Guess I wasn't the first.

GrasstopsUSA sent out an email, asking that we demand "Congress be called back into session IMMEDIATELY and emergency legislation must be passed that simply states that voters must produce a valid state or federal ID at the polls or have their vote counted provisionally." (I do not support GrasstopsUSA financially but find their emails interesting.) This has a snowballs chance of going anywhere, but dealing with voter fraud after the fact is pretty ineffective.

It does little good to question a vote after the fact. Once ballots are cast in the usual way, it is impossible to know if they came from a legitimately registered voter or a fraudulent one. 

Another idea might be for emergency legislation requiring the permanent ink on the finger solution, as they did in Iraq. It wouldn't prohibit illegals from voting, but at least a person could cast only one vote.

My son informs me that idea would not work because we are too sophisticated a society and have access to solvents. (I guess I can already picture certain groups passing out little foil packets of solvent wipes to their voters.) 

What about requiring a fingerprint to vote? That wouldn't disenfranchise anyone since we all have a fingerprint. (Retailers used to require fingerprints if paying by check.) I don't like the Big-Brother-ish aspect of that idea, but voters might be hesitant to use a fraudulent registration if they knew there was a record of it.

I contacted Congressman Sensenbrenner, Senators Kohl and Feingold and the President about my concerns regarding the need for voter ID and signed up to be a poll watcher. At least I know I tried.

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At yesterday's McCain/Palin Town Hall meeting, a person from Milwaukee County's Republican Party passed out info to the waiting crowd: "Your VOTE is being STOLEN!" It gave some information about the problem of voter fraud.

"National activist groups such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), come to Milwaukee and members have been charged with padding the voter list by adding fake names. Once these fake names are on the voter lists, they can be voted by people claiming to be that person."

It mentioned Obama's associations with Project Vote, a subsidiary of ACORN, and how local municipal clerks are saying they don't have the time to follow the laws of the United States. It ended with,

"Concerned? You should be. Want to help? Contact 414-727-0008" 

I called the Milwaukee Republican Party for more information. The woman who answered the phone said they were looking for poll watchers. (She suggested you bring your own chair.) I asked if this was to identify declared Republican voters, as they did in 2004 or if it was to look for voter registration irregularities. She said it was to check on registration irregularities.

The Waukesha office said that the poll watchers duties were to check if their base was voting but also to make sure people did not vote twice.  

If you wan to help, call your campaign headquarters and volunteer. The Waukesha office number is 262-542-8532

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Today's Washington Times piece, PRUDEN: Smells from the shadows sums up much of what's fishy about this election: the voter fraud, the biased media, and of course, Sen. Barack Obama's questionable associations. (My emphasis)

Something odd is going on. The Obama campaign boasts of a landslide in the making even as his polling lead slips a point or two, and there's anger bordering on rage when John McCain and Sarah Palin raise questions about Barack Obama's judgment in his unexplored past in Chicago.

An investigation of ACORN, a cabal of "political activists" hired to register voters in the neighborhoods where few friends of John McCain abide has now spread to 10 states. ... The rules for this game were written in Chicago.

Wesley Pruden brings up an important point that often is overlooked: judgment. Whatever explanation Obama gives to explain away his many controversial associations, Rev. Wright, Rev. Flagler, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, and even his work with ACORN, still doesn't address Obama's lack of judgment. How could he have not known these associations were toxic to a political career?

The unanswered questions are not about crimes, but about his judgment.

Obama has used that That isn't the so-in-so I knew several times to whitewash his relationships. Yet, good judgment is a necessary quality in a President. A president must be able to size up individuals and make accurate assessments of their character, be they prospective cabinet members or leaders of countries such as Iran, Venezuela or North Korea!

But we do know that he has a history of choosing odd friends, such as Tony Rezko, whose sentencing for racketeering was postponed this week, suggesting that Tony the Squeezer is squealing to the feds in pursuit of a lighter sentence. Maybe the squealing will tell us something else about the Obama past. Or maybe not. The senator's reticence encourages speculation, some of it perhaps unfair.

But why did it take him 20 years to discover that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his beloved pastor in Chicago, is a racist bigot who doesn't like white folks very much and who prayed for God to "damn America."

Why indeed. Political candidates lives are supposed to be an open book. The media used to investigate everything. So "Why the ferocious attempts to stifle these perfectly legitimate questions?"

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