Fraud. Election theft. Betrayal of the democratic process.
Accusations are flying, particularly in Nevada where exit polls showed Nevada’s TEA Party candidate for the U.S. Senate Sharron Angle ahead, only to lose inexplicably to vilified Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
We’ve seen it before. Most Baby Boomers grew up hearing about John F. Kennedy’s phantom Chicago votes that put him into the White House and Lyndon Johnson’s rise to national leadership through stuffed ballot boxes. Liberals justify any wrongdoing by citing Al Gore’s hanging chad loss.
A supervisor for the now defunct political advocacy group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors in a case alleging that canvassers were illegally paid to register Nevada voters during the 2008 presidential campaign.
"Amy Busefink, 28, pleaded no-contest in a Nevada court to two misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters," reports Jim Kouri of the media watchdog group Accuracy in Media. "Her nolo contendere plea acknowledged the state had sufficient evidence for a conviction if the case went to trial.
"Busefink is expected to get a slap on the wrist, according to critics of ACORN, with only one year of probation, a $1,000 fine and 100 hours of community service probable."
Last month, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri applauded reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened a criminal investigation into whether the left-wing advocacy group ACORN has violated federal election law by fostering and promoting a national program of voter registration fraud.
The Associated Press reported at the time that “the FBI is actively pursuing leads in the investigation of ACORN. Word of the investigation comes less than a week after Blunt joined Reps. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in sending a letter to the Department of Justice urging it to act.”
"Blunt, a former secretary of state in Missouri, joined other House leaders in urging the Bureau to 'take all active and appropriate measures' to ensure the civil rights of legitimate voting Americans aren’t diluted by systemic voter fraud," reported Kouri..
“I am proud," said Blunt, "to join three former secretaries of state now serving in Congress, as well as our ranking members on the Judiciary and Administration committees, in calling on the Justice Department to stand up in defense of the sanctity of Americans’ right to vote — and, as important, their right to be assured that vote counts. News that the Justice Department has heeded that call and begun the process of unraveling ACORN’s widespread program of alleged voter registration fraud is a heartening development — and one all Americans ought to take notice of as they prepare to exercise their most basic civic duty next month,"
“I want to applaud the Department of Justice for taking this important step," said Blunt, "and associate myself with the efforts of Leader Boehner to ensure not one more dime of taxpayer money is diverted into the coffers of this organization until Justice completes its review and determines whether ACORN’s actions merit criminal prosecution."
Obama’s spokespersons claim he had a limited relationship with ACORN. However, the record shows that “[Obama] says he is drawn to politics, despite its superficialities, as a means to advance his real passion and calling: community organization. … In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, an ACORN program said to be the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent [Chicago] history.”
ACORN officials have admitted to submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in Ohio and press reports confirmed that ACORN submitted hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms in Kansas City, forcing local officials to wade through fraudulent voter registrations, potentially disenfranchising legitimate voters.
Meanwhile in the highly suspicious Nevada re-election of Harry Reid, Angle has filed a complaint with the Justice Department, accusing Reid’s campaign of engaging in voter intimidation. Her attorney Cleta Mitchell told Fox News that the complaint was filed in response to a National Review report of internal emails among Harrah’s casino executives. The memos appear to show how Harrah’s executives launched an effort to intimidate their employees and ensure that they vote for Reid.
"We hope that the Department of Justice will take this serious and investigate it because it’s really quite terrible," Mitchell told FoxNews.com. "This is really, classic voter intimidation."
In Minnesota, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced it was prosecuting 47 cases of alleged voter fraud stemming from the November 2008 election.
Minnesota Majority, a conservative group, had cross-checked voter registration and voter history rolls with lists of felons ineligible to vote. At one point the group alleged that felon voters tipped the disputed 2008 election in favor of Al Franken.
Franken won the hand recount by only 49 votes over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. After the state canvassing board agreed to accept previously rejected absentee ballots, Franken’s lead grew. At the end of a court challenge by Coleman, Franken’s official lead was 312 votes.
After exhausting all appeals in 2009, Coleman conceded the election and Franken joined the U.S. Senate six months into the new session – giving the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to block any GOP filibuster. Because Coleman led in the unofficial machine tally on Election Day, many conservative pundits and the Wall Street Journal declared that Democrats had "stolen" the election.
And so this election, there was incredible vigilance.
In North Carolina, a Craven County resident reported attempting to vote a straight Republican ticket but his choices came up straight Democrat four times, despite receiving assistance from poll workers. Nearby in Lenoir County, registered Democrat Ervin Norville also tried to vote straight Republican, but found that his ballot had the names of several Democrat candidates already selected.
In Nevada, Boulder City resident Joyce Ferrara reported that when she and several others went to vote for conservative Sharon Angle, they found that Senator Harry Reid’s name was already checked off.
In Texas’ 30th congressional district, Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson’s name was the only one on the ballot in several locations.
Massive election fraud
The liberals’ final recourse to thwart this year’s voter rebellion, says commentator Selwyn Duke, was massive vote fraud nationwide. Hey, it keeps Venezuela’s and Iran’s dictators in power.
"A large and growing cloud hangs over the entire election process," writes author Roger Aronoff. "While it has always been with us to some extent, new technologies, new forms of voting and a Justice Department that plays favorites with Americans’ voting rights now threaten our electoral system and our expectations of free and fair elections."
The Obama Justice Department doesn’t seem too concerned about keeping the elections honest as much as they do about winning, observed Hans von Spakovsky, the senior legal fellow and manager of the Civil Justice Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Beware close elections
He is a former member of the Federal Election Commission.
"Any place where it comes down to the wire, any place around the country where we have a really close election, well, that’s when we have to be worried, because anytime you have a really close election where a small number of votes is going to make the difference – like what happened in Minnesota – that’s when people who can put out bogus votes, that’s when the temptation is greatest, and that’s where it can really make a difference. Any time we have a close election, that’s when we’ve got to be vigilant the most."
Comedian Al Franken was placed into the U.S. Senate after months of legal wrangling, Democrat-controlled courts and panels in Minnesota disqualified hundreds of Republican ballots and scraped together enough Democrat votes to give the Democrats their 60th senator and a filibuster-proof U.S. Senate.
Given the enormous political stakes, says Duke, "I have long said that this election would see vote fraud of unprecedented magnitude."
"We are in a huge battle for the heart and soul of America," writes columnist Laurie Roth. "We are seeing the voter fraud."
Each case is generally referred to as a "mistake" or a "glitch," but, notes Duke, "if that’s all they are, then we’re witnessing a truly historic anomaly. The laws of probability have suddenly been rescinded and tossed coins are coming up donkey tails every time. Welcome to American elections, Venezuelan style."
"It does seem that a perfect storm of such criminality is brewing," writes Duke. "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship to vote, a treasonous act that facilitates vote fraud.
"Then there is the matter of the fox guarding the polling house. It has now been learned that the technicians who work on the Nevada voting machines that have been checking off Harry Reid’s name are members of the Service Employees International Union, a leftist organization that has given tens of millions of dollars to Democrats."
No paper trail
"By the way, do you remember all the complaints about ‘antiquated’ paper ballots after the 2000 election? I knew that all the talk about ‘hanging chads’ and the need for modern technology would lead to vote fraud. After all, now elections can be swayed by a well-placed, skilled hacker and there’s no paper trail.
"Add to this the fact that the left is more brazen than ever. For one thing, laymen liberals, like their judges, are very influenced by precedent. And the liberal delusion that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election – thus drawing first blood – gives leftists a handy rationalization for actually stealing elections.
"Second, Barack Obama’s DOJ’s refusal to prosecute the Philadelphia Black Panthers – despite videotape evidence of their voter intimidation – sends the message that the left has almost carte blanche to sway elections by any means necessary.
"Most of all, though, we have to remember that leftists are, well, leftists. They are simply much more corrupt than those on the right. I know, this sounds like blind partisanship, so I’ll explain," writes Duke.
"If you’re an average bright-eyed conservative and you really want to understand leftists, begin by viewing them as aliens. Because they really aren’t like you, and the difference isn’t simply ideology, either. They truly are far more dishonest, deceitful and manipulative than conservatives.
"In explaining why this is so, I’ll again draw an analogy to Islamists. Many have pointed out that Western and Islamic thought dictate very different things with respect to honesty. While the West’s formative religion, Christianity, teaches that lying is a sin, period, Islam states that lying to an infidel for the glory of Allah is a good thing.
"This brings us to liberals. Without belief in anything that transcends man to use as a yardstick for behavior, they ultimately have nothing left to use but the ‘god within,’ which is just a gussied-up name for emotion. And their emotion-driven ends really do justify their means. If they feel conservatives are ‘evil,’ conservatives must be.
"And if they feel that any tactic necessary to vanquish that evil is fair game, it must be.
"Lying, cheating or stealing to win elections is not merely justifiable – it is a "good."
"They are aliens from a planet much like the hell described by the devil in an old comic strip in The New Yorker, I think, when he said, ‘There’s no right or wrong down here. It’s whatever works for you.’"
So, writes Duke, conservatives "mustn’t for a moment entertain the notion that the best thing for the nation after a suspicious loss is to concede the race graciously. Rather, the best thing for the nation is to oust the vote-snatchers from power.
"We must analyze exit polling – which has become a very precise science – for discrepancies between its findings and election results.
"Vote-snatchers are worse than murderers. They not only steal votes but also our future. They undermine the rule of law and threaten the republic itself. In a saner time, they would probably be hanged."
"We all must do our small part," writes Roth, "in getting back our country and freedoms.
"The voting rights laws are there to protect all Americans from discrimination," writes Aronoff. However, "because I believe in clean voter registration rolls, I’ve been labeled as a ‘vote suppressor’ by a Left-wing blog site, because I think people ought to have to show a photo ID when they go in to vote.
"That’s called ‘wanting to intimidate voters from voting.’ Those kinds of claims are ridiculous, but that’s the kind of thing that is said when people, when regular citizens get concerned over, and want to make sure we have, a secure election."
Attempted intimidation
"What the Obama administration did try and do is," says von Spakovsky, "they tried to stop Georgia from verifying the citizenship status of newly registered voters, and Georgia actually had to sue in federal court, and once they actually sued, and the Obama administration was faced with the prospect of having to show a federal judge evidence to back up their claim that this was somehow ‘discriminatory,’ the Obama administration quickly backed down, agreed to settle the case, and agreed to allow Georgia election officials to check to make sure that people who are registering to vote are really U.S. citizens.
"It is different in each state, and, unfortunately, absentee ballots – that’s really the tool of choice, of people who want to steal ballots. A city commissioner in Daytona Beach was just arrested for absentee ballot fraud. We have a trial that is just starting up in Atlantic City because 13 people there, including city councilmen, were indicted for absentee ballot fraud," says von Spakovsky.
"Something happened that I’ve never seen before, which is, in Troy, New York, the local District Attorney there has asked for DNA swabs of various officials who he’s investigating for having engaged in absentee ballot fraud in one of the last elections. He wants to compare their DNA with the DNA on the fraudulent absentee ballots."
No interest in prosecution
"I know from people I talk to within the Obama administration, that they have absolutely no interest whatsoever in prosecuting voter fraud cases. It’s just not something that interests them.
"That was also demonstrated this year," says von Spakovsky, "in their reluctance to get into enforcing the federal law that guarantees the right of military people to vote overseas, and, also, the fact that they have completely failed to go after states who haven’t cleaned up their voter registration lists by taking people who are dead, or people who have moved, off of their lists.
"That’s actually a real scandal," says von Spakovsky, "but they haven’t done anything about that. There’s a number of states – for example, Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Tennessee – who, when they filed a federal report last year that they’re required to file, showed that they hadn’t removed a single person who had died from their voter registration rolls for two years.
"There were reports than an election official in Illinois, a couple of weeks ago, said that he just didn’t really care about overseas military voters, and he didn’t care about whether the Justice Department came after him for that.
"Can you imagine if he had said the same thing about African-American voters? That would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the country, and that guy would be out of office by now. And yet, he gets away with doing things like that for military voters
"The Justice Department never went after ACORN for the kind of actions they were engaging in. It took state officials in some states, but the Justice Department never did, and we don’t hear or see any indication that they’re going to investigate these kind of problems by ACORN-like organizations, or the kind of things that the Service Employees International Union is now, apparently, doing what ACORN used to do."
Voting felons
"During the Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken," says von Spakovsky, "which, as you know, was only decided by about 300 votes – they had not taken people who were felons, and who shouldn’t be voting, off of the voter rolls there.
"The problem is, the Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie – someone who was, in fact, supported by ACORN and by people like George Soros – hasn’t been really doing his job the way he should in cleaning up the voter rolls and getting those folks who shouldn’t be voting off of the rolls."
Illegal aliens
It’s apparent that President Obama considers anybody who wants to enforce illegal immigration laws in America, "to be the enemy," writes columnist Jim Kouri. "Even more revealing is the fact that with so much riding on the elections, Obama decided to take the time to speak to people who shouldn’t be voting – legal and illegal immigrants.
"The dirty little secret is there exists an enormous amount of proof that illegal aliens are being registered to vote and they’re being registered as Democrats. And our political leaders know it.
"Whistleblower J. Christian Adams, who testified before a Commission of Civil Rights committee regarding voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers, dropped a bomb on his former employers at the Department of Justice.
"According to Adams, a Deputy Attorney General refused to investigate allegations of illegal voting during the last presidential election.
"While Justice Department officials deny this allegation – and the news media portray Adams as a disgruntled employee – a study released by the conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation provides proof that illegal aliens and immigrants with green cards are committing rampant voter fraud in the United States," writes Kouri.
"Reports of ineligible persons registering to vote have raised concerns about state processes for verifying voter registration lists."
Von Spakovsky believes many government officials and politicians are complicit in the voter fraud problem.
"Allegations of voting irregularities have been a staple of American politics," observes Rich Trzupek. "Yet, it’s very possible that this year’s election could be about as dirty as any that we’ve seen in this country in many a decade. Democrats know that the fate of their president’s agenda hangs in the balance, while many Republicans believe that unless voters send the administration a clear message, there will be no stopping the march toward European-style, nanny-state socialism.
"With the stakes this high, the temptation to rationalize fraud in the name of the greater good rises in proportion.
"The Chicago machine that nurtured Barack Obama’s political career is legendary for its ability to manipulate an election. Indeed, cheating and fraud are such staples of Illinois politics that residents hardly notice any more. It is, of course, always interesting to hear a Chicago news-anchor provide the latest tally of calls to the ‘Election Fraud Hotline’ and no doubt some wagers are won and lost among citizens once the final count is announced.
"But, for the most part, pay-offs, unregistered voters, dead voters, and all the rest are an accepted part of life. This is the political culture that gave us a Barack Obama and, most importantly, brought political hucksters who believe that the ‘Chicago Way’ is the only way to power."
Instances of purported fraud continue to pour in.
The Pennsylvania Voter Assistance Office sent citizens letters encouraging them to apply for absentee ballots. However, no such office exists. The letter says it was financed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee.
The return address on 250 absentee-ballot applications in Bridgeport, Connecticut was 1238 North Avenue, which just happens to be a vacant lot.
Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and Genesis Robinson, his campaign manager, face voter-fraud charges for allegedly completing 92 absentee-ballot applications with the names of Floridians who never requested them or who had moved away. There’s little doubt that we’ll see more and more of this sort of activity as we move toward Election Day.
"The danger in this sort of behavior," writes Trzupek, "isn’t merely that it can skew an election, but that it further erodes the American soul. By ramming through unpopular bill after unpopular bill, the Obama administration has left a huge portion of the populace feeling powerless and disenfranchised.
"This election has thus become their moment to say ‘enough!’ and to demand that the nation change direction. If these tens of millions of Americans find that their message didn’t get through, those voters will be deeply disappointed and more concerned about the fate of the nation than ever.
"But, if these same voters perceive that their voices were silenced as a result of manipulation and fraud, the damage to the nation as a whole will be catastrophically polarizing," writes Trzupek.
"In spite of our well-earned reputation for cynicism when it comes to politics, the average American still believes that one person, one vote can make a difference. Take away that belief, and you undermine America’s faith in the democratic institutions that allow the citizenry to determine the direction of the country. Take away that faith from tens of millions of voters who demand to be heard, and America will become a much different nation indeed."
