This is my first diary, so please bear with me. I'm in south central PA and ACORN lawsuits caught my attention while channel flipping just before bed. Needless to say I'm not in bed but posting here. Join me below the fold for details.
At a press conference today, Robert Gleason, Chairman of the PA GOP announced that a law suit was filed against the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Pedro Cortes and ACORN by the PA state GOP and Craig Williams, 7th Congressional District Candidate and former Federal Prosecutor.
In justifying the lawsuit, Gleason said:
"With the election being only a couple of weeks away and with more and more incidents of voter fraud coming to light, we don’t believe that we can trust the results of this election,"
Williams, who did not attend the press conference, released the following statement:
"Voter fraud is a crime against democracy and violates a critical tenet of our system of government: one person, one vote," said Williams. Williams continued, "Fraudulent voter registration is the groundwork for stealing an election from honest, law-abiding citizens. We need to send a clear message that Chicago-style politics of ‘vote early and vote often’ will not be tolerated in Delaware County or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania...
Article here.
The law suit alleges fraud in the following counties: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Delaware, and Dauphin.
Some other particulars of the lawsuit:
The GOP lawsuit also asks the court to order Secretary of State Pedro Cortes to ensure that local polling places have extra provisional ballots for prospective voters whose registrations are not processed by the Nov. 4 election. And it suggests - but does not ask the court to order - that Cortes halt processing of registration applications collected by ACORN and require those people to cast provisional ballots.
Article here.
ACORN held it's own press conference
...to accuse the GOP of "voter suppression" targeting minorities in an effort to deny them the vote. It claimed it has registered 144,000 new voters in Pennsylvania with between 60 to 70 percent being identified as "people of color.
Here.
Democrat's response:
Key Democrats dismissed the suit as a GOP ploy to unnecessarily alarm voters at a time when polls in this battleground state show Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with a double-digit lead over Republican John McCain. "The Republicans' frivolous lawsuit is not about voter protection," said Democratic State Chairman T.J. Rooney. "It's about the Republicans' realization that Pennsylvanians have had enough of the failed economic policies of George Bush and John McCain."
Here..
Response from Rendell's office:
"I think they are reading the tea leaves," said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for Gov. Ed Rendell. "They see that they're going to lose and they're starting their whining before the ballots are cast."
Here.
From reading and what was reported on the news, a lot of these votes have the potential to be cast on provisional ballots.