As many of you may know, I posted a diary on Sunday regarding the GOP fraudulently changing voter registrations in CA to the Republican party. That link is here.
More after the jump.
Apparently, this is not a simple case, as it was in 2008, according to Channel 8 News in Las Vegas, when in Las Vegas there were cases of misappropriation of voter registrations.
An employee of a private voter registration firm alleges that his bosses trashed registration forms filled out by Democratic voters because they only wanted to sign up Republican voters.
The allegations have set off a political firestorm stretching from Las Vegas to Washington D.C., and beyond.
As with everything else in this election year, it's now become a political football being tossed between the two parties, with charges and countercharges, but at its core, there still remains the matter of registration forms that were ripped up and tossed in the trash.
Who did it, and why? That's what official agencies will try to determine. On Tuesday afternoon, Las Vegan Eric Russell and his girlfriend took a packet of documents to the Las Vegas FBI office but left before filing a formal complaint about what Russell says was a deliberate effort to disenfranchise local voters.
Russell worked for a company called Voters Outreach of America, along with 300 other people. He says he got into a beef with the company over a pay dispute, and witnessed his bosses ripping up registration forms that had been filed by democrats.
"They were thrown away in the trash. I grabbed them out," said Eric Russell. One of those forms belonged to Daren Gray, who was shocked to learn that the re-registration form he filled out was never turned in.
As per the original story on the Orange County Register. Unfortunately, as you read the comments on that page, they are very Wingnut in nature and are very hate-filled.
The Orange County District Attorney’s office said Wednesday that it plans to team with the Secretary of State’s office to investigate voter registration fraud uncovered by the Orange County Register.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Lubinski who oversees the special prosecutions unit said the DA’s office would be reaching out to the Secretary of State’s office this week to offer its help. Already, representatives of the Republican Party of Orange County and the Democratic Foundation of Orange County have written the DA requesting an investigation into the Register’s findings of widespread voter registration fraud in central Orange County.
A Register investigation published Friday online and in Sunday’s newspaper exposed how signature gatherers circulating petitions had tricked young Orange County voters into registering to vote as Republicans. Since mid-March, at least 99 written complaints have been submitted to state elections officials by Orange County residents who say they were registered to vote Republican without their consent.
An independent Register investigation found an additional 74 voters who say they were tricked or coerced into registering to vote as Republican by signature gatherers who initially asked them to sign petitions to legalize marijuana, fight cancer or clean up beaches.
All of the voters identified by the Register are listed as under 28 years old and live in the 34th State Senate District, where the Republicans hope to oust incumbent Democrat Lou Correa in the fall. Unlike the Democrats, the California Republican Party has a policy of paying signature gatherers who send them new GOP voter registration cards and the Republicans are offering as much as $8 for each new GOP registration in that district.
Many believe this $8 bounty creates an incentive for signature gatherers to commit fraud.
Lubinski said the Secretary of State has the primary jurisdiction over such cases, but noted the office typically has limited investigative resources. Four years ago, when a similar rash voter registration fraud was uncovered in Orange County, the Secretary of State and the District Attorney’s office worked together to bring charges against 12 signature gatherers.
"We will offer them assistance and work with them," Lubinski said Wednesday.
Shannan Velayas, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, said she could not comment on whether the Secretary of State had launched an investigation. However, Brett Rowley, spokesman for the Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley, said his office had been in contact with both the Secretary of State and the District Attorney, but could not comment further because "it’s an ongoing investigation."
I am able to bring you a bit more thanks to blog for arizona.
Who is Grassroots Outreach, LLC?
The California Corporations database indicates that Grassroots Outreach, LLC: established in California on June 11, 2008 via a third-party registration agent, C T Corporation System. C T Corporation System is also the agent for legal process. The registered address is 1232 Q St., Sacramento, CA 95811. The third-party registrant leaves the true ownership in question, but follow along with me anyway.
Nathan Sproul, a Republican political operative with a long and storied history of voter suppression and voter fraud accusations, has an Arizona company called Sproul Grassroots Mobilization, LLC. The mailing address is 80 E Rio Salado Pkwy #814, Tempe, AZ.
On June 18, 2009 the Golden State Voter Registration Project paid $50,000 to Grassroots Outreach, LLC. The address on the check was 80 E. Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 814, Tempe, AZ 85281, and the stated purpose for the payment was "voter registration services." The reported mailing address is Nathan Sproul's office, and the registered address for Sproul Grassroots Mobilization, LLC. (More on the Golden State Voter Registration Project donors and expenses here.)
The mailing address for the California payment to Grassroots Mobilization LLC is 1317 N. San Fernando Blvd, #175, Burbank, CA 91504. That address is a Pak-N-Ship store with a post office box rental service. The main offices of the California Republican Party are located about six blocks down at 1903 W. Magnolia Blvd, Burbank, CA 91506.
If we had access to corporate records, I'd be willing to bet we could draw a straight, clear, unquestionable line between Star Petition Services and Grassroots Outreach, LLC. After all, Jacoby and Sproul have a long history of doing business together.
California's politics are being run off the rail by this kind of activity. The initiative process is completely broken because Republicans are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put signatures they bought on ballot initiative petitions and voter registration cards. We seriously cannot afford to let this go unnoticed if we ever hope to have elections that truly are fair and free.
There are a number of paid petitions circulating in Arizona presently. Has anyone in the Arizona media, law enforcement, and those parties responsible for election integrity, i.e., the Secretary of State and County Recorders (in most instances) investigated to determine whether this dynamic duo of Republican voter registration fraud is circulating paid petitions and similarly working this fraud in Arizona? (Sproul was implicated in the destruction of voter registrations in Arizona in 2004).
This sonuvabitch has been investigated numerous times over the years, but was always protected by the Bush Injustice Department. His partner in crime Mark Jacoby was even arrested for it in October 2008, and only got a slap on the wrist. Here they are again, back in business, perpetrating the same Republican voter registration fraud.
When the hell is law enforcement going to treat this as the serious crime that it is and prosecute this dynamic duo? And when the hell is the Republican Party going to receive the same scrutiny as ACORN?
I would like to know what the candidates for Arizona Secretary of State have to say about Nathan Sproul and his operation of Republican voter registration fraud.
As per PR Watch.org, this isn't the first time.
In 2006, the Register uncovered a similar pattern of fraud in the county that was attributed in part to the bounty the GOP pays to signature gatherers. In that incident, 167 voters complained that they were switched to Republican affiliation without their permission, and the Register found another 112 voters who claimed they were tricked. Eleven signature-gatherers in that case were eventually convicted of falsifying voter registrations and other charges. Of the eleven, eight went to jail.
As per Brad Friedman in 2008, GOP claims about ACORN were just talking points.
It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less.
As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.
That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys for failing to bring phoney charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.
So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself?
The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up.
But in the bloody and desperate trenches of the Republican war on democracy, that's more than enough to kick in a last minute surge of lies that may - with the help of a compliant and lazy corporate US media - wreak enough havoc, scare enough voters, confuse enough people and plant enough seeds to call an Obama victory into doubt on November 4.
If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you. (Heckuva job, CNN.)
Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.
You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.
What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won't be voting this November. You needn't worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead you.
If it quacks like a duck, in this case, it's likely another Republican Acorn voter fraud lie. They haul it out every two years.
Just days before the 2004 presidential election, rightwing whack job Michelle Malkin claimed that Acorn was registering terrorists to vote in swing state Ohio. Problem was, that was a lie.
In 2006, again just days before the election, the new US attorney in swing state Missouri (recently appointed, since the one before him refused to bring such charges), filed voter fraud indictments against Acorn workers in the state. Problem was, bringing election-related indictments that close to an election was a violation of the department of justice's own written policy. And Acorn had nothing to do with it, other than turning in the employees to officials.
Getting the picture? It's a hoax. All of it.