Scott Brown, conspiracy theorist
Scott Brown is amping up his grand
conspiracy theory that the state of Massachusetts is in cahoots with Elizabeth Warren's daughter to fix the election for Warren. Warren's daughter is on the board of the advocacy non-profit Demos, which sued Massachusetts (along with a number of other states) for not complying with the National Voter Registration Act by making voter registration readily available to people applying for drivers' licenses or public assistance. Massachusetts decided to settle—and to comply with the law—by mailing out voter registration forms to welfare recipients.
That, Brown says, is tantamount to the state trying to fix the election for Elizabeth Warren, because obviously all those welfare types are going to vote Democratic. Brown's assertion is not amusing state officials.
Daniel Curley, commissioner of the transitional assistance department, said the mailings had nothing to do with partisan politics. [...]
William Galvin, who oversees elections as secretary of state, said the “idea there’s conspiracy here is fiction.” [...]
But Brown is doubling down, and now is
using his conspiracy theory to raise money, of course.
The Brown campaign said Thursday that the fact that the Patrick administration agreed to the welfare registration effort in an election year was evidence of a “rigged game ” and “Beacon Hill machine politics.”
“The state of Massachusetts is using hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to finance a massive voter registration drive targeting nearly half a million welfare recipients—that’s about one-third of the votes necessary to win,” Jim Barnett, Brown’s campaign manager, wrote in fund-raising appeal. “This is what we’re up against in the political machine in Massachusetts, where years of one-party rule has perpetuated a culture of corruption and sleaze.”
Be prepared for the Brown campaign to soon start equating Demos with ACORN. Then the accusation will probably escalate to say the state is actually enabling voter fraud. That's the logical next step in this smear campaign, and can only be expected from Brown, who "was a leading supporter of efforts to require voters to show identification at the polls," when he served in the state legislature.
Brown's accusations, termed "fiction" and "lucidicrous" by state officials, are making the campaign look increasingly desperate. And for an incumbent who has a long history of making bizarre shit up (the "official briefing" in which he saw classified photos of a dead bin Laden, the secret meetings with foreign heads of state, how the Obama administration calls on him all the time for his help), this kind of tin foil might get him some fundraising help, but it's sure not helping his credibility.
But tapping into voter fraud fears and playing the victim-of-the-corrupt-liberal-establishment card wil net him a ton of campaign contributions, because that's how Republicans do it. So let's fight back.
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