Since this fight needs a little levity every now and then, I bring you Sharrrrron Angle
She's going to be focusing her prodigious political skills to exposing "America's silent epidemic"—voter fraud. How it could possibly be silent when the Right has been screeching about it since destroying ACORN.
“The progressives in the media would like us to believe that voter fraud or election tampering either do not exist or represents such a small percentage of the election process that we should just sweep them under the rug,” said Angle, a Republican, in a video posted to Youtube and featured on her website.
She called the problem a bipartisan one, adding, “it seems every week we hear of another incident of dead people voting or hacking of voting machines.”
“I want you to join me in producing an important documentary film for national release,” Angle said, requesting viewers to donate to the film. “I believe that preserving a trustworthy vote for every American is more important that my seeking elected office at this time.”
Or in other words, send me money. And, of course, we don't hear about incidents of voter fraud every week, only when some
asshole political
operative commits voter fraud in a desperate attempt to prove the thesis that fraud exists. But Angle's relationship with reality and what could be considered "truth" has always been a little shaky.
Maybe she can get some help from her neighbor, Sheriff Joe Orly Arpaio Taitz in her big investigation.
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- The Brennan Center updates how newly enacted voter ID laws could effect the 2012 vote. They find that "70 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win in 2012 will now come from states with new restrictive voting laws." That's 189 electoral votes that could be decided by states that have kept traditionally Democratic voters out of the voting booth.
- That includes Pennsylvania, with a brand new voter suppression law. The new law will likely face an quick legal challenge.
- As promised, last week former Rep. Lincoln Davis has filed suit over having been denied a vote in the Tennessee primary, on behalf of himself and other Tennessee voters who had been dropped from voter rolls.
Davis filed a class action lawsuit in federal court Monday that says state election officials broke the law by not requiring more than 70,000 voters to be notified that their registrations had been cancelled. Davis decided to sue after he and his wife were turned away at the polls when they attempted to vote in the Fentress County Democratic primary last Tuesday.
- The tea baggers are organizing to block as many voters as possible in November. Surprise.
- Gov. Rick Perry is back to secessionist kind of talk, saying that the administration has blocked Texas' “right to make sovereign decisions” by refusing to provide pre-clearance to that states new voting law, which the Department of Justice found would disproportionately affect minority voters.
- A "proof of citizenship" voter law proposed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the same Kris Kobach who helped Arizona and Alabama create draconian immigration laws (and advises Mitt Romney on immigration) might not make it through the state Senate, after having passed in the House.
- In case you missed it, really good news out of Wisconsin, where Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess permanently barred implementation of that state's new voter ID law. Just days before, Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan had issued a temporary injunction, but it's now permanent. From Niess' decision:
"Without question, where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government. The legislature and governor may certainly take aggressive action to prevent its occurrence. But voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads of the same monster."
The state will appeal.