Archive for the “2008 Presidential Race” Category

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Connecticut
The Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission says it will look into allegations that an advocacy group submitted fraudulent voter registration cards in Bridgeport. Joseph Borges, Bridgeport’s Republican registrar of voters, filed the complaint. He says he has found numerous problems with voter registration cards submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

In one instance, he says a card was filled out for a 7-year-old girl, whose age was listed as 27 on the card.

Republicans say there are similar problems with cards filed by ACORN in Stamford. But Nancy Nicolescu with the enforcement commission says they have not received a formal complaint from anyone in that city.

Florida
Some voters being re-registered without their consent
By 970 WFLA, Friday, October 10, 2008

CLEARWATER, Fla. (970 WFLA) - Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark has notified the State Attorney and the Florida Division of Elections that her office has received 35 voter registration applications in the last two weeks from the organization Work for Progress that appear questionable and possibly fraudulent. The handwriting is virtually the same on multiple applications, and some have the same address. Some of the applications have no address or are incomplete in other ways.

One application was turned in incomplete, so elections staff sent a notice to the applicant. However, the voter responded that she has been registered to vote since 1995 and stated that she had not submitted a new registration application.

Clark’s staff contacted the organization after receiving the first 21 applications and was informed that the person responsible for the applications had been fired. Subsequently, another 14 applications were received.
Clark asked the Division of Elections on October 1 to notify other county supervisors of elections to be aware of the situation in case it is repeated elsewhere in the state.
http://620wdae.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=124415&article=4383709

Indiana
Over 2000 voter registration forms filed in a stack of about 5000 applications in Indiana have been confirmed to be fakes. And from where did those forms originate? The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
It looks like fake voters are popping up all over the country in an effort to skew the polls and whose name is showing up concurrently? ACORN.

According to a CNN: And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.
“All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”

A subsidiary of the group was paid $800,000 by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign to register voters for the 2008 primaries, and ACORN’s political wing endorsed Obama back in February. But Obama’s campaign told CNN that it “is committed to protecting the integrity of the voting process,” and said it has not worked with ACORN during the general election.

Michigan
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”

Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State’s Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Missouri
By BILL DRAPER – 1 day ago
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.
“I don’t even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy,” Davis said. “We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don’t exist, people who have driver’s license numbers that won’t verify or Social Security numbers that won’t verify. Some have no address at all.”

Ordower said Wednesday that ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some politicians don’t want that many low-income people having a voice. “It’s par for the course,” he said. “When you’re doing more registrations than anyone else in the country, some don’t want low-income people being empowered to vote. There are pretty targeted attacks on us, but we’re proud to be out there doing the patriotic thing getting people registered to vote.”

Nevada
Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote. On Tuesday, authorities in Nevada seized records from ACORN after finding fraudulent registration forms that included the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

No one was at the ACORN office when Nevada state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away. Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names. The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.

New Mexico
Such is the situation for Bernalillo County, which reported, the day before Obama’s Española rally, that it had received 1,100 fraudulent voter-registration cards. While there is no information, yet, on where those cards came from, Matthew Henderson, ACORN’s New Mexico head organizer, acknowledges some could have come from his group. ACORN, he says, has registered 75,000 New Mexicans during this election cycle. While the group separates suspect forms into a separate stack, he says, it’s ultimately up to county clerks to decide which are valid.

In the case of Bernalillo, County Clerk Maggie Toulouse-Oliver notified the district attorney, Attorney General and US Attorney Offices about the bogus voter-registration cards. “If they want to conduct an investigation,” she says, “that’s their prerogative

North Carolina
Written by Matt Willoughby
(UNDATED) — North Carolina is one of the states in which there are allegations of voter fraud involving a community organizing group called ACORN. There were charges, mainly from conservative groups, that ACORN was turning in fraudulent voter registration forms. Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation says there were reports of the same names showing up many times and allegations that a 14-year-old signed up.
Kokai says there’s no sign of a crime, but there should still be some concern about what ACORN is doing. Bob Hall is with Democracy North Carolina, which has an ACORN organizer on staff. Hall claims any fraud would be caught. A representative of the State Attorney General says that office has not been asked to investigate.

Ohio
CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

“Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they’ll give me a dollar to sign up,” said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. “The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, ‘You are?’ I say, ‘Yup,’ and then they say, ‘Can you just sign up again?’ ” he said.

Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot.

Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it’s a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay “compensation on a fee-per-registration” system when signing up someone to vote.

Johnson, who works at a cellphone kiosk in downtown Cleveland, said he was a sitting duck for the signature hunters, but was always happy to help them out in exchange for a smoke or a little scratch. He’d collected 10 to 20 cigarettes and anywhere from $10 to $15, he said.

The Cleveland voting probe, first reported by The Post yesterday, also focused on Lateala Goins, who said she put her name on multiple voter registrations. She guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them. “You can tell them you’re registered as many times as you want - they do not care,” she said.

ACORN’s political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, but Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign in Ohio, said ACORN has no role in its get-out-the-vote drive. During the primary season, however, the Obama camp paid another group, Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. That group and ACORN share the same board of directors.
jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

Pennsylvania
Voter registration officials in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Allegheny County have reported problems with registrations filed on behalf of voters by The Association of Community Organizations, or ACORN.
State Republican Party chairman Robert Gleason said the number of fake registrations is in the thousands and said the situation has “the potential for massive fraud.”
A York man employed by ACORN part-time was arrested Saturday and charged with submitting more than 100 bogus registrations during an eight-day period in June. The man was fired when ACORN learned of the discrepancy.
Dauphin County investigators said Luis F. Torres-Serrano, 37, of the 400 block of George St., York, was working part time for ACORN and turned in bogus registration forms, apparently to justify his paycheck, said Chief County Detective John Goshert.
ACORN officials have denied all allegations that the organization knowingly submitted false information to election officials.

Texas - The Dead Are Rising
In Texas and all over the country, Obama supporters are registering dead and make-believe voters. A non-partisan Texas news group has turned up 4,000 “newly-registered” voters — in JUST Harris County, Texas, ALONE — that, it appears, are already dead.

New T-shirt suggestion: “Dead voters for Obama”

*Read this at:
http://www.click2houston.com/investigates/17671375/detail.html

Wisconsin
Milwaukee County prosecutors Tuesday charged a convicted felon with illegally registering himself and others to vote between his conviction and his sentencing.

The complaint accuses Adam Mucklin, 22, of registering to vote in June, after he was convicted of battery in April, and after a judge told him he couldn’t vote as a convicted felon. Later in June, Mucklin signed up to work as a paid voter registrar for the Community Voters Project, something else he couldn’t do as a convicted felon, the complaint says.

A recent opinion from the staff of the state Government Accountability Board says no one convicted of a felony can ever serve as a registrar, a stricter standard than the previous interpretation that registrars only had to be eligible to vote.

Under Wisconsin law, felons can’t vote until after they have completed their sentences and are off probation or parole. For Mucklin, that would not be until Jan. 10, 2012, the complaint notes.

Main Stream Media Reporting
And, of course, MSNBC tries to sweep it under the table and pretend it away: *** Is it really voter fraud? ACORN has gotten itself into trouble, as it did in 2004, because its workers — some who are homeless and ex-felons — get paid for registering voters, and that in some cases leads to these workers turning in bogus forms. But is that voter fraud, as Republicans suggest? Not really, voting experts tell First Read. For one thing, it’s highly unlikely that these fake registrations actually get added to the rolls. And if they do, it’s doubtful that Harry Potter, Han Solo, or Haywood Jablome would actually show up at the polls. The big problem these bogus forms present, says voting expert Doug Chapin, is that they gum up the process of approving legitimate registrations — especially at a time when there have been so many new registered voters.

You might want to read this very interesting interview with Stanly Kurtz:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,435962,00.html

H/T: www.HillaryClintonForum.net (really)

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TROY — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s last name is spelled “Osama” on hundreds of absentee ballots mailed out this week to voters in Rensselaer County.

The misspelling, which elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist was simply a typo, is causing embarrassment for the county.

”No question this is an honest mistake innocently done,” said Edward McDonough, the Democratic commissioner. ”We catch almost everything.”

[...]

But even the county Democratic election commissioner is apologizing for what he calls a terrible mistake. More here.

Damn the luck.

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The push to register voters for this year’s presidential election is breaking records. More than 1.9 million people are registered to vote in Harris County alone.

But how many of the people listed on the voter roll are actually eligible to cast a ballot?
Investigative reporter Amy Davis shows you how hundreds of voters could sway this year’s election — voters who are not even alive.

“All-in-all, a great person, a great woman, just a wonderful person” is how Alexis Guidry described her mother to Local 2 Investigates.

“As far back as I can remember, they’ve always voted in the election,” Guidry said of her parents. The March 2008 Primary was no exception. Voting records show Alexis’ mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home.
“It was just very shocking, a little unsettling,” said Alexis Guidry. It’s unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

“She’d be very upset,” Guidry said when asked what her mom would think.
Trent Seibert, of Texas Watchdog, says you should be too. “This is really disquieting. It’s concerning. It’s worrisome,” said Seibert. He heads up the non-partisan news group on the web. Texas Watchdog compared Harris County’s voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches — registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.

So just how many of these dead people did Obama/Acorn register? They’ve been on the forefront of registrations there for some time.

Houston for Obama-United for Change Voter Registration Drive

ACORN planting voter registrars in certain areas
To find the most effective mass voter registration drive in Houston, check bus shelters, public hospital waiting rooms, job search centers and welfare offices.
There — as opposed to PTO meetings, art festivals, naturalization ceremonies and other typical sites for civic activity — is where ACORN has been methodically signing up poor and working-class citizens this year.

I believe the feces will hit the rotary oscillator soon.

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A Newsmax investigation of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign finance reports has turned up more than 2,000 cases in which individuals have made donations far above the legal limit of $2,300 per election.

Such donations, if not returned within 60 days, violate federal campaign finance laws.

Some can be chalked up to common names, such as Michael Brown, William Taylor, or James Smith.

But many others cannot.

On Aug. 31, for example, the Obama campaign filed a report listing a single donation from a Debra Myers in “Rancho Palos Verde, Calif.,” for $28,500 – more than 10 times the amount the law allows per election. Although Debra Myers is identified as a physician, only two individuals with that last name have a listed phone number in Rancho Palos Verdes (the city’s name actually does have an “s” at the end). Neither is a Debra or a “D” Myers, or a physician.

The Obama campaign also identified Woodrow Myers Jr. of Indianapolis, Ind., on Aug. 31 as having given $28,500 to the campaign. Woodrow “Woody” Myers is a former Indiana state health commissioner who spent $2.1 million of his own money in a failed special election to challenge Andre Carson, the grandson of U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, who died in December. The younger Carson won the race this year, with heavy backing from lobbyists, the Democratic Party and related PACs. (Interestingly, Woodrow Myers’ wife is identified as Debra, although Newsmax could not confirm whether this is the same Debra Myers the campaign report lists as being from Palos Verdes.)

In an initial reply to Newsmax questions, the Obama campaign said it had refunded both contributions on Sept. 30, a day after a Newsmax investigation was published that revealed extensive federal election campaign violations by the campaign.

Read the entire story here.

From Fox News

A Yonkers, N.Y., councilman whose home was bombed nearly four decades ago by the Weather Underground says Barack Obama should know better than to associate with the domestic terror group’s co-founder, Bill Ayers.

“Barack Obama constantly says, ‘I was only 8 years old when this happened.’ That’s kind of his throwaway line,” John Murtagh told FOX News Thursday morning.

“I’m not questioning what Barack Obama was doing when he was 8 years old. I’m questioning his behavior as an adult to choose his friends, mentor and longtime personal and professional colleague.”

Murtagh discussed the 1970 bombing as John McCain’s campaign put renewed focus on Obama’s ties to Ayers, who lives in Chicago and is an education professor at the University of Illinois.

Murtagh, whose father was a New York Supreme Court justice when his family’s home was targeted, put out a statement on behalf of McCain’s campaign Wednesday claiming “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”

[...]

Murtagh also alleged that Obama’s ties to Ayers probably go back earlier, since Ayers’ wife, Weather Underground radical Bernadine Dohrn, at one point worked at the same firm where Obama’s wife, Michelle, worked.

Obama is a liar, plain and simple.

Check out this timeline.

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Now, this is funny stuff.

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From CBS News’ Dean Reynolds

(NASHVILLE, TENN.) - After most of the previous 12 months covering Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, it was interesting, instructive and, well, relaxing to follow John McCain for the last few days. The differences between the two are striking.

[...]

Obama’s campaign schedule is fuller, more hectic and seemingly improvisational. The Obama aides who deal with the national reporters on the campaign plane are often overwhelmed, overworked and un-informed about where, when, why or how the candidate is moving about. Baggage calls are preposterously early with the explanation that it’s all for security reasons.

If so, I would love to have someone from Obama’s campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case.

[...]

The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who’ve been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.

The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama’s, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.

The Obama’s are used to stinky.

In an interview with Glamour magazine, Michelle Obama reveals that her husband, Barack, is so “snore-y and stinky” when he wakes up in the morning that their daughters won’t crawl into bed with him.

The other day in Albuquerque, N.M., the reporters were given almost no time to file their reports after McCain spoke. It was an important, aggressive speech, lambasting Obama’s past associations. When we asked for more time to write up his remarks and prepare our reports, the campaign readily agreed to it. They understood.

Similar requests are often denied or ignored by the Obama campaign aides, apparently terrified that the candidate may have to wait 20 minutes to allow reporters to chronicle what he’s just said. It’s made all the more maddening when we are rushed to our buses only to sit and wait for 30 minutes or more because nobody seems to know when Obama is actually on the move.

So this begs the question. If Obama and his staff cannot run a campaign, what makes you think they he can run this country?

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From the Review Journal

State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities.

The secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November’s general election.

“Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys,” Secretary of State Ross Miller said. “Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot.”

From Michelle Malkin

Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?

Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars; in turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his campaigns. Obama also sat on the boards of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, both of which poured money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money. More here.

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