Devil is in the Details

Since ACORN has been in the news so much, can I just remind everyone that when you hear someone argue that ACORN submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registration cards, can you please retort that ACORN officials are required by LAW to turn in EVERY card they receive, even the dumb ones. They can only mark cards that they think are "bad" ("Mickey Mouse," "Donald Duck") which they did. But, while annoying, this is REGISTRATION fraud-- it does not constitute voter fraud unless "Mickey Mouse"shows up to vote. A big thank you too, to Betty who sends along word of REPUBLICAN voter registration irregularities. From the LA TImes: "The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud. State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states."

The US Supreme Court ruled at the eleventh hour that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner does NOT have to supply the Ohio GOP with names of 200,000 new voters who registration info may not match state records. Wapo reports: "The GOP argued that the county boards needed the lists to detect possible registration fraud. Brunner had said that reprogramming the system just weeks before the Nov. 4 election would result in chaos. Until the Supreme Court issued its unanimous ruling, Brunner was under court order to produce lists for counties by yesterday.

Wapo also reports that in Montana, "a state GOP official challenged nearly 6,000 voters over apparent discrepancies in their addresses. He dropped his challenge after Democrats went to court, but not before one county sent letters to hundreds of voters informing them that their registrations were in jeopardy. Now the county is trying to let them know they are eligible to cast ballots after all. The Republicans filed the case 'with the express intent to disenfranchise voters,' a federal judge said."

And since we're on the topic of fraud. Let the games begin. In West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette is reporting that voters have had problems with the touch screen voting machines, which mysteriously kept switching their "check" in the Obama box over to a check in the McCain box. Hmmmm.....