Friday October 10, 2008, 2:36 pm
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
updated 2:30 p.m. ET, Fri., Oct. 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - The fiercest shouting match of this campaign season isn’t necessarily “vote for Obama!” versus “vote for McCain!”

In some states, it is “voter fraud!” versus “voter intimidation!”

Republicans allege Democrats and their allies are trying to subvert the voter registration system, and perhaps the election itself, with an avalanche of inaccurate or fraudulent new voter registrations.

But Democrats charge Republicans are trying to deter would-be voters by discouraging registrations and by requiring voters to identify themselves, in some cases with state-issued photo identification such as a driver’s license.

In one sense, this is simply the intense political combat one would expect to see three weeks before an election, with each side using an issue to fire up its loyal supporters.

But some election officials are struggling with substantial problems as they try to avoid a fiasco on Election Day, Nov. 4.

Republicans have made a group called ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the chief villain in the home stretch of the campaign.

Their allegation: that ACORN has been flooding election officials in states from Nevada to Connecticut with thousands of erroneous and fraudulent voter registration forms.

In Jackson County, Missouri, (which includes Kansas City) election officials said this week that fraudulent registration forms had been handed in by ACORN canvassers.

Nevada raid on ACORN
In Las Vegas, investigators from the office of Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat, served a search warrant Tuesday on the ACORN office, as part of an investigation into allegations of voter registration fraud. Miller’s agents seized computer hard drives and boxes of documents.

ACORN defended itself in the Nevada incident, saying its workers verify the information on new voter registration cards before turning them in to election officials.

But ACORN did acknowledge that some errors were made.

“While the vast majority of our voter registration canvassers do a great job, there have been several times over the past ten months that our Las Vegas Quality Control program has identified a canvasser who appears to have knowingly submitted a fake or duplicate application in order to pad his or her hours,” the group said in a statement.

It complained that “It was surprising that law enforcement officials appeared suddenly at our Las Vegas offices yesterday, because ACORN and its attorneys have already been proactive in providing information about problematic cards and any employee suspected of misconduct.”

President Bush won Nevada in 2004, but recent polls show Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain statistically tied in the state with his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama.

Obama ties to ACORN
Obama has long had ties to ACORN. In 1995, he was one of the attorneys who represented the group in a suit against the state of Illinois for not implementing the federal "Motor Voter" law which makes it easier for people to register as voters. And the ACORN political action committee has endorsed Obama.

Campaigning in Mosinee, Wisc., on Thursday, McCain responded to shouts of “ACORN!” in the crowd by saying, “There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America…. You’ve seen these are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately, and they must be stopped before November the 4th so Americans will not be deprived of a fair process in this election.”

The co-chairman of the McCain advisory team in charge of monitoring alleged voter fraud, former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, hinted this week at potential post-Nov. 4 litigation if Obama wins due to suspect voters who had been registered by ACORN. “The contest could go on for a very long time,” he told reporters.

Danforth also said it would be “a nightmare in America” and “a total horror story” if Obama either wins or loses by a small margin “and the losing side believes it has been cheated.”

Offering a professional election official's view of last-minute “dumps” of new registration applications by groups such as ACORN was Doug Lewis, the executive director of the nonpartisan National Association of Election Officials, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month.

'It just screws up the system'
“This unfettered, unbounded, unregulated use of third-party registrations, where they sit on those registrations right until the end and try to turn them all in at the very last minute — it just screws up the system,” Lewis told the committee. “It disenfranchises voters. It's one of those things that just is frustrating to us as elections officials.”

Lewis added that in his years as an election official he has seen both Democrats and Republicans “dumping in” new voter registration cards at the last minute before a state’s voter registration deadline. “The problem is that these groups all think that they're going to surprise the other campaign with how many people they've registered.”

This week the controversy reached as far as the usually non-political offices of the Social Security Administration.

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) which represents most of the chief election officials in the states, urged Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue to postpone this weekend’s scheduled shutdown of his agency’s database, which most states use to verify new would-be voters’ names and identities.

State officials use the Social Security database when they cannot verify voters’ identity with drivers’ licenses or other state-issued identification cards.

The database shutdown is an annual event, done for maintenance.

In its letter to Astrue, NASS said that most states have voter registration deadlines “that fall a week before, the week of, or the week after the scheduled Computer Center shutdown. Holding all of these verifications until the system comes back online on October 13, 2008 could result in a tremendous surge of data.”

For his part, Astrue accused his critics of partisan motives: “I regret that people unfamiliar with the facts of this situation have sought to create a partisan issue where there is none.”

State officials have been reporting to NASS this week that there has been a slowdown in the Social Security database, which could create delays in verifying voter registrations.

The issues of registration and voting are sensitive in part due to the history of intimidation of black people seeking to register and vote, especially in the South, which led to the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Monday October 13, 2008, 1:35 am
Palin has a lot of skeletons in & out of her closet. She speaks with a forked tongue. www,grizzlybay.org was written in 2007 primarily by Alaskans. See what there is to see & read on that site. Sarah Palin is a puppet for the Republican Party & I believe her to be corrupt. If I understand Alaska state law governing the shooting of wolf pups in the den & the age of needing parental feeding, then I feel Sarah Palin is guilty of facilitating the murder of wolf pups with her aerial hunting of wolves & the bounty she said would be paid for a front paw of each dead wolf. I don't agree with her facilitating any killing by air of black bear sows& cubs nor wolves. Why did all the young wolf pups get killed? All of this is extreme cruelty to animals & Sarah Palin should be found guilty. I thought I'd seen every kind of cruety in America there was until Sarah Palin was brought to the spotlight by the Republicans & they protect her like she has done no wrong. Let her face a jury of her peers without her Republican strong arms & see how she fares. John McCain may have been a war hero & I respect him for years spent ias a prisoner of war. However, his bragging about his military superiority makes me wonder if he lives in his dreams & the world of PTSD. No Senator with self respect should mistreat his fellow senators nor let his choice of Vice President call another Senator"SAMBO". There is no place in the USA for people to refer to an Afican American as "SAMBO". I would expect that from a white supremacy group member or members but not a Governor from any state in the Union. Is this what we have to expect if they make it to President & Vice President of the USA? We will fall back to the 1960's & that would be just more TRAGEDY. What do you think?

Tuesday October 14, 2008, 1:19 am
Sarah Palin would NEVER have been elected into any office in any other state but Alaska.
She has strong ties to a an organization that most would consider a terrorist group called the AIP which wants to make Alaska a separate country. Palin's husband has been a card carrying member and she herself has addressed their convention and praised them to the high heavens. The leader of this group, Joe Vogler, who professed his hatred for the United States government over and over and and said "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." was eventually killed while trying to buy plastic explosives. If that's not a terrorist group then I don't know what is.

Her record of atrocities committed against animals and the environment is mind boggling. Anyone who would ever vote for her just because they think she is pro-life is sadly mistaken and I say that as a pro-life person myself. She has NO respect for life. She knows absolutely nothing about the world, foreign policy, the economy, government, or any subject that a vice president needs to be interested in and would have kept up with for years now. She couldn't even name ONE newspaper or magazine that she reads for Katie Couric. She also could not name one single thing a vice president does. It's clear that John McCain chose her for one reason only. She was the only woman who was a republican that he could find. He is making a mockery out of women. He apparently thinks that the American people are so stupid that they will vote for this ignorant, dangerous person just because she's a woman and he thinks that will get him into the White House.

Well, I can name one thing that John McCain didn't vote for, and that was a bill called the Violence Against Women Protection Act. We are seeing more and more just what he really thinks of women. Now I will name one thing I won't vote for and that's you, John. I'm proud to say I will vote Obama/Biden!

Tuesday October 14, 2008, 4:28 am
Could not agree more Ruth. Go Obama/Biden!!

Tuesday October 14, 2008, 1:01 pm
It seems to me, having followed the infamous story of Sarah Palin on Care2 for a long time, that it is time for everyone in your country to seriously network to get ALL of the stories of Palin and her attitudes/connections/behaviours out to as many of your citizens as possible before another stolen election, after which the whole world would have to live with these people running your government. Being right next door, we worry, especially since our Prime Minister is 'very close' to your out-going President and has already signed away our sovereignty to the US armed Forces without government knowledge or approval.

Tuesday October 21, 2008, 8:39 am
MARK KARLIN ON BUZZFLASH Republican Leaders Who Participate in Attacks on ACORN Could be Prosecuted as Part of a Criminal Conspiracy