A story RUE may love by whozit

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A story RUE may love

POSTED BY: WHOZIT
UPDATED: Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:58
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Thursday, October 16, 2008 8:50 AM

WHOZIT

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93RNJOG2&show_article=1 All for you RUE

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 8:55 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Did you miss this part? Or do you just scan the headlines and twitch when one seems to meet your ideological needs?

Quote:
ACORN says laws in a number of states require it to submit all registration cards it collects even dubious ones, so its workers segregate applications with missing, suspicious or false information and flag them so state election officials can quickly check them further.

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Let's party like its 1929.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:08 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Did you miss this part? Or do you just scan the headlines and twitch when one seems to meet your ideological needs?
Quote:
ACORN says laws in a number of states require it to submit all registration cards it collects even dubious ones, so its workers segregate applications with missing, suspicious or false information and flag them so state election officials can quickly check them further.

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Let's party like its 1929.

Yes I twitched, are you sure you can belive them? They're only being investigated in 14 states, and they've been busted for this crap before.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:11 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

They are REQUIRED to turn the forms in - ALL of them.

As long as they do due diligence including screening the forms and firing anyone turning in bogus forms - which they have done - then there is no case against the organization because of it following the law.

BTW - many of the supposed 'discrepancies are simple ones such as someone filling in their full middle name in one form and submitting an initial in another, even if ALL other information is the same. For example, if whoZIT filled out the registration card whoZIT s. jackass, but the social security form was filled out whoZIT shit-heel jackass it would be considered a questionable form.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:11 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

When the investigations are complete we'll know the story. If they're exonerated, will you offer an apology?

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Let's party like its 1929.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:14 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
When the investigations are complete we'll know the story. If they're exonerated, will you offer an apology?

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Let's party like its 1929.

Sure

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

M'kay. And if ACORN is found guilty of a nationwide scam, I'll jump on 'em with both feet.

---------------------------------
Let's party like its 1929.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:52 AM

STORYMARK

Amusing how righties are so up-in-arms about some fake voters being registered.... but have no problem with the far greater number of legitimate voters (usually minorities) that get barred, disenrolled or otherwise prevented from voting honestly.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:55 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
They are REQUIRED to turn the forms in - ALL of them.

As long as they do due diligence including screening the forms and firing anyone turning in bogus forms - which they have done - then there is no case against the organization because of it following the law.

BTW - many of the supposed 'discrepancies are simple ones such as someone filling in their full middle name in one form and submitting an initial in another, even if ALL other information is the same. For example, if whoZIT filled out the registration card whoZIT s. jackass, but the social security form was filled out whoZIT shit-heel jackass it would be considered a questionable form.

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That's Mr Jackass thank you.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:00 AM

WHOZIT

BTW,the card with Mickey Mouse's name with the ACORN stamp, accident?

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:14 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"That's Mr Jackass thank you."

Adding a title -- another difference. That could get your whole registration thrown out right there.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:21 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

A recent Justice Department inspector general report detailed how David Iglesias, New Mexico's former U.S. attorney appointed by President Bush, got the boot because his fellow Republicans objected to the lack of zeal with which he handled voter fraud and public corruption cases against Democrats.

Iglesias had formed a bipartisan task force to investigate more than 100 claims of voter fraud, but it wasn't good enough because it found no prosecutable cases.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/falkenberg/6061112.ht
ml

Voter fraud not rampant at ACORN
By Lisa Falkenberg Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 15, 2008, 11:01PM

The sky is falling at voter registrar offices across the country! Or was that just an ACORN?

It's hard to tell these days with breathless news reports blanketing airwaves and the Internet, spewing accusations of voter registration fraud in battleground states.

We're told dead people are being signed up, along with Mickey Mouse and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys — bogus registrations supposedly planted by the liberal-leaning community organizing group ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Voter fraud is a perennial political boogeyman of the Republicans, similar to the way fears of rigged elections, registrars purging voters and ballot-stealing voter machines are employed by Democrats. Like a good rumor, they persist because they're based on a kernel of truth.

There's no doubt that each election cycle, ACORN hires canvassers who end up turning in bogus registration cards.

But large-scale conspiracy this does not appear to be. These paid canvassers, many low income folks themselves, are more likely motivated to pad their stacks to collect a paycheck than to join in a sinister plot to swing an election.

But even if investigations in other states do turn up evidence of a coordinated effort to commit fraud, Harris County apparently has nothing to fear.

"There's no Dallas Cowboys football team. President Roosevelt has not been re-registered. We've done a cursory check," says Paul Bettencourt, Harris County voter registrar.

In fact, Bettencourt, a Republican, says he has a healthy relationship with ACORN. When there's a problem, he meets with the group's officials to work it out. And there have been problems this election cycle.

Felons can vote
First, there was an issue of ACORN canvassers signing up felons, which, unlike in some other states, is perfectly legal in Texas, just so long as the felons have completed their sentencing terms. The problem was some ACORN canvassers were frequenting halfway houses, resulting in about 230 registration cards for felons who weren't yet eligible to vote, according to Bettencourt. But he says once he raised the issue with ACORN, the halfway house visits ceased.

Then there were the two ACORN deputy registrars who tried to register themselves eight times each. Both were fired, and ACORN's state political director Catherine Blue told me one was dismissed before Bettencourt's office called to report her.

The problem of duplicate cards has been worse this year than in past election cycles, Bettencourt says, though he had a little trouble quantifying it. He told a Chronicle reporter and me that ACORN had submitted 4,600 duplicates this year up until Oct. 8, but when he ran the numbers to get an updated figure Wednesday, he corrected the record: Only 3,791 duplicates.

30,000 ACORN registrations
Of more than 30,000 ACORN-submitted registration cards, Bettencourt says 61 percent actually were successful in adding registered voters to the rolls. Not a bad showing when you consider that many of these duplicates are well-intentioned mistakes, the result of people who can't remember if they've registered, or they still haven't received their voter registration card in the mail, so they fill out another application.

There's an important difference between bogus voter registration applications and real, Election Day voter fraud.

"Registering over and over is not fraud," Bettencourt says. " ... it's just a bogus waste of time."

And the chances of the bogusness leading to Election Day fraud?

"The odds are higher than zero. That's really all you can say," Bettencourt says.

Of course, the duplicates and ineligible felons waste the time of the county employees who have to sift through them. And they waste taxpayer money that funds the employees' salaries. Bettencourt argues that ACORN could reduce its error rate if it used volunteer canvassers instead of paid ones. ACORN's Blue says using volunteers isn't a feasible option for a large-scale operation aimed at the most hard-to-register group: minority, low-income, historically disenfranchised voters.

But the errors are a waste of time, and money, for ACORN's privately funded campaign, too. "We have no interest in turning in bogus cards. Those folks aren't going to do us any good," Blue said. Blue says ACORN has quality control measures, such as calling three times to verify applications, to crack down on bogus applications, but the organization is legally required to turn in every card. When that happens, though, Blue says, "We turn it in with big, glaring, flashing lights all over it saying we suspect that this card is a problem."

There's no motivation for ACORN to pay people to sit on a street corner and register cartoon characters, quarterbacks or their own names multiple times. The cartoons, quarterbacks and multiple personalities won't be able to vote on Election Day.

The only clear motivation in the supposed battleground state scandals is political.

It's the same scare tactic used in 2005 when former Republican state Rep. Talmadge Heflin blamed Democratic challenger Hubert Vo's razor-thin victory's on voter fraud. Unfortunately for him, the even-handed Republican investigating the allegations, state Rep. Will Hartnett, R-Dallas, found no evidence to back the powerful former House budget chief's assertion.

Partisanship trumps facts
And let's not forget the role of voter fraud in the infamous U.S. attorney firings scandal that helped take down former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

A recent Justice Department inspector general report detailed how David Iglesias, New Mexico's former U.S. attorney appointed by President Bush, got the boot because his fellow Republicans objected to the lack of zeal with which he handled voter fraud and public corruption cases against Democrats.

Iglesias had formed a bipartisan task force to investigate more than 100 claims of voter fraud, but it wasn't good enough because it found no prosecutable cases.

Partisanship trumped the facts.

Same thing with the latest accusations.

In politics, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:24 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/article852295.ece

Nationwide, ACORN is a favorite GOP target for allegations of voter registration fraud this year.

...

Under attack again, ACORN leaders defend their work. Often, they say, things are as not simple as they're portrayed.

Take Mickey Mouse.

Yes, that's their logo. But they say their workers routinely scanned all suspicious applications.

"We don't think this card came through our system," said Brian Kettenring, ACORN's head organizer in Florida.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:26 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Some guy who’s getting paid money to register voters decides to be lazy and just make up a buncha names - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd and Chuck E. Cheese all wind up registering as Democrats.

You wanna tell me which of those characters actually shows up to vote?

Again: How about zero.

http://blogs.lancasteronline.com/smartremarks/2008/10/15/the-mickey-mo
use-acorn-lie/

The Mickey Mouse ACORN lie
October 15th, 2008 10:09 am · 2 comments
So. You’ve been following the story of the ACORN voter registration fraud. Duplicitious Democrats! This just shows they’re cheating!

And so - how many bogus votes do you think the Democrats will get as a result of ACORN? A few dozen? Few hundred? Few thousand?

How about zero?

Zero because to whatever extent they exist, we’re talking about fraudulent voter registrations. Some guy who’s getting paid money to register voters decides to be lazy and just make up a buncha names - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd and Chuck E. Cheese all wind up registering as Democrats.

You wanna tell me which of those characters actually shows up to vote?

Again: How about zero.

Josh Marshall does a thorough breakdown/takedown of the ACORN lie being pushed by the right here - and really, read the whole thing. Because all of this is is the right trying to lay the groundwork for challenging the validity of the presidential election. And that involves them getting you to believe that actual fraudulent votes will be cast; that somehow, somewhere, Mickey Mouse is going to actually show up and cast a ballot.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:37 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Again, there have been numerous investigations of this. Often by people with at least a mild political interest in finding wrongdoing. But they never find it. It always ends up being right-wing hype and lies. Remember, most of those now-famous fired US Attorneys from 2007 were Republican appointees who were canned after they got tasked with investigating allegations of widespread vote fraud, did everything they could to find it, but came up with nothing. That was the wrong answer so Karl Rove and his crew at the Justice Department fired them.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/223436.php

The Gist of the ACORN Story
10.10.08 -- 2:58PM By Josh Marshall

The Republican party is grasping on to the ACORN story as a way to delegitimize what now looks like the probable outcome of the November election. It is also a way to stoke the paranoia of their base, lay the groundwork for legal challenges of close outcomes in various states and promote new legal restrictions on legitimate voting by lower income voters and minorities. The big picture is that these claims of 'voter fraud' are themselves a fraud, a tool to aid in suppressing Democratic voter turnout. But I want give readers a bit more detail to understand what is going because the right-wing freak out about ACORN happens pretty much on schedule every two years. The whole scam is premised on having enough people who don't remember when they tried it before who they can then confuse and lie to. And this is clearly important because I'm hearing from a lot of people whose heart is in the right place thinking some real voter fraud conspiracy has been uncovered and that Obama has to distance himself from it post-haste.

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations. 1) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

I've always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here's the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote 2, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won't count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there's very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud 3. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations 4 have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud.

To expand on this point let me quote from Richard Hasen, one of the most experienced and concise commentators on this question, from a June 2007 column in the Dallas Morning News ...

At least in hindsight, the center's line of argument is easily deconstructed. First, arguing by anecdote is dangerous business. A new report by Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College looks at these anecdotes and shows them to be, for the most part, wholly spurious. Sure, one can find a rare case of someone voting in two jurisdictions, but nothing extensive or systematic has been unearthed or documented.
But perhaps most importantly, the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible. Suppose I want to swing the Missouri election for my preferred presidential candidate. I would have to figure out who the fake, dead or missing people on the registration rolls are, then pay a lot of other individuals to go to the polling place and claim to be that person, without any return guarantee - thanks to the secret ballot - that any of them will cast a vote for my preferred candidate.

Those who do show up at the polls run the risk of being detected and charged with a felony. And for what - $10? Polling-place fraud, in short, makes no sense.

The Justice Department devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out fraud over five years and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country. Of the many experts consulted, the only dissenter from that position was a representative of the now-evaporated American Center for Voting Rights.

Again, there have been numerous investigations of this. Often by people with at least a mild political interest in finding wrongdoing. But they never find it. It always ends up being right-wing hype and lies. Remember, most of those now-famous fired US Attorneys from 2007 were Republican appointees who were canned after they got tasked with investigating allegations of widespread vote fraud, did everything they could to find it, but came up with nothing. That was the wrong answer so Karl Rove and his crew at the Justice Department fired them.

Vote registration fraud is a limited and relatively minor problem in the US today. But it is principally an administrative and efficiency issue. It is has little or nothing to do with people casting illegitimate votes to affect an actual election. That's the key. What you're hearing right now from Fox News, the New York Post, John Fund and the rest of the right-wing bamboozlement chorus is a just another effort to exploit, confuse and lie in an effort to put more severe restrictions on legitimate voting and lay the groundwork to steal elections.

It's that simple.

1
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/05/controversial_usa_de
livered_vo.php

2
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/news/politics/nuts__132771.htm

3
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/
DN-hasen_10edi.ART.State.Edition1.436da28.html

4
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/
DN-hasen_10edi.ART.State.Edition1.436da28.html

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:52 AM

WHOZIT

You're rite, it's a minor problem, Mickey Mouse and the guy who was registerd 72 times for money and cigarettes are isolated cases. The FBI looking into this is just a political stunt.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:32 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

BTW - the FBI has a POLICY of not releasing information on ongoing investigations. Yes, announcing they were 'investigating' IS a political stunt. That's why those FBI 'sources' had to remain anonymous.

How much you wanna bet when they find NO MASSIVE FRAUD - just like the AG's found NO MASSIVE FRAUD - that announcement will be small, and obscure, and late.

If I'm right (and I will be), not only will you owe me an apology you have to post that you're a shit-heeled idiot and a ZIT that needs to be popped.

Up for it ?

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:48 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
BTW - the FBI has a POLICY of not releasing information on ongoing investigations. Yes, announcing they were 'investigating' IS a political stunt. That's why those FBI 'sources' had to remain anonymous.

How much you wanna bet when they find NO MASSIVE FRAUD - just like the AG's found NO MASSIVE FRAUD - that announcement will be small, and obscure, and late.

If I'm right (and I will be), not only will you owe me an apology you have to post that you're a shit-heeled idiot and a ZIT that needs to be popped.

Up for it ?

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Sure I'm for it, if I win, you have to post a 500 word essay telling everyone how wrong YOU were, titled "whozit was rite" or "RUE is icky", take your pick.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:48 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
BTW - the FBI has a POLICY of not releasing information on ongoing investigations. Yes, announcing they were 'investigating' IS a political stunt. That's why those FBI 'sources' had to remain anonymous.

How much you wanna bet when they find NO MASSIVE FRAUD - just like the AG's found NO MASSIVE FRAUD - that announcement will be small, and obscure, and late.

If I'm right (and I will be), not only will you owe me an apology you have to post that you're a shit-heeled idiot and a ZIT that needs to be popped.

Up for it ?

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

Sure I'm up for it, if I win, you have to post a 500 word essay telling everyone how wrong YOU were, titled "whozit was rite" or "RUE is icky", take your pick.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:28 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Or, apparently, TWO 500-word essays...

This world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.

Trolls Against McCain!

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:45 PM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd and Chuck E. Cheese all wind up registering as Democrats.

You wanna tell me which of those characters actually shows up to vote?

Again: How about zero.

Mickey just votes absentee, he always gets swarmed by felons waiting to vote Democrat every time he goes to the polls.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:52 PM

KWICKO

Aren't most of the white-collar felons Republicans?

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Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:58 PM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Aren't most of the white-collar felons Republicans?

Yes they are, but they're to busy stealing your money, they don't have time to vote.

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