More Political Fire From ThoughtOne

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It's time to wake up or .............continue to be bamboozled, hoodwinked and led astray.

Don't worry Upgrade Dave. I know Obama did it.

Fucking right wing liars!

source: Huffington Post

A right-wing group in Houston engaged in a systematic voter suppression and intimidation effort used a doctored photo in its showcase video. Tellingly, a hand-lettered sign carried by an African-American woman at a 2000 Florida, Gore-Lieberman recount rally was changed from, "Don't Mess With Our Vote," to read, "I Only Got to Vote Once."

Huffington Post editors first suspected the photoshopping after I posted "Possible Arson and the Right's Texas Voter Suppression Effort" regarding King Street Patriots' attacks on a nonprofit voter registration effort and the mysterious fire that destroyed all of Harris County's (Houston) voting machines.

In my regular Sunday FireDogLake column, I posted a follow-up piece, "Contempt for Democracy: Attacks on Voting Rights," that included a link to DigitalDupes.org, which had launched an effort to locate the original photo. Within hours, Newshounds found it.

In addition, a Gore/Lieberman sign was altered to read, "I'm With Stupid." Here is the doctored video as presented in King Street Patriots' video, followed by the original photographs.

The King Street Patriots video has disappeared from their website (soon after the deception was revealed), but it remains on YouTube. Here it is:

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In the video, King Street leader Catherine Engelbrecht says their effort is all about the truth, that they just want true, fair, honest elections. But if they are so committed to the truth, why did they use doctored photos? Why did they lie?

Because their real intent -- as it has been for similar voter suppression efforts for decades -- is to create barriers between the ballot box and the voters. They want to suppress the vote of people they suspect of opposing their agenda. In this case, as in most, that means assaulting the voting rights of the poor and minorities.

Their pious and sanctimonious rhetoric works -- most of the time. Political journalists seldom get beyond the "he said/she said" accusations and counter-accusations in voting controversies. This deception, in a showcase video, puts the lie to King Street Patriots claims to the truth and destroys whatever credibility they might have had.

source: Think Progress

Right Wing Foments Voter Fraud Conspiracies, Hatches ‘Voter Caging’ Plot To Suppress Minority Votes In WI

Documents and audio recordings released yesterday by One Wisconsin Now document an apparent plot by the Wisconsin Republican Party, Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (aka Fight Back Wisconsin), and various other tea party groups to suppress votes from minorities and students in this year’s elections using a well-documented — and illegal— practice known as “voter caging.” The alleged plot offers fresh evidence that long-discredited right-wing conspiracy theories about massive voter fraud supposedly perpetrated by minorities and others remain alive and well in both the official GOP establishment and its tea party base.

“Voter caging” is a means of voter suppression and intimidation that involves sending mail to a list of voters, compiling a list of mail pieces returned as undeliverable, and then challenging those voters at the polls or otherwise attempting to remove them from the voter rolls. The mere process of challenging voters can intimidate from voting even if they are eligible, cause long lines to form at polling places that will then discourage others from voting, and may result in eligible voters casting provisional ballots which stand a high likelihood of not being counted in the final tally.

In the alleged conspiracy uncovered in Wisconsin, Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity — whose Wisconsin state chair was previously banned from politics in Wisconsin for three years, would finance a test mailing and other costs associated with compiling the caging list and then coordinate with the Wisconsin Republican Party to undertake an elaborate process to remove voters from the rolls ahead of the election, if possible, or at the polls on Election Day. Tea party groups were to provide the volunteer labor and cover for the activity — with all participants signing an extensive non-disclosure agreement under which they agreed to publicly operate in the name of Wisconsin GrandSons for Liberty, who would also provide some funding for the plan. The Wisconsin GOP would also provide additional funds, trainers for the tea party volunteers and would have a team of lawyers “standing by” on Election Day to respond to tea party volunteers and “bring the police” if necessary. As is typically the case in voter caging operations, the plotters appeared intent on targeting minorities, students, and others from heavily-Democratic areas of the state.

Audio recordings of the tea party meeting where the alleged voter suppression plot was discussed include numerous references by presenters to supposed instances of minorities and college students voting illegally. Tim Dake, a prominent tea partier in the state who belongs to Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, cited an anecdote about busloads of out-of-state voters voting multiple times in previous elections, then went on to discuss “the racial thing”

“So, the problem is now you see elections being stolen and we have to get these guys fired up about it, which is not happening. The other thing is you run into the racial thing. You have people screaming, ‘Oh, you’re denying the minorities their right to vote.” No, we’re denying their right to vote multiple times.’”

“No, we’re not even denying the minorities anything, we’re denying fraud,” added an unidentified attendee of the meeting.​

Later in the meeting, Dake offered up another anecdote that included a comment implying that individuals with Vietnamese surnames had committed voter fraud. He described how after moving into a “brand new condo” in 2004, he attempted to vote and was told that there were already twelve others registered to vote at his address:

“They said, ‘Wow, you must have a big family.” And I’m looking at names and going, ‘No, there’s nobody named “Nguyen” and “Din” and that sort of thing in my family.”​

Considering that the voter rolls used to check voters in at the polls are typically organized by last name, it’s unclear how a poll worker could have immediately discovered this information or why they would have chosen to share it.

Another presenter at the meeting, Shane McVey of the Eau Claire Tea Party, raised the specter of college students voting illegally en masse; however, he then admitted that the one time he had personally challenged a student voter (based on a conversation he says he overheard in line), “[t]he kid turned away and started freaking out and it turned out he was who he said he was, but I challenged him.” He then described using a 6’4”, 300-pound man to challenge voters at the polls, which apparently provoked allegations of voter intimidation from Democratic poll watchers.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the groups chose Wisconsin’s 16th Assembly district — an inner-city Milwaukee district that is heavily Democratic (PVI +35 D) and majority-minority — for their July Americans for Prosperity-financed test run.

Presenters at the meeting also repeatedly blamed ‘quote unquote Republican’ and Democratic district attorneys, the media, and others for consistently failing to pursue purported instances of voter fraud — especially from the 2004 election in Milwaukee. However, a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney did in fact pursue such an investigation — which some deemed politically-motivated — of the 2004 election and eventually admitted that he couldn’t find any evidence of a “massive conspiracy.”

What’s more, an exhaustive five-year investigation concluded in 2007 by the Bush administration’s Department of Justice, which was quite keen to investigate such cases, “turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.” Indeed, the biggest impact of the Department of Justice investigation seems to have been the subsequent politically-charged removal of several U.S. attorneys the Bush White House deemed to have been insufficiently aggressive in pursuing alleged cases of voter fraud.

The total lack of any clear evidence of voter fraud did not stop the right-wing from hysterically and repeatedly invoking the bogeyman of an ACORN-led plot to ‘steal the election for Obama’ in an effort to justify their numerous attempts to disenfranchise voters in 2008. For example, this “Republican War on voting” led the Wisconsin Attorney General, a McCain campaign co-chair, to sue his state’s election officials in a maneuver that could have potentially disenfranchised all 240,000 people who had registered to vote by mail since 2006.

While ACORN is now defunct thanks to a discredited right-wing smear campaign led by a convicted criminal, that has not even stopped the right-wing from continuing to invoke it to stir fears over minority voter fraud. Just today, Sarah Palin tweeted about the group. A new poll out this week found that 20% of Americans believe that “ACORN will steal the election to keep the Democrats in control of Congress.” Another 40% aren’t sure whether the phantom group will do so or not. Sadly, Slate’s Dave Weigel predicts that with this being the first ACORN-free election since 1970, the myth of ACORN will only grow as Democratic losses are attributed to the lack of a massive fraud by the group.

source: Huffington Post


Voter Intimidation At McDonald's: Employees Told That, Unless Republicans Win, They Won't Get Raises Or Benefits

WASHINGTON -- There may be something rotten at McDonald's -- and it's not a year-old Happy Meal.

The owner of a franchise in Canton, Ohio enclosed a handbill in employees' paychecks that threatened lower wages and benefits if Republicans don't win on Tuesday.

"As the election season is here we wanted you to know which candidates will help our business grow in the future," reads the letter. "As you know, the better our business does it enables us to invest in our people and our restaurants. If the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels. If others are elected, we will not. As always, who you vote for is completely your personal decision and many factors go into your decision."

The note ends with a list of candidates McDonald's believes "will help our business move forward." It names Republicans John Kasich for governor, Rob Portman for Senate, and Jim Renacci for Congress. With the letter was a biography of Renacci.

"The handbill endorses candidates who have in essence pledged to roll back the minimum wage and eviscerate the safety net that protects the most vulnerable members of our workforce," said Attorney Allen Schulman of Canton law firm Schulman Zimmerman & Associates, which received the documents from an employer who stepped forward. "But it's more than that. When a corporation like McDonald's intimidates its employees into voting a specific way, it violates both state and federal election law. It's no surprise to anyone that Ohio is a battleground state in this election, and for a multinational corporation like McDonald's to threaten employees like this is morally and legally wrong. This despicable corporate conduct is the logical extension of the Citizens United decision, which has unleashed corporate arrogance and abuse."

Schulman turned over the documents to local prosecutors, asking them to "investigate this matter for a criminal violation." Ohio election law specifically states that no corporation "shall print or authorize to be print...or post or exhibit in the establishment or anywhere in or about the establishment...handbills containing any threat, notice, or information that if any particular candidate is elected or defeated, work in the establishment will cease in whiole or in part, or other threats expressed or implied, intended to influence the political opinions or votes of...its employees."

On Friday, franchise owner Paul Siegfried apologized in a written statement, saying the communication was "an error of judgment on my part." "Please know it was never my intention to offend anyone," he added. "For those that I have offended, I sincerely apologize."

In a statement to The Huffington Post, Shirley Rogers Reece, general manager of McDonald's Ohio region, said, "We wholeheartedly respect diverse views and opinions, and our employees' right to vote. Our position is that every employee should make his or her own choice. McDonald's had no knowledge of this material being distributed. As independent business owners, our franchisees are responsible for matters regarding their own employees. The content of this material is not reflective of McDonald's position. We remain bipartisan on these matters. That said, while clearly this was poor judgment, we don't believe it was intended to offend anyone."

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UPDATE 6:24 p.m.: Renacci's opponent, Rep. Jim Boccieri (D-Ohio) put out a statement about the incident: "Sadly, these voter intimidation tactics by this McDonald's franchise owner is another example of corporations exerting undue influence on our elections -- something we've seen all too often lately, including earlier this year in the Citizen's United decision. To date, big corporate special interests have spent $6 million to remove me from office. I voted to require corporations to disclose their influence in elections, so it's not surprising this franchise supports my opponent."

<font size="5"><center>
Inside the Wisconsin Right's
Voter-Suppression Scheme </font size></center>



Sarah Posner
October 29, 2010


From familiar stories about “illegal” electioneering by ACORN and the Black Panthers to Sharron Angle’s recent claim that Harry Reid is trying to steal the election by offering prospective voters free food—the myth of widespread voter fraud is now commonplace among Republicans. In just one example, an unconfirmed assertion that Nevada voting machines already had Reid’s name checked off became a national story, with Rush Limbaugh claiming that the “New Black Panther Party,” with the “imprimatur of the Justice Department,” was “running fraudulent elections” across the country.


<font size="4">Misinformation & Propaganda</font size>

In this swirling storm of misinformation and propaganda, a half-dozen Republican activists met in the community room of the Tri City National Bank in Sturtevant, Wisconsin on October 27, to receive training on how to be an election observer. Lou D’Abbraccio, an official with the Racine County Republican Party, laid out a parade of voter fraud horribles to the assembled men, from fraudulent voter registrations to vans organized by “leftists” ferrying people “incentivized” with money or coupons to cast multiple votes at different polling locations.

“There are polling locations where the election workers are largely Republican, and we have less concern,” said D’Abbraccio, a member of the Racine Tea Party, the local chapter of Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity. “Then there are polling places where, not so much. Historically we have observed things there that are issues.”

This year, the Wisconsin GOP, Americans for Prosperity and Wisconsin tea party groups are working together, through the GOP and the tea party-affiliated website We’re Watching Wisconsin Elections, to combat this alleged scourge on the democratic process.

D’Abbraccio went on to recount “war stories” from previous elections, particularly 2004, which he claimed was “the worst election I’ve experienced in Racine.”

Even though Wisconsin law prohibits photography by anyone but news media inside a polling place, D’Abbraccio counseled his trainees to bring their cell phone cameras just in case. “Theoretically you’re not supposed to take pictures,” he said, but told the group to do it “surreptitiously” if they needed to document anything—and to “be careful.”


<font size="4">The Joint Plan to Suppress the Vote</font size>

The progressive group One Wisconsin Now has asked the US Attorney, the State Attorney General and the state Government Accountability Board to investigate a joint plan by the state Republican Party, Americans for Prosperity and local tea party groups “to engage in voter suppression” during the election, in violation of the Constitution and federal law. In particular, based on documents made available on the We’re Watching Wisconsin Elections and other tea party sites, as well as a recording obtained by One Wisconsin Now at a June meeting at which the coordination was discussed, AFP would pay for mailings to voters so that a list of supposedly ineligible voters could be used by tea party activists to challenge voters at the polls.

The GOP and tea party groups have denied the existence of any plan, in spite of the public documents outlining it. Tim Dake, one of the speakers on the tape One Wisconsin Now obtained and a leading state tea party figure associated with the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, called the charges “ridiculous, reprehensible and could be construed as libel.” But the We’re Watching Wisconsin Elections site continues to publicize meetings organized by the Wisconsin Republican Party to train election observers and to make the training materials available on their site.

At the Racine County training, there was no discussion of using any lists to challenge the eligibility of voters. While D’Abbraccio urged his trainees to be polite, he nonetheless continually elaborated on and reinforced the impression that rampant fraud by “leftist” groups threatened the integrity of the election and that election observers were necessary to report such fraud to party officials and to challenge the eligibility of voters they suspected of fraud.

Even with appropriate training, said Wendy Weiser, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, “that doesn’t diminish our concern about what might happen on Election Day” with election observers. The proliferation of unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, she said, “cements distrust and hostility and lack of confidence and anger, and it’s inaccurate. There’s no basis for this, and stoking anger and mistrust around election time is not a good thing.”

The unsubstantiated claim that ACORN had engaged in widespread fraud in the 2008 election is a well-worn trope in conservative media, along with the implication, and sometimes explicit claim, that the election of Barack Obama was illegitimate. After the conservative-instigated witch hunt led to ACORN closing its doors, additional bogeymen have been added to the mix.

As D’Abbraccio put it, “An organization running around comprised of all the alphabet soup of evil: AFSCME, SEIU, ACLU—every leftist group you can imagine put together some umbrella group called Election Protection. In the city of Racine, it actually took over polling locations [in 2004].” That year, Racine County was a hotbed of charges of voter fraud by conservatives, but an analysis by the Brennan Center found just seven instances of ineligible voters knowingly casting ballots that were counted—just 0.0002 percent of the total votes cast statewide.

In spite of this lack of evidence, D’Abbraccio claimed to be “concerned with wholesale fraud.” He painted a foreboding picture of “knocks and drags,” which he described as vans trolling the streets for random people to pick up. He claimed that “leftist” groups give people campaign literature that was really a “coupon” to redeem at a local establishment. He said these vans “drag people from polling place to polling place and have them vote multiple times.”

“That is a complete fantasy and fiction,” said Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now. “There is nothing like that that happened.”

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, said that there are “fairly rare instances” of people double-voting, citing one case last year in which a couple was convicted of voting in the polling places of both their primary residence and their vacation home. This was detected not due to a citizen complaint, he said, but because the “we [the GAB] proactively run checks after every election to make sure there is no double voting.”

As far as other types of double-voting or ballot-stuffing, Magney said, “we haven’t seen any kind of evidence of any widespread problem of that.”

Ross added that the groups concerned about voter fraud have a “complete and total delusion that minorities are voting more than once. There’s absolutely not one shred of evidence, no conviction, no charges, no nothing of that nature in the state of Wisconsin. I am aware of absolutely no activity like that.”

About the alleged “knock and drag” efforts, D’Abbraccio said he followed vans around on previous election days and said he would be following vans this Tuesday as well. “We have on occasion followed them from polling place to polling place,” he said. “The fact that they’re looking for someone following them from polling place to polling place is a good indicator that something fishy is going on. I had one guy start pulling evasive maneuvers.”

He speculated—without any basis—that Advancing Wisconsin, a group formed in 2008, may be the culprit this year. “We suspect that if it happens this time,” said D’Abbraccio, “it’s going to be through a group called Advancing Wisconsin, which was funded by George Soros [as] this kind of umbrella group that’s intended to create a permanent election infrastructure for all these groups so they’ve got the know-how and resources on election day, and some of that know-how is how to cheat.”

Meagan Mahaffey, Advancing Wisconsin’s executive director, said her group did no voter registration drives in 2010. Of D’Abbraccio’s statement, Mahaffey said, “I’m pretty shocked by it. It’s a pretty serious allegation he’s making. Nothing to back it up and nothing to show we are doing this. It’s not true, not rooted in anything. Just a guy in a meeting saying whatever he wants to say.”

D’Abbraccio also claimed that there is abuse of the corroboration process for voters who register on election day. Under Wisconsin law, if someone seeking to register on election day lacks the proper verification of their address—either their drivers’ license number, the last four digits of their social security number or other acceptable proof for establishing residence, such as a lease or utility bill, they can have someone “corroborate” their residency. Referring to the process as “vouching,” D’Abbraccio maintained that people are grabbed as they finish voting and asked to “vouch” for a stranger, producing an “endless loop” of people vouching for each other.

Magney, the GAB spokesperson, said that he was not aware of phony corroborations. “I’m not aware of us prosecuting” anyone for that, he said, adding, “I don’t think that that’s an issue.”

“I have never heard such an allegation,” said the Brennan Center’s Weiser. “That is something that is certainly easily observable and easy to get caught” because “it is so elaborate and visible.”

D’Abbraccio also accused the GAB of being derelict in its responsibility to purge 18,000 “invalid” registrations from the voter rolls, based on mail returned as undeliverable to the GAB.

But the reality is quite different. Magney said that as part of a routine check under the Help America Vote Act, the Board sent letters to voters whose details on their voter registrations didn’t match other government records, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles database. Frequently, he said, such lack of a match is caused, for example, by one record bearing the person’s middle initial only, while the other bears the person’s full middle name. What’s more, he said, the lack of a match doesn’t render the person ineligible to vote; the purpose of the database match, he said, is only “to improve data quality.” (The Republican State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued the board in 2008 in an attempt to force it to require a match for a voter to be eligible to vote; the case was dismissed.)

About the 18,000 voters whose letters were returned as undeliverable, and who conservatives are charging should be removed from voter rolls, Magney said, “we didn’t feel comfortable removing [from the voter rolls] them based on one letter coming back, especially because there is no requirement in the law that your information has to match in the first place.” He said the GAB sent a second letter, and 12,431 have come back as undeliverable a second time, in most cases probably because the voter had moved. “Those are the people who we have marked as inactive. If they show up to vote, their names won’t be on the list at their polling place,” although they could do a same-day registration as allowed by Wisconsin law.

Election observers can be perfectly innocuous, but the climate of “misinformation or fear, stoking fear of voter fraud” creates risks, said Weiser. While that has been has been occurring for several election cycles, she said, “what’s different in this cycle is more mobilization of citizens, party activists and political operatives to police the polling places and to take matters in their own hands… if people are overly outraged so they are more likely to cross lines, and that’s a problem.”

http://www.thenation.com/article/155688/inside-wisconsin-rights-voter-suppression-scheme

source: TPM

Misleading fliers where passed out at a predominately African-American polling place in Houston.​

Fake Group Hands Out Fliers Meant To Mislead Black Voters In Texas (VIDEO)


Misleading fliers are showing up on the windshields of vehicles at a predominately African-American polling place in Houston that claim to come from a non-existent group called the "Black Democratic Trust of Texas."

The fliers were placed on the windshields of vehicles at and near the Sunnyside Early Voting location and tell voters not to voter straight Democrat, according to Texas Democrats and local news reports.

"Republicans are trying to trick us!" the flier reads. "When you vote straight ticket Democrat, it is actually voting for Republicans and your vote doesn't count. We are urging everyone to VOTE for BILL WHITE. A VOTE for BILL WHITE is a VOTE for the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC ticket. We have fought too hard to let Republicans use voting machines to deny us our basic rights. We must guard the change and NOT VOTE STRAIGHT TICKET DEMOCRAT!"

"YES WE CAN," the flier reads

Here is a copy of the flyer sent to TPMMuckraker by the Texas Democratic Party:​

The flier includes what appears to be an image of Ann Richards, the deceased former Democratic governor of the state. Outside of news reports about this flier, there is no online record of a group called the "Black Democratic Trust of Texas."

"These fliers are part of a coordinated effort between the Tea Party and Houston Republicans to intimidate and misinform voters," Chad W. Dunn, General Counsel for the Texas Democratic Party, told TPMMuckraker.

"Any Republican worthy of serious consideration for election to any office will immediately condemn these tactics and fully cooperate in bringing the wrongdoers to justice," Dunn said. "The Texas Democratic Party will ultimately discover who was behind this effort and we will ensure they bear the full weight of civil and criminal penalties."

"This deliberate attempt to misinform voters is the last ditch effort by the Republican Party that trying to win votes from a public that is skeptical of their failed policies in Texas," Dunn added.

J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director & Director of Litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, has already alerted the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division about the fliers.

"It bothers me they're coming up with shenanigans, lying to people anonymously. Show your face," Houston City Council Member Jolanda Jones told Houston's KTRK.

Watch the video report from Miya Shay of Houston's KTRK below:

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source: TPM


TPMMuckraker
Mark Kirk Sends Poll Monitors To 'Vulnerable,' Largely African-American Neighborhoods

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill)


In a private phone conversation that was secretly recorded, Mark Kirk, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois, told state Republican leaders last week about his plan to send "voter integrity" squads to two predominately African-American neighborhoods of Chicago and two other urban areas of Illinois with significant minority populations "where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat."


Kirk's campaign confirmed the candidate was secretly taped last week as he was talking about his anti-voter fraud effort.

"These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat," he said in the audio posted on YouTube.

As TPMMuckraker has reported, accusations from conservatives that ineligible voters are fraudulently stealing elections for Democrats have continued to fly in the 2010 campaign cycle, despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud. "Voter fraud" has been the rally cry for conservative groups seeking to make it more difficult to cast ballots and suppress minority voter turnout. In particular this election cycle, Tea Party groups have taken up the issue, and Democratic groups have called for assurances that poll watchers trained by such groups are clear on polling station rules.

Talking Points Memo tried to reach the Kirk campaign when the audio emerged last week on the blog ArchPundit to confirm its authenticity, but we did not hear back. Blogger Larry Handlin told TPM he promised not to give away information about the source, but said it was recorded on Monday or Tuesday of last week.

Here's a local news report:

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</EMBED>

Full coverage on voter fraud here.


[Ed note: This post was edited after publication, as it incorrectly identified Rockford and Metro East as neighborhoods in Chicago.]

source: TPM


Dick Armey: Many Dems Are Voting Early To Commit Voter Fraud (VIDEO)


After CBS News reported today that Democrats are showing strong numbers at early voting polls, FreedomWorks CEO Dick Armey offered his theory as to why: Those Dems are committing voter fraud.

Appearing on Fox News this afternoon, he told Neil Cavuto that Democrats vote early because there's "less ballot security," creating a "great opportunity" for fraud. He also claimed that such fraudulent early voting is "pinpointed to the major urban areas. The inner city."

Republicans and others on the right, as we've reported extensively, often make high-pitched claims of Democrat-operated voter fraud, arguing that Dems focus on minority areas. Such claims rarely bare out, but the fear of voter fraud can lead to voter suppression.

Here's the video:

<EMBED height=360 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=480 src=http://www.youtube.com/v/rdpbiXuBDZ0?fs=1&hl=en_US allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">​

</EMBED>

source: Think Progress



Thursday, ThinkProgress reported that the Ohio House had approved the most restrictive voter id law in the nation — a bill that would exclude 890,000 Ohioans from voting. Earlier this week Texas lawmakers passed a similar bill, and voter id legislation — which would make it significantly more difficult for seniors, students and minorities to vote — is now under consideration in more than 22 states across the country

Conservatives have said voter id laws are necessary to combat mass voter fraud. Yet according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Americans are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than commit voter fraud. And the Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor.

Below, ThinkProgress examines the history of conservatives anti-voter agenda:

– JIM CROW SOUTH: In the Jim Crow South, historian Leon Litwack writes, “respectable” Southern whites justified their support for measures to disenfranchise African-Americans “as a way to reform and purify the electoral process, to root out fraud and bribery.” In North Carolina for example, conservatives insisted that literacy tests and poll taxes — which disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-Americans — were necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”

– 1981 RNC VOTER CAGING SCANDAL: According to Project Vote, in 1981 the Republican National Committee mailed non-forwardable postcards to majority Hispanic and African-American districts in New Jersey in an effort to accuse those voters of false voting. The 45,000 returned cards were then used to create a list of voters whose residency the GOP could challenge at the polls. The Democratic National Committee sued, winning a consent decree in which the RNC agreed not to engage in practices “where the purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting.” Similar initiatives were undertaken by the Arizona GOP in 1958, the RNC in 1962 and again, despite the decree, in Louisiana in 1986.

–RECENT VOTER CAGING EFFORTS: During the 2004 election GOP state parties, along with dozens of unidentified groups, launched similar “voter caging” efforts designed to challenge the eligibility of thousands of minority voters by accusing them of voter fraud. And in 2008, the Obama campaign sued the Michigan Republican Committee for collecting a list of foreclosures in an effort to challenge the residency, and eligibility, of voters who had lost their home in the housing crisis.

– US ATTORNEY DAVID IGLESIAS FIRING SCANDAL: In an unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department, in 2006 the Bush White House fired US Attorney David Iglesias for refusing to prosecute voting fraud cases where little evidence existed. The New Mexico political establishment asked for Iglesias’ dismissal after he refused to cooperate with the party’s efforts to make voter id laws “the single greatest wedge issue ever.”

– US ATTORNEY TOM HEFFELFINGER DISMISSAL: In Minnesota, US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger lost his position when he ran afoul of GOP activists for “expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.”

– WISCONSIN, THE KOCHS AND THE 2010 ELECTION: Last fall ThinkProgress reported that a coalition of Wisconsin Tea Party and Koch-funded groups, in an effort to stop “voter fraud” and prevent “stolen elections,” was planning a sophisticated voter caging effort that would use GOP lawyers and Tea Party volunteers to challenge the eligibility of voters at polls in the state. Earlier that year, the same groups were instrumental in defeating a voter protection law that would have criminalized any attempt to use force or coercion to “compel any person to refrain from voting.” One prominent Tea Party member behind the voter caging effort that “since the voter law did not get passed this year… we can still do this.”
​

As statehouses across the country move forward on voter identification bills, ThinkProgress will continue to track conservatives latest efforts to advance their century-old anti-voter agenda.

Voter Suppression , Voter Intimidation, Voter "Special ID Card" requirements, Voter “felony disenfranchisement” scam purges, Voter "provisional ballot" scams, are all the foundation and bedrock of todays RepubliKlan party balloting strategy . This strategy adaptation by a political party is not new.

In the period immediately preceding the US Civil War (1860), the ‘Democratic Party’ was the party of the slave holders & white-male only monopoly capitalists that ruled the south with blood-soaked treachery.

In 1860 there were 32 states in the “United States of America”. The newly formed Republican party Presidential candidate in 1860 was Abraham Lincoln. Although Lincoln at that time didn’t advocate freeing Black slaves he said that slavery was morally wrong, joining the rapidly increasing abolition movement.

Such pronouncements from Lincoln so ‘frightened’ the southern slavocracy that they removed his name entirely from their states ballot. Talk about voter suppression!! Lincoln’s name didn’t appear on 9 states! out of the 32 states that comprised the “United States of America”. Blocked from the ballot in 9 out of 32 states - and Lincoln still won!

Today (2011) the RepubliKlan carcass is faced with the “Teabagger” takeover of their party & the rapidly changing demographics of the United States (the Hispanic explosion).

They have alienated the Hispanic population with their support of the Nazi inspired “papers please” law initiated in Arizona. A plurality of American reject “Tea Bagger” politics.

<s>FOX </s> Fake News owner Rupert Murdoch who owns the Wall Street Journal recently conducted a poll in which 81% of those polled said raising taxes on those who earn over 1MM dollars a year is the best way to start reducing America’s debt.

Despite this recent unsurprising poll result, the RepubliKlans, following the orders of their corporate puppet masters had Paul Ryan today (April 5th 2011) announce that RepubliKlans want to drop the top tax rate for America's richest from 36 percent down to 25 percent while increasing taxes for those who earn as little as $13,000 a year!

The RepubliKlans only play in a 50 state presidential election contest is voter suppression, coupled with “Dog-whistle” racial fear-mongering and a hope that the economy continues its weak recovery into 2012 with President Obama solely being blamed.

Paul Weyrich RepubliKlan conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, realized in 1980 that RepubliKlan policies were an anathema to the majority of Americans; therefore Voter Suppression had to be a critical pillar for RepubliKlan electoral success. He said:
<blockquote>
"Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."</blockquote>

<hr noshade color="#FF0000" size="10"></hr>

 

[kinglickk]

W.O.W.

 

[Blu Diablo]

Bump

 

[ballscout1]

What we had no input from the GOP stans ?

curiously absent

 

[thoughtone]

Make sure you have your voting credentials in order!

 

[woodchuck]

Cats are sleeping on these drops.

 

[jahman]

Bump

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Keeping it on the front page

Thought1 is killing this over on the Politics page. He, muckraker, and Que have posted good articles and videos. This shit is a blatant attack on minority, young, and older voters. These tactics are meant for the 2012 election but would reach into every election afterward as well.

But it's not as exciting as talking shit about Obama so I expect this to drop off by noon.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

bump

 

[sharkbait28]

Democrats and Republicans are NOT THE SAME. Period.

Yes they both suck.... but Republicans are truly despicable.

 

[thoughtone]

Make sure you have your voting credentials in order!

GOP upset win in NY portends challenge for Obama



If you don't vote this is the future!

 

[thoughtone]

source: Political Wire

Pennsylvania GOP Proposes New Electoral Vote Allocation

Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to change how the state awards its electoral votes -- from winner take all (like most states) to by congressional district (like Maine and Nebraska), the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

"An analysis by the online news service Capitolwire noted that had the proposed distribution process been in place in Pennsylvania in 2008 before the state lost one congressional district due to a population decline in the 2010 census, Mr. Obama would have won only 11 of the state's 21 votes."

First Read: "Interestingly, Nebraska Republicans had considered changing the state's system back to winner take all -- after Obama won one of Nebraska's electoral votes in 2008. But that effort stalled."

 

[actinanass]

Typicsl again...

I don't have to read this thread to know what it's about. If Obama loses, people on here already has an excuse to lay out.

If our community wants another term of Obama, trust, they will hop over a lava pit to a voting booth.

The true question is this. Does our community care enough to vote Obama back in? Perhaps Obama's policies hasn't produce the promises most of our community hoped for?

You can't have "voter suppression" when there's 9% unemployment.

 

[easy_b]

source: Political Wire

Pennsylvania GOP Proposes New Electoral Vote Allocation

Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to change how the state awards its electoral votes -- from winner take all (like most states) to by congressional district (like Maine and Nebraska), the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

"An analysis by the online news service Capitolwire noted that had the proposed distribution process been in place in Pennsylvania in 2008 before the state lost one congressional district due to a population decline in the 2010 census, Mr. Obama would have won only 11 of the state's 21 votes."

First Read: "Interestingly, Nebraska Republicans had considered changing the state's system back to winner take all -- after Obama won one of Nebraska's electoral votes in 2008. But that effort stalled."

PA POLL: Obama 50, Romney 40. Obama 52, Perry 37. No wonder slimy GOP are trying to rig the results.

Magellan Strategies (R)
9/12-14/11; 702 Likely Voters, 3.7% Margin of Error
Mode: Live Telephone Interviews

Pennsylvania

Obama Job Approval
44% Approve, 47% Disapprove

2012 President: General Election
Obama: 50%, Romney: 40%
Obama: 52%, Perry: 37%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/pa-obama-job-approval-44-_n_970541.html

 

[humble]

Democrats and Republicans are NOT THE SAME. Period.

Yes they both suck.... but Republicans are truly despicable.

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779#[3

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
Saturday 3 September 2011
by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)

Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization...

 

[thoughtone]

Typicsl again...


If our community wants another term of Obama, trust, they will hop over a lava pit to a voting booth.

How well are Black folk doing under Governor Secessionist in Texass? The question is can we afford an America with President Perry?

You can't have "voter suppression" when there's 9% unemployment.

The hell you can't. Read the fucvkin' thread for once!

 

[code_pirahna]

You can't have "voter suppression" when there's 9% unemployment.

Its funny how the Republicans don t ever mention this guy......

as if he didn t cause this mess