posted October 09, 2004 12:38 AM            

Left wing groups are double registering potential voters and turning in fraudulent voter registrations.

Both ACORN and the Citizens for Consumer Justice are left wing groups. What else is new?

Voter fraud suspected in registration deluge

Sharon Spohn , sspohn@pottsmerc.com 10/08/2004

READING -- A backlog of last-minute voter registrations in Berks County is pushing the system to its breaking point, according to election officials.

Director of Elections V. Kurt Bellman told the Board of Elections Thursday that there have been flagrant attempts at voter registration fraud.

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"It’s absolutely out of hand," Bellman said. "Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registrations but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations."

Bellman said groups conducting voter drives are coming out of the woodwork, something Berks County hasn’t seen before. He added that some of the drives are being conducted in violation of the law because they are paying incentives to sign up voters.

Commissioner Mark Scott suggested the Board of Elections conduct its own investigation that would be public rather than create more work for the district attorney’s office.

"I’d like the public to get more access to the details of fraud," Scott said.

Bellman said his office has had numerous calls from people who were registered through a group called the Association Communication Organization for Reform Now (ACORN), complaining that those taking down the voter information deliberately put inaccurate information on the form.

Bellman said he also received a batch of registrations from Citizens for Consumer Justice in Allentown that contained several hundred forms, including ones that have been held since July and ones with fictitious names and addresses and even wrong counties.

Bellman said he believes it’s an attempt to overload the elections office.

"It’s election sabotage," Scott added.

posted October 09, 2004 12:42 AM            

Alleged fraudulent voter cards scrutinized
19 in Hamilton Co. suspected

By Cindi Andrews
Enquirer staff writer

Hamilton County election officials will meet this morning to discuss 19 voter registrations for people who may not exist, which would be a rare case of election fraud.

Board of Elections Director John Williams subpoenaed those named on the voter registration cards after similar handwriting and false addresses raised election workers' suspicions. The sheriff's department could not find them, he said.

The cards were turned in, Williams said, by someone affiliated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that represents low-income people.

"We have a very extensive fraud detecting process," said Dierdre Murch of ACORN. "If this is true, I don't know how they got there."

Officials in Columbus are also investigating possible improprieties by an ACORN worker there.

ACORN has registered more than 1 million new voters nationwide, including 158,036 in Ohio, according to its Web site, www.acorn.org.

Murch said she took 526 new voter registrations to the board of elections late Thursday that the group found in a mismarked box and are asking the board to accept even though the deadline was Monday.

Ohio is under unprecedented scrutiny over its election process this year as a battleground state in what is expected to be a close presidential election. Unprecedented levels of voter interest also resulted in record numbers of new voter registrations.

State and local officials say those factors contributed to an unusually high number of potential election fraud cases. Lake and Summit counties are investigating over 1,000 potential instances of voter registration fraud.

By comparison, Hamilton County's 19 potential fraud cases out of the 68,728 new voter registrations tallied so far appear to be a pretty small number, Board of Elections Chairman Tim Burke said.

The Board of Elections can refer election fraud for prosecution if it decides there was malicious intent. It's a felony and carries a possible sentence of up to one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

The only other incidents Burke could remember in his dozen years on the board involved candidate petitions. In 2001, four women were sentenced to 30 days in jail each for signing fake names on petitions they were supposed to be circulating for would-be congressional candidate Jim Condit Jr.

E-mail candrews@enquirer.com
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/08/loc_voters08.html

posted October 09, 2004 12:48 AM            

Posted on Fri, Oct. 08, 2004

Stash of voter cards probed

Former canvasser may be charged

BY PATRICK SWEENEY

Pioneer Press

When police at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport stopped a man for running a stop sign late last month, they found an unusual stash in his car trunk: More than 300 voter registration cards that had been filled out but never submitted to the Minnesota secretary of state.

The motorist allegedly told police that he was an ex-employee of ACORN, a group that has been conducting a voter registration drive in Minnesota for a year.

Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar said Thursday her staff is investigating allegations involving the man in connection with his voter registration work.

"Charges are likely to be filed next week,'' Klobuchar said.

A
CORN, which stands for Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now, boasts of having registered 1 million voters across the country since last fall. In Minnesota, the liberal group says it has registered 36,000 voters.

The man stopped at the airport is Joshua Reed, 19, of St. Louis Park. He faces two unrelated criminal charges, a felony drug case in Hennepin County and a misdemeanor shoplifting case being prosecuted by the St. Louis Park city attorney.

Now he faces an investigation that could lead to felony charges against him or perhaps others for violating election laws.

The law requires that cards be submitted to the secretary of state within 10 days of being filled out and signed, but the cards found in the car trunk were weeks or months old.

So far, Reed has not been charged with any crime in connection with the cards. He could not be reached for comment.

The airport traffic stop occurred Sept. 22. Reed was briefly taken into custody and then released.

After the stop, airport police seized the voter registration cards, and an investigator took them to the secretary of state's office, where workers photocopied the cards and returned them to police to hold as evidence.

Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer asked metro-area county election officials to accept the photocopies as valid registrations. Kent Kaiser, a spokesman for Kiffmeyer, said Thursday he presumed the counties would do so.

All but a handful of the affected voters, those whose cards became illegible because of water damage in the car trunk, apparently are now validly registered.

But there is another issue. The cards contained several pieces of sensitive personal data — signatures, driver's license numbers and full dates of birth — that would make them a lucrative target for anyone seeking to commit identity theft.

It was not clear whether any of that information was compromised.

Airport police refused to comment on the case. Klobuchar said she could not comment further, other than to say the airport police are doing the bulk of the investigation.

Much of what is publicly known about the case comes from a memo written by Bert Black, a legal analyst in Kiffmeyer's office. In the memo, Black said investigators told him that Reed "indicated he had been fired from ACORN for making copies of the cards."

Becky Gomer, the head organizer in Minnesota for ACORN, denied that Reed was discharged for copying cards. "That's absolutely not true," she said.

She said Reed was one of a number of canvassers whom ACORN paid $1 for each new voter registration they secured and, she said, ACORN supervisors discharged him because representatives of the county attorney warned ACORN that they suspected he was registering some voters twice to double his fee. "So we let him go," she said.

Minnesota Republican Party officials seized on the case Thursday to suggest that the voter registration system could be abused by employees or volunteers in any of the mostly Democratic groups conducting voter registration drives in Minnesota.

"This incident raises many other questions, including how many voter registration cards are sitting in the car trunks of ACORN employees?" Corey Miltimore, executive director of the state Republican Party, said on Thursday. "And why was this individual fired by ACORN?"

Gomer said there have been few problems with the registration cards collected by the ACORN canvassers.

posted October 09, 2004 12:54 AM            

Voter registration process causes concern
Alleged irregularities in several counties are being probed.
By Dara Kam
Special to The Palm Beach Post
Thursday, October 07, 2004

TALLAHASSEE — Law enforcement officials are investigating voter registration irregularities in at least three counties in Florida, and election supervisors fear that the problem is so widespread it could lead to massive confusion on Election Day.

Third-party groups, including tax-exempt organizations known as 527s that engage in political activity, have been conducting voter mobilization drives in an attempt to persuade new or apathetic voters to turn out in support of their causes — mostly Democratic — on Nov. 2.

But problems with the applications, already reported to authorities in Miami-Dade, Duval, Monroe, Leon, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, could result in people who thought they had registered showing up at the polls only to discover they aren't eligible to vote.

Of the forms collected by the voter mobilization groups, many are incomplete, have suspicious signatures or may have been forged, elections officials said Wednesday.

They have created an accountability problem that the legislature is expected to address in the session beginning in March, the incoming Senate president said.

Supervisors are concerned about "the quality and the timeliness of the work being received" and about the lack of accountability for the application-gatherers, said Bill Cowles, Orange County supervisor of elections and president of the statewide supervisors' association.

Supervisors have 15 days after the Oct. 4 closing date to report new registrations to the state Division of Elections. Potential voters whose applications were incomplete or unsigned are out of luck if they did not correct their forms by the deadline.

Applications bundled

Many of the third-party groups delivered bundles of applications, some collected as long ago as January, on the final day. Cowles said he received about 15,000 registration applications Monday, which he called "a disservice to voters."

"It is taking the control, the education and the accuracy of the work out of our hands," he said.

Voters who have not received registration cards by the end of October should call their elections office to check on the status of their applications and to find out where their polling places are, Cowles said.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating voter registration irregularities in Miami-Dade County and anticipates more complaints as supervisors sort through the applications, a spokesman said Monday.

In Leon County, elections officials are investigating 1,500 applications, including many from Florida A&M University students that were photocopied. All were for registration as Republicans.

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said most of the students contacted by his office indicated they had chosen "No Party Affiliation" and his office registered all of the applicants as independent.

In St. Petersburg, the state attorney's office is investigating allegations that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group pushing the minimum-wage ballot initiative, fraudulently changed party affiliations on voter-registration applications.

Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said she received dozens of applications collected by an unknown third party at a high school, all completed in the same handwriting and with similar signatures. LePore plans to send them to state elections officials but said the questionable applications left her in a quandary.

The 1995 National Voter Registration Act, known as the "Motor Voter Act," took registration out of the exclusive domain of supervisors.

"It's also opened the door for fraud," LePore said. "We can't investigate unless there's something really glaring."

It is a third-degree felony to lie on a voter registration application, but state law provides for no penalty for those who sign up voters but do not hand in the paperwork or wait until the last minute, depriving voters of the opportunity to make corrections.

Election issues piling up

Legislators almost certainly will address the 527s, the voter registration process and other election issues in March, said incoming Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon. Setting the stage, he said, are legal challenges concerning provisional ballots, touch-screen machine paper trails, voter registration anomalies and the felon purge list.

"Much of it has been designed to lay a legal predicate for litigation in the event that this election is close and Florida's electoral votes are determinative in the outcome of the presidency," Lee said.

Lee, in Tallahassee, said he has told his staff to be prepared for an election challenge if the race is close and the Democrats lose.

posted October 09, 2004 01:01 AM            

Last modified Fri., October 08, 2004 - 02:23 AM
Originally created Friday, October 8, 2004
County finds 25 falsified voter registration forms

The Duval applications remain valid until authorities conclude whether they are fraudulent.
By DAVID DECAMP
The Times-Union

Duval County elections officials alerted state prosecutors Thursday to investigate 25 voter registration applications that turned out to be linked to bad addresses.

The forms had been processed and the voters registered. Erin Moody, elections spokeswoman, said the registrations remain valid until authorities conclude they are fraudulent. Officials have not determined whether the voter or someone else committed fraud. However, voters must sign an oath saying the registration is true.

Moody spoke with an investigator from the State Attorney's Office in Jacksonville to discuss the case and prepare a description of how the office has handled the forms. The forms remain at the downtown office.

"We're still at a very preliminary stage of the investigation. I just can't comment much," Assistant State Attorney Mac Heavener said Thursday night.

The elections office checks registrations using a computer to make sure addresses match acceptable ranges of street block numbers, Moody said. The computer accepts those -- like on the troubled forms -- that fall within the right range. If they don't, workers are alerted to square the problems.

Duval recently passed the 500,000 mark for registered voters, thanks largely to massive registration drives this summer. Independent groups and Republicans have worked aggressively to raise registrations in the state where 537 votes in a recount decided the 2000 election.

Asked whether more registration fraud complaints had been generated, Heavener said, "I can say there has been more interest in the 2004 election than there was in 2000. ... I can't specify a number of complaints."

The elections office learned of the questionable registrations through a tip. Moody declined to identify the tipster.

The Associated Press reported that it checked each address and found only one that matched an occupied house. Most of the addresses didn't exist. Residents at the occupied house said they moved in this week and did not know the person registered at the address. Other locales included a park, parking lot and utility building.

All but three of the individuals registered as Democrats. Two chose no party and one checked Republican.

All but two of the forms came from groups that registered groups independently. Moody declined to say which groups registered the voters.

Tait Sye, a spokesman for Democrat-supporting America Coming Together, said this week its registrations are checked for completeness and accuracy. ACT had registered voters in Duval.

Moody said none of the 25 forms is related to the 1,448 applications held back for being incomplete. Civil rights groups wanted a chance to contact or fix the registration before Monday's deadline.

This summer, Republicans were criticized after some newly naturalized citizens complained their forms were preassigned to the GOP.

posted October 09, 2004 01:34 AM            

It'll be kind of crazy to have yet another election scandal if these reports are true. Record breaking even I would venture to guess. Hmmm ... and then there is the constant "assurance" from some "conservatives" that the U.S. will, for sure, be attacked again if Kerry wins. Doesn't sound like a very good time for a democratic vote here by some accounts. Maybe Iraq will have a better go at it when their elections come up?

posted October 09, 2004 04:26 AM            

Who have you heard saying that?

posted October 09, 2004 04:37 AM            

ST. PAUL -- On the same day that someone fired shots into the windows at the Bush/Cheney campaign headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee, angry Kerry supporters laid siege to the Bush headquarters in St. Paul Minnesota today.
"Today's siege on the Bush/Cheney headquarters in St. Paul was an attempt by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to intimidate voters who were picking up tickets to see the President," said Republican Party of Minnesota State Chair Ron Eibensteiner. "The Minnesota Kerry Campaign and DFL are ruled by an angry mob mentality that has nothing positive to offer Minnesota voters." Today Kerry supporters blocked the entrance to the Bush campaign's Minnesota headquarters with buses and proceeded to rush into the headquarters in a clear attempt to intimidate voters who were picking up tickets to see the President this Saturday.

Eibensteiner called on DFL Chair Mike Erlandson and Kerry's Minnesota campaign to immediately cease these kinds of intimidation tactics.

"Lately, the DFL Party and Kerry Campaign can be best described as Anger Incorporated," said Eibensteiner. "They need to stop their escalation of these intimidation tactics before someone gets hurt."

Eibensteiner pointed out other instances where out-of-control Kerry supporters have intimidated voters. For example, at the Gophers football game last weekend, a Kerry supporter physically assaulted a female College Republican who was handing out flyers supporting the President. In a similar incident, Kerry supporters assaulted College Republicans at the Minnesota State Fair. During the incident, the union members elbowed two College Republicans in the head and threw them to the ground. Also, DFL Party officials have yet to repudiate a bumper sticker, which was handed out from their party headquarters comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler.

"Anger is no substitute for optimistic leadership," said Eibensteiner. "Through their actions, Democrats have shown themselves incapable of governing themselves, much less our nation, during these challenging times."

posted October 09, 2004 11:45 AM              

It's absolutely ridiculous, JW. I'm quite sure with your intelligence, you know better.

posted October 09, 2004 12:11 PM              

Here's one that doesn't name sides... maybe because EVERYONE'S guilty???: http://www.pottstownmercury.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13098474&BRD=1674&PAG=461&dept_id=18041&rfi=6

Republicans still up to their dirty work in Fl: http://www.wesh.com/news/3793266/detail.html

More Republicans up to MORE dirty work in Fl: http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=9288&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

posted October 09, 2004 01:04 PM            

******

Cheney: Kerry Victory Is Risky
Democrats Decry Talk as Scare Tactic

By Dana Milbank and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A01

COLUMBIA, Mo., Sept. 7 -- Vice President Cheney warned on Tuesday that if John F. Kerry is elected, "the danger is that we'll get hit again" by terrorists, as the Bush campaign escalated a furious assault on the Democratic presidential nominee that has kept Kerry from gaining control of the election debate.

In Des Moines, Cheney went beyond previous restraints to suggest that the country would be more vulnerable to attack under Kerry. "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again," the vice president said, "that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war."

******

jwhop
I know someone else posted an article or some reference to Cheney's comments here in GU mentioning this, but I can't seem to find it. It's not so easy to find stuff here anymore with the "search" option no more.

posted October 09, 2004 01:07 PM            

Bush sends the American military after them, keeps them on the run making it hard to plan an attack here. Further, they know the Bush plan is to kill them...far from America.

That's the stark difference between Bush and Kerry. Bush is their number one enemy, while Kerry is their choice for President and Kerry has given them every reason to believe in him with his "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time nonsense. With Kerry there is NO Right War, Right Place, Right Time....unless he can get Global permission.....
read that as getting the permission of France, Germany and Russia and of course the permission of Koffi Annan before America can be defended.

quote:

---

DES MOINES, Iowa — Vice President Dick Cheney (search) says the United States will risk another terrorist attack if voters make the wrong choice on Election Day
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told supporters at a town-hall meeting Tuesday.

If Kerry were elected president, Cheney said the nation would risk falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.

---

No LS, I'm not the least ashamed. From the beginning, the mantra of the left has been that the President's actions have made America less safe. This, in spite of time and events which proved they don't know what they're talking about. Worse, in true libo tradition of ignoring facts, they're still at it.

Now, either of you..or anyone else have anything to say about attempts by radical political action groups to steal the election, using illegal voter registrations and voter fraud?

posted October 09, 2004 01:10 PM              

What is it you'd like to know?

It's wrong on either side. The election should pan out as it is meant to. I don't support anyone from the Kerry (or Nader camp, for that matter) stealing the election, even though I believe they are both better choices than Bush.

posted October 09, 2004 01:32 PM            

My information is that organized get out the vote organizations are holding voter drives, taking voter registration forms from potential voters, then holding out those who are attempting to register as Republicans or throwing them in the trash. Those people go away thinking they are now registered to vote...awaiting a voter registration card that will never show up in their mailbox.

posted October 09, 2004 01:41 PM            

As for the voter fraud issues, I think it's awful. I can't get over the fact that the voting procedure is looking, again, like it's going to be a big disaster. I thought the last election's disaster was bad enough. Thankfully, though, the articles you posted are in regards to allegations, and not charges, so I'm going to keep some hope that it will turn out to not be as bad as it may seem right now.

posted October 09, 2004 01:45 PM            

Thanks!

Here's a lovely just for you.

posted October 09, 2004 02:10 PM              

That is, something that is not an opinion, or alleges it is all from the left... but actually proves it.

If you care to go back and read, you'll see that I quoted an article accusing Indys, and two exposing Republicans.

I've done my job as far as exposing your BS this time, JW.

posted October 09, 2004 02:47 PM            

You have proven nothing concerning voter registration tied to "organized" Republican get out the vote campaigns.

Further, I posted the examples of "organized" leftist groups attempting to subvert the election process. You've posted nothing to show any related activity on the part of "organized" Republican efforts.

Don't expect me to spend my time attempting to prove your point. Prove it yourself...if you can.

posted October 09, 2004 02:52 PM              

What is in need of proof is your half a**ed attempt to pin all this crap (once more) on the left.

You can't do it because it is not true.

posted October 09, 2004 03:07 PM            

Taxpayer-supported bureaucrats who help foreign lawbreakers get on the public dole would face jail sentences under a ballot measure favored to pass in Arizona.

Naturally, the likes of Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano and Republican Sen. John McCain oppose this sort of justice, but "a poll this week showed nearly two-thirds of registered Arizona voters support it," the Associated Press reported today.

"Supporters maintain Arizona spends hundreds of millions annually to provide food stamps, welfare and other social services" to illegal aliens, "who slip through the cracks using fake documents - or when sympathetic clerks and social workers look the other way."

Kathy McKee, director of the group sponsoring Proposition 200, noted that pandering elected officials had created a system fraught with "the opportunity for fraud."

"Our government has opened the gates and put up a 'welcome here' sign. The villain in all of this is our government," she pointed out.

Oh, the humanity: The commonsense measure also dares to require people to prove citizenship when registering to vote.

"To me, voting is something that is very precious. I don't want my vote canceled by someone who isn't legally here," McKee said.

AP says Masavi Perea, an illegal alien who lives in Phoenix, has been visiting towns to "educate" people about the measure. His version of "education" includes trying to compare enforcement of U.S. borders to the Jim Crow laws that were used to discriminate against blacks.

posted October 09, 2004 03:11 PM            

I maintain it IS the left attempting to steal the election for Heinz Kerry with illegal voter registrations and fraudulent voters, who don't exist, are dead, felons, illegal aliens or voting in more than one precinct.

posted October 09, 2004 03:27 PM            

Now, look at who is turning those forms in to the registrars! These invalid registration forms were intended to slip through the cracks in the system and register people who are not eligible to vote at all. Part of stealing the election for Heinz Kerry effort. Nice going democrats!

Thousands of Fla. Voters May Be Refused
NewsMax Wires
Saturday, Oct. 2, 2004

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Thousands of Floridians who think they're registered to vote could be turned away at the polls Nov. 2 because their voter registration forms weren't completely filled out, officials said Friday.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood said some groups registering voters are turning in application forms with information missing, such as unchecked boxes asking whether applicants are citizens, mentally incompetent or felons.
A group that's been seeking copies of the incomplete applications in an effort to help people complete them said Hood's office, citing state law, has begun blocking them.

"Clearly, way over the number that could determine the election" won't be able to vote, said Judith Browne, a lawyer with the Washington-based Advancement Project, which promotes multiracial participation in voting. She was referring to President Bush's disputed 537-vote victory in Florida that gave him the presidency in 2000.

'Butterflies'

During that election, state and local election officials were criticized on a host of issues, from people mistakenly removed from voter rolls to the infamous "butterfly ballot" in Palm Beach County that may have led Al Gore supporters to vote for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead.

While the Advancement Project is not registering voters itself, it assists groups that are, including America's Families United, which tries to register voters in poor and minority communities.

America's Families United is suing the Duval County elections supervisor to get copies of 1,441 rejected applications there. Browne said a judge ruled against it Friday.

Previously, the Advancement Project received copies of forms from Miami-Dade, Orange, Hillsborough and other counties. In Miami-Dade and Broward alone, Browne said 12,000 incomplete ballots were turned in.

Acting Duval elections supervisor Richard Carlberg said his office is trying to call the 1,441 applicants to let them know they won't be able to vote unless the forms are completed, but said many of the phone numbers on the forms aren't working numbers.

Hood said her office is only trying to help elections supervisors follow the law and that incomplete forms must be rejected.

Hood recommended that people who were registered by a group instead of at their county elections office check to make sure they are actually registered.

She also said anyone registering to vote outside a county office should double check to make sure all information is accurate, forms are completely filled out and that the group plans to turn the applications in before midnight Monday.