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| (NV) 5/09 - State: Criminal charges f... |
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10494
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - 1:48 pm: | 
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To be clear, the criminal charges outlined against ACORN below are not about ineligible voters casting ballots, which would be election-tampering. This is about illegal and reckless compensation schemes, basically, pay-per-registration and a bonus program called "Blackjack" or "21+" that added bonus money for exceeding quota.
The distinction is an important one. Turning an illegal compensation scheme into election fraud requires two more steps: Dumping extra or unauthorized registrations into the system, and voting those extra registrations.
Like many writers of a progressive political mindset I had assumed, inaccurately, that:
(1) ACORN's pay-per-reg compensation scheme, while reckless, would not produce ineligible voters, just dead weight registrations that clog the system;
(2) I believed the story that ACORN itself was flagging the bad registrations, and that ACORN was in fact being victimized by its own employees;
(3) I believed that even if a bunch of bad registrations made it into the system, they wouldn't vote.
I've been rethinking some of these assumptions.
Assumption 1) was incorrect. A lot of ineligible registrations have made it through quality control processes. In Nevada they have traced many of these to ACORN through numbered registration forms; I'd like to get a quantity on that.
Assumption 2), that ACORN itself was defrauded, becomes moot when its own managers implement reckless and illegal pay-per-reg schemes.
This leaves Assumption 3) - Do the invalid registrants vote, and could this happen in sufficient numbers to sway electon results?
I have come to realize that in states with heavy mail-in voting, all it takes for large-scale election fraud when you have a stuffed voter list is one insider dumping extra ballots into the system. I am particularly concerned in view of the fact that the absentee authentication system used in many locations was designed by convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean, and that it reportedly has a signature export function which enables transfer of signature batches FROM the envelope TO the voter registration card sig batch.
Once Internet registration kicks in, as it has in Washington and may in Oregon, ACORN won't need to dump oops-excuse extra weight into the system. It can all be done internally.
We need to take a broader view to get a handle on the real risks, which I think are significant.
OFICE OF THE NEVADA ATTORNEY GENERAL - May 4, 2009
http://ag.state.nv.us/newsroom/press/2009/ACORN%20press%20release.pdf
NEVADA ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE CHARGE ACORN WITH VOTER REGISTRATION VIOLATIONS
Las Vegas, NV: Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller today announced the filing of criminal charges against the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now Inc. (ACORN) and two of its employees for compensating their employees to register voters based upon a corporate mandated quote system.
The complaint includes 26 counts of Compensation for Registration of Voters, a Category E felony in violation of NRS 293.805 and 13 counts of Principle to the Crime of Compensation for Registration of Voters, also a Category E felony, in violation of NRS 293.805 and NRS 195.020.
“By structuring employment and compensation around a quota system, ACORN facilitated voter registration fraud in this state,” said Attorney General Masto. “Nevada will not tolerate violations of the law by individuals nor will it allow corporations to hide behind or place blame on their employees when its training manuals clearly detail, condone and, indeed, require, illegal acts in performing the job for the corporation.”
“It’s important to keep in mind that this was a case of registration fraud, not voter fraud,” said Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller. “The investigation and subsequent charges that have now been filed demonstrate the effectiveness of the safeguards in our system designed to prevent voter fraud. I’ve been clear from the outset of my administration that we would be aggressive in our pursuit and prosecution of any fraudulent activity that might threaten the integrity of our electoral process. This investigation is the direct result of our aggressive response to those safeguards.”
Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada. ACORN paid the canvassers a rate of between $8.00 and $9.00 per hour, but made continued employment, and therefore continued compensation, contingent upon the canvasser registering 20 voters per shift. Canvassers who failed to obtain 20 voter registration forms per shift were terminated.
This policy was clearly outlined in the training materials the organization used to train new employees and confirmed by former employees of ACORN.
From July 27, 2008 through October 2, 2008, ACORN also provided additional compensation, in the form of a bonus program called “Blackjack” or “21+” that was based upon the total number of voters a person registered. Specifically, a canvasser who brought in 21 or more completed voter registration forms per shift would be paid a bonus of $5.00.
The Blackjack bonus program was created by employee Christopher Edwards, the Field Director for the Las Vegas office. ACORN time sheets indicate that corporate officers of ACORN were aware of the “Blackjack” bonus program and failed to take immediate action to terminate it.
Amy Busefink was ACORN’s Deputy Regional Director who was aware of the “Blackjack” program and aided and abetted the scheme by approving Edwards’ bonus program.
The investigation into the scheme stemmed from a complaint filed with the Secretary of State’s office by Clark County Registrar of Voters, Harvard “Larry” Lomax. Lomax’ office had received a significant number of Voter Registration Application (VRA) forms that appeared to be fraudulent. These forms were identified by serial numbers on the applications as those issued to ACORN for the purpose of registering new voters.
Criminal charges were filed in Justice Court, Las Vegas Township, Clark County, Nevada |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 5505
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 1:34 am: |
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Bev,
As always, your commentary to articles such as this is invaluable in providing a broader context.
Thank you. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2939
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 10:13 am: |
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Nevada has shown intestinal fortitude that other states have lacked.
Does anyone REALLY believe these facts are relevant only to Nevada?
If you do, there is a call on Line 2 for you from the Tooth Fairy.
The fact is that we are now 16 years into the effectiveness of the NVRA of 1993, and the vast pool of unregistered potential voters has largely dried up. For any organization to employ ANY quota system for voter registration, as ACORN does nationwide in clear violation of many state statutes, is at the very minimum the suborning of perjury, and probably worse.
In the "bad old days" of biennial voter purges, there may have been a need for aggressive voter registration generally. There are only three cases where large-scale voter registration drives are necessary in this day and age - 1) newly age-eligible folks (just turned 18), 2) high residential turnover places (campuses?, new developments?), and 3) outside naturalization ceremonies.
Other than those kinds of places, the only ways you can garner a quota of registrations, is to 1) make up registrants out of whole cloth, or 2) register non-citizens.
==========================================
Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 35
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 2:17 pm: |
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The other side of the story !
http://http://acorn.org/index.php?id=4174&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=22557&tx_ttnews[bac kPid]=2716&cHash=e32102da21
News from Nevada
Politicians in Nevada are at it again. Seven months after executing a carefully staged raid on the Las Vegas ACORN office - a publicity stunt purporting to gather evidence of "voter fraud" in ACORN's 2008 voter registration drive - Nevada's attorney general and secretary of state today announced that they were filing a complaint against ACORN and two voter registration managers. Specifically, the complaint alleges that ACORN implemented a "corporate mandated quota system," and that bonuses were paid for exceeding this quota, in violation of a Nevada statute that prohibits payment based on the total number of registrations.
What the attorney general and secretary of state did NOT announce were any indictments against any of the 44 individual canvassers ACORN identified, as early as April 2008, as having submitted fraudulent applications to their supervisors. If Nevada officials were truly interested in protecting the integrity of the registration process they would cooperate with ACORN in seeking prosecution against these individuals. Instead, after seven months, the state of Nevada has chosen to divert attention from their failure and attempt to justify their attacks against ACORN with this ridiculous complaint.
If you were to work at a Bennigan's making steaks and burgers, you would need to in fact make food to retain your employment. Even university professors must "publish or perish." ACORN, like any business or professional organization, establishes standards for performance and a reasonable basis for evaluating its employees. For canvassers, who are paid by the hour to assist members of the public in completing voter registration applications, these expectations are based on the only measurement that makes sense: the number of complete and accurate voter registration applications a canvasser collects per shift. Based on years of experience conducting community-based voter registration drives, ACORN has established 20 applications per four-hour shift as a reasonable performance standard.
Performance standards do not represent a "quota," or payment per registration, but simply a baseline for job performance. And, as the complaint itself makes clear, failing to meet this standard does not result in automatic termination. ACORN supervisors are trained to evaluate canvassers on a case-by-case basis, and are given wide latitude in determining the appropriate course of action for under-performing canvassers, ranging from re-training or reassignment to disciplinary action or dismissal.
Moreover, the statute invoked in the complaint does not even address such job performance standards, nor does it address the situation in the Nevada office, in which unauthorized but moderate bonuses (in the amount of five-dollars per shift) were awarded in September to canvassers who exceeded expectations. In fact, the poorly written statute merely states that it is illegal to pay anyone to register voters based on the total number of voters registered. ACORN canvassers are paid and evaluated by the hour. The absurd legal interpretation under which the complaint has been brought suggests that it is illegal for a voter registration drive to set ANY job performance standards for hourly employees, or to evaluate employees and hold them accountable. In effect, their interpretation of the law would make conducting a paid voter registration drive impossible.
Few states need active and effective voter registration drives more than Nevada, which rates 50th out of 51 states (including the District of Columbia) in voter registration rates. Over 900,000 of 1.6 million eligible Nevadans remain unregistered, including 106,000 of the state's 199,000 eligible low-income residents. ACORN's registration drive, by election officials' own conservative estimate, resulted in over 23,000 new Nevada voters casting a ballot in the 2008 election.
There will surely be a fierce hue and cry in the media over these charges; for that is, after all, largely the point. We look forward to the opportunity to beat back these false claims. Meanwhile, ACORN members will continue to fight for quality affordable healthcare, for living wage jobs, and to stop home foreclosures. And yes, we will continue to fight for the government to do its job and provide a means for universal voter registration for every citizen.
Mikes PS. It would be nice if Nevada officials were as interested in investigating Nevada sequoia voting system and the the relationship between sequopia and the county registras. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10498
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 2:50 pm: |
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Thanks Mike, for posting this.
I have read that the number of bogus registrations in Nevada exceeded 19,000; I would very much like to get the real numbers on this.
I respectfully disagree with the ACORN position that pay-per-registration is okay. Yes, people need to do the work. However, when you tie a paycheck to a quantity of registrations, you guarantee quality management problems and you MUST implement truly effective quality management to weed out the bogus registrations.
The numbers are really, really important in this story, and without them the full story can't be told. For example: If there were 19,000 false registrations (we don't have the figures) the next very relevant test is how many of the 19,000 false registrations were identified by ACORN and flagged as false registrations.
The number of false registrations minus the number flagged by ACORN itself provides a quantification of ACORN's quality management procedures. If ACORN is not weeding almost ALL of the bad registrations out itself, flagging them for separate action, ACORN's quality management procedures are unacceptable and enable real fraud by insiders. |
Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 36
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 3:54 pm: |
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More facts about ACORN
I'm not defending ACORNS Nevada mistakes but they do register people no one else will help to register.Maybe they did screw up in Nevada ???
However the team that was assembled to investigate them was over kill has never moved on any Nevada sequoia machine problems nor any ties county registrars may have to sequoia. I have never been lied to by ACORN but I have been told bold face lies by a county registrar of voters !
New Report Shows Media Consistently Scapegoat ACORN
Media Matters shows Media Scapegoats Group Instead of Using Substantive Analysis
Washington, D.C.--Today, Media Matters released a new report showing that when discussing major news stories, conservatives in the media have repeatedly resorted to blaming ACORN in place of substantive analysis of causes and solutions, even where the organization has little or nothing to do with the issue. The report can be viewed at:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200904070005
"We are disappointed, but not surprised, in the report's findings," said Bertha Lewis, CEO and Chief Organizer of ACORN. "ACORN has watched over the years as the right wing has attempted to blame us for everything from the 2008 financial crisis to voter fraud. We hope that this report serves as a wake-up call that we must no longer be used as a kicking post."
During the 2008 financial crisis, several in the media claimed, suggested or uncritically reported that ACORN contributed to the housing crisis by bullying banks into irresponsible lending to minorities. For example, the media has falsely asserted that much of the housing crisis was caused by ACORN intimidating banks under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to lend loans to minorities and the poor, all of whom could not make payments. In fact, according to housing experts, a large number of subprime loans were not made under the CRA.
Also, during the 2008 presidential and general election, the media falsely linked ACORN's voter registration campaign to allegations of voter fraud. The media, including CNN and the Wall Street Journal, repeatedly failed to report that in many states in which ACORN registered voters, state law required the organization to submit all registration forms filled out despite being flagged as fraudulent. Moreover, actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare.
In the debate over the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the media repeatedly claimed that the bill contained language to funnel money to fund ACORN. However, the act does not mention ACORN or otherwise single it out for receiving funding, and ACORN itself has said that it is ineligible for the funds and has no plans to apply for them.
The media, including The Washington Times and FoxNews.com, has also uncritically reported that ACORN will be a national partner with the Census Bureau in its effort to recruit more than 1 million temporary workers, baselessly suggesting the group will fraudulently influence the count or that the Obama administration is politicizing the process. However, ACORN is only one of "more than 250" groups partnering with the Census Bureau to recruit workers.
Many in the media have also vilified public figures' relationships with ACORN. For example, during the 2008 Senate recount in Minnesota, the media uncritically reported that Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's "ties" to ACORN were proof of his favoritism of Democratic challenger Al Franken over Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.
The report also cites incidences where undocumented immigrants are used as scapegoats, including during the debate over the 2009 State Children's Health Insurance Program, when many in the media falsely claimed that the bill made it easier for undocumented immigrants to access health benefits.
To read more:
Media Matters Report (HTML)
Media Matters Report (PDF)
Media Matters Press Release (HTML)
08-04-09 13:30 |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 387
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 4:02 pm: |
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In response to Bev's post: If, if, and if.
"What the attorney general and secretary of state did NOT announce were any indictments against any of the 44 individual canvassers ACORN identified, as early as April 2008, as having submitted fraudulent applications to their supervisors."
So here's a nonspeculative "if":
"If Nevada officials were truly interested in protecting the integrity of the registration process they would cooperate with ACORN in seeking prosecution against these individuals."
That has the numbers, precisely "44 individual canvassers ACORN identified, as early as April 2008, as having submitted fraudulent applications to their supervisors," and evidence that ACORN was acting responsibly.
I see no evidence that State officials are acting responsibly.
As for the possibility that there may have been a large number of false registrations, that is not evidence of a single false voter. This looks to me exactly like a fishing expedition to try to find evidence of the almost-mythical "voter fraud."
I remember the special election in San Diego in 2006 when Brian Bilbray was sworn into office before the election had been certified and while more than 50,000 votes remained uncounted. I remember the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 where the "winner" was sworn in without bothering to fully count the votes first.
The great concern about the possibility of unflagged false registrations, should be compared to the total lack of concern shown by Congress, local elections officials, and law enforcement about uncounted votes. When 18,000 votes can mysteriouly vanish and not interfere with a candidate being declared the winner and sworn in, when tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of votes can remain uncounted and not interfere with a candidate being declared the winner and sworn in, I can't say that I'm particularly worried about the possibility of two or three of those uncounted votes being fraudulent.
If there was some way to ensure that everyone's vote would be counted, instead of having an election nullified by the Supreme Court, Congress swearing in candidates before the votes are counted, a candidate conceding before the votes are counted, etc., THEN I might worry about the possibility of fraudulent votes and investigate the registration process.
As long as 80% of U.S. votes are counted secretly inside unverifiable and easily hacked central tabulators, most people cannot know for sure if their own vote was even counted, no less counted accurately, and they're worried about the possibility of fraudulent registrations? How about the reality of fraudulent elections? Insiders can just as easily flip the votes of legally eligible, fully qualified, and properly registered voters, as the votes of anyone else. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 388
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 4:20 pm: |
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Bev writes:
"1) ...A lot of ineligible registrations have made it through quality control processes. In Nevada they have traced many of these to ACORN through numbered registration forms; I'd like to get a quantity on that."
If the State's quality control processes failed, how did Nevada find ineligible applications and trace them to ACORN?
"2), that ACORN itself was defrauded, becomes moot when its own managers implement reckless and illegal pay-per-reg schemes."
They did not have a pay-per-reg scheme.
"3) - Do the invalid registrants vote, and could this happen in sufficient numbers to sway election results?"
In elections where the quality control process failed, and where votes were fully and accurately counted, it might be theoretically possible for the votes of invalid registrants to sway election results. But as the ongoing struggle in Pima County demonstrates, it is very unlikely that anyone would ever be able to prove it. And think back to the "hack and stack." Arizona elections are so corrupt that there is great suspicion that the voters got bilked for billions when a very unpopular tax was passed--the Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians, which represent most Pima County voters, have been trying to prove that election was fraudulent ever since 2006.
I fail to understand how, in an election where the votes of tens of thousands of eligible voters were flipped or remained uncounted, the votes of a few ineligible voters, if such actually existed, could make any difference at all. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10501
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 4:25 pm: |
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Nope, disagree Mark.
We need the quantity of bad registrations. The problem is with the very unwise mass-mail-in voting procedures that are creeping across the US like poison ivy. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the presence of bogus registrations in the pool will result in large-scale election fraud. It won't be by random persons showing up to vote illegally. It will be by votes being cast, en masse, for the bogus registrants by insiders. And my concerns are not limited to ineligible voters. Any person who fails to return a ballot may just get "voted."
When you look at the structure of the statewide databases and the vote remote-like software, you see what it enables. Voting list integrity is a lot more important than most liberals realize, because they aren't putting two and two together: Stuffed lists enable insiders to cast large numbers of votes, if they wish. All of the safeguards live in the database and the authentication software, which basically function like a set of on-off dip switches. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 389
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 4:36 pm: |
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Bev, when a ballot proposition is as unpopular as the one in Pima County, when it had been rejected by the voters several times previously and was opposed by Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians, how did it pass?
It doesn't matter if ten votes are cast or if ten million votes are cast. If crooked insiders have programmed the central tabulators to allocate 40% of the vote FOR one issue or candidate, and 60% of the vote AGAINST that issue or candidate, the result of the election will be the same no matter how many votes are cast.
Who can't put two and two together? |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10502
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 4:39 pm: |
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Mark: Just because you have apples doesn't mean you don't also have oranges. |
Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 37
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 7:29 pm: |
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My whole reason for posting the above two posts about ACORN was to add information.Bev has some really good points. My big complaint is with the Nevada hypocrites who hold public office and the law enforcement agencies that made up the combined task force that investigated ACORN. What a bunch of bu$hit and wasted time and money when there is the humongous problem of the sequoia voting system used in Nevada that needs to be investigated along with the county registrars and elected officials who are aiding and abetting this fraudulent system of voting !
Now that is a real and not imagined problem. My opinion is ACORN's mistakes was used as a red herring to keep us distracted from the REAL problem, SEQUOIA !! |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 391
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 2:56 am: |
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C'mon, Michael--you don't really expect public officials and law enforcement in Nevada to spend time and money investigating the WHOLESALE fraud that THEY are perpetrating, when they can distract people with rumors of RETAIL fraud of which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
If I was going to be fair and impartial, and I didn't know the numbers, I wouldn't cite large numbers that could incite fear and hatred.
But the juicy possibility of finding a fraudulent voter (as long as it isn't Ann Coulter) is a lot safer to pursue than going after the machines and insiders capable of flipping thousands of votes. What if one of the votes they flipped belonged to an undocumented worker? Isn't the possibility that one vote was fraudulent more important than an entire election being fraudulent--especially since the election results are unverifiable, but voter registrations can be easily traced?
Of course even if the quality control system failed, there are usually teams of political challengers at every polling place to ensure that every person with a visibly ethnic heritage or name is properly registered. But what if one slipped through while well-meaning election integrity folks were trying to keep an eye on whether the voting machines were flipping votes?
Hasn't Bev explained to us at least a hundred times that known and actual WHOLESALE election fraud which HAS swayed elections, isn't as important as a rumor of possible RETAIL election fraud which theoretically, if the election was very close and the votes were counted accurately, MIGHT sway an election? Or have I misremembered my apples and oranges?
Whether elections officials simply don't bother to count fifty or sixty THOUSAND absentee ballots, or they count them towards candidates people didn't vote for, it is not the fault of the voters or the people who registered them to vote.
One of the problems in Pima County, Arizona, is that they have a ballot printing machine, and only microscopic examination, if it had been allowed, which it wasn't, could have determined if ballots had been sent in by voters or had been printed by elections officials. When they toss out tens of thousands of real ballots and replace them with fake ballots that they printed themselves, the votes of fraudulently registered voters, if such existed, would be tossed out along with the votes of legitimate voters, and therefore could not possibly sway an election. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2940
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 5:57 am: |
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Okay, the ideologues are out - the left can do no wrong, apparently. Call from Tooth Fairy on Line 2 for Mark or Michael, your pick.
Bev, you've strayed off the "progressive" party line. Prepare to be vilified.
I strongly suspect that neither Mark nor Michael have had to deal with ACORN "across the counter" as many Election Directors and I have. Every Election Director I know, present and former, of EITHER party, and many of them are patronage employees of BOTH major parties, believe that ACORN is a fundamentally criminal organization when it comes to voter registration.
Just who in the heck are these "chronically underserved in voter registration services" demographics when nearly every governmental agency is REQUIRED BY FEDERAL LAW to offer voter registration services, and has been so required since 1993? It's a myth! There are no chronically underserved populations in voter registration unless you count people who have recently moved, or people who avoid governmental services like the plague, such as the Amish. What's next? Realtors and landlords being required to register voters? C'mon!
And I haven't seen ACORN shirts registering Amish people in Lancaster County, PA rural areas. Why? Too many conservatives (and maybe a language barrier).
ACORN has never been seen at Green Dragon Farmers Market in Ephrata, PA, and they might be among the most underregistered people as a percentage of population that there is anywhere.
==========================================
Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 392
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 9:50 am: |
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Kurt, neither of the major parties in this countries would be considered to be "the left" in any European country, in any country with a multi-party rather than a two-party system, or in any country with proportional representation. The Democrats, however, in places they traditionally control such as Chicago, are guilty of at least as much election rigging as the Republicans.
Anyone who encourages people to vote in elections where the votes are counted secretly and cannot possibly be verified, or in elections where the voters have no way to hold candidates accountable once they are in office, is engaging in a criminal enterprise and undermining and opposing democracy.
As long as the votes are counted secretly, it doesn't matter who votes or how many people vote, whether they are left, right, or center, underserved or overserved, qualified or unqualified.
Just because somebody is an elections official does not mean that they're honest, any more than being Democrat or Republican means that somebody is honest. When votes are counted secretly, people have to trust the elections officials, and many elections officials, judges, and even Members of Congress have been convicted of crimes and sent to prison. There are very few saints in this world and most of them are deceased and cannot run for office, except possibly in Chicago. Holding a particular office or patronage position, even if a person was legitimately elected, is no guarantee of their good charactor. Faith-based elections have no place in a democracy and nobody should have to place their trust in officials.
One of the biggest problems we have is secret vote counting. 80% of U.S. votes are counted secretly with no citizen oversight possible. 90% of Americans angrily opposed the bailouts. In the 2008 election, both major candidates favored the bailouts. Since approximately 55% of Americans voted, it appears that half of those who opposed the bailouts, voted for one of the candidates who favored the bailouts. Their only other option was to cast a wasted or protest vote for a third party candidate who couldn't win. Isn't it a problem that nobody who represents the interests of 90% of the American people can get a major party nomination? In Haiti's recent election the same thing happened and only 3% of Haitians bothered to vote. Did Americans really vote against their own best interests? Can you prove it?
This is not a partisan issue. The Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, and many other third parties have voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote actions for the purpose of providing elections officials with plenty of votes they can count, not count, miscount, substitute, or whatever else they feel like doing with secret vote counts.
Many people mail in their ballots in states where absentee ballots do not have to be counted at all.
Look, if a criminal gang robs a bank and takes money and valuables not just from the bank but also from the customers and employees who happen to be inside the bank at the time of the robbery, would it change the conditions of the bank robbery if one of the bank's employees or customers was not a U.S. citizen? If ALL of them weren't?
Trillions of dollars for bailouts that 90% of Americans didn't want is much worse than a bank robbery. Billions of dollars for a transportation proposition that most citizens and all political parties of Pima County Arizona didn't want, is much worse than a bank robbery. When everyone is robbed, what good does it do to concentrate on whether some of them were not eligible to be robbed?
Bev is correct in that mail-in ballots can be easily substituted or manipulated. But that applies to the ballots of properly registered, fully qualified, eligible voters as well as to the ballots of those who are not. When properly registered, fully qualified, eligible voters are voluntarily providing corrupt elections officials with easily manipulated ballots, the possibility that improperly registered, unqualified, ineligible people might be doing the same thing in much lesser numbers, at most extreme estimates no more than one in ten thousand, doesn't strike me as being particularly worrisome. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2941
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 10:31 am: |
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Mark,
You misapply the evidence test.
You claim, above, certainty about your allegations, here: (How about the reality of fraudulent elections?) Yet no court of law has found any evidence of any such thing on a grand scale. Locally, yes. Yet you believe it with all your heart, as is your right.
However, there is more than adequate, indeed VOLUMINOUS physical on-paper and electronic evidence of ACORN's registration misdeeds, in my county and countless others across the nation, (with the voter registration list in my PC I can find HUNDREDS myself in a few minutes) yet no one, not the registration commission nor the D.A's office, has any interest at all in pursuing it. Why? Politics, that's why. A previous D.A. in 2006 indeed DID prosecute and won convictions. Yet after 2008, no interest. Why?
You correctly state that "people" cannot oversee the counting of elections directly in most cases. That's undeniable as a general rule. You are ALSO correct that officials COULD BE, in several cases, altering votes. But then you make the unsupported logical leap to attempt to have me believe that it actually DOES happen on a wholesale basis. Yet the people who are in charge of ajudicating such things reject these charges as fanciful. Yet I am supposed to believe you instead of them and four years of my own experience.
Umm, sorry, that would be a "no".
Is there SOME nasty goings on? Sure.
Is there too much secrecy? Sure.
Does that support your conclusion? Not on my planet.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 38
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 10:50 am: |
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"My big complaint is with the Nevada hypocrites who hold public office"=A SOS and AG the children of two long time democratic political families in Nevada,one the son of a ex county DA and Governor and the other a daughter of a long time powerful now deceased, County Commissioner. All 4 of whom I have supported with time, money, and my vote over the last 40 years.On this issue they are wrong and political grand standing (and I hope I'm wrong)as we have much more serious sequoia problems that are probably flipping elections in Nevada that need attention.My information is nonpartisan and just info.
I find disparaging remarks from a life time bureaucrat who has worked in and been part of what many describe as one of the most broken,and corrupt statewide voting systems in the USA is not helping to straighten out this mess but condoning and defending this broken voting system we are stuck with in this country ! Resorting to name calling and claims of partisan fact bending is the refuge of a defender of our broken voting system that 99% of the people posting here are trying to find a way fix.Instead of name calling maybe some guidance for us amateurs from the professionals who may know it all would help this process along ! |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2942
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 11:15 am: |
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Excuse me?!?!
"the children of two long time democratic political families"
Why is this important?
"All 4 of whom I have supported with time, money, and my vote over the last 40 years."
Did you believe you bought some influence? Expect the arrest papers soon for bribery, if so.
"sequoia problems that are probably flipping elections"
PROBABLY??? Ever hear of PROOF?
"I find disparaging remarks from a life time bureaucrat who has worked in and been part of what many describe as one of the most broken,and corrupt statewide voting systems in the USA is not helping to straighten out this mess but condoning and defending this broken voting system we are stuck with in this country ! Resorting to name calling and claims of partisan fact bending is the refuge of a defender of our broken voting system that 99% of the people posting here are trying to find a way fix.Instead of name calling maybe some guidance for us amateurs from the professionals who may know it all would help this process along !"
Excuse me? I worked in elections for 4 years out of a 54 year life, and we didn't have statewide anything, and still don't. Who are you calling out, dude?
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 393
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 11:17 am: |
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Kurt writes:
"You claim, above, certainty about your allegations, here: (How about the reality of fraudulent elections?) Yet no court of law has found any evidence of any such thing on a grand scale. Locally, yes. Yet you believe it with all your heart, as is your right."
No court of law has found any evidence of ballots cast by fraudulently registered voters swaying an election, yet you believe it with all your heart, which is your right.
Kurt: "However, there is more than adequate, indeed VOLUMINOUS physical on-paper and electronic evidence of ACORN's registration misdeeds, in my county and countless others across the nation, (with the voter registration list in my PC I can find HUNDREDS myself in a few minutes) yet no one, not the registration commission nor the D.A's office, has any interest at all in pursuing it. Why? Politics, that's why. A previous D.A. in 2006 indeed DID prosecute and won convictions. Yet after 2008, no interest. Why?"
Did you actually read the article above, Kurt? The article's headline says:
NEVADA ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE CHARGE ACORN WITH VOTER REGISTRATION VIOLATIONS
Is there some way that you can interpret that to mean that for political reasons, nobody is investigating or prosecuting ACORN, or do you know that you're stating something that is obviously and patently false, and are doing it just to be disruptive and divisive?
Kurt: "You correctly state that "people" cannot oversee the counting of elections directly in most cases. That's undeniable as a general rule. You are ALSO correct that officials COULD BE, in several cases, altering votes. But then you make the unsupported logical leap to attempt to have me believe that it actually DOES happen on a wholesale basis."
You and Bev correctly state that there have been cases of registration irregularities. That's undeniable as a general rule. You are ALSO correct that organizations that engage in registering voters COULD BE, in several cases, doing so improperly. But then you make the unsupported logical leap to attempt to have me believe not only that it actually DOES happen on a wholesale basis, but that it could sway elections.
Umm, sorry, that would be a "no".
Kurt: "Yet the people who are in charge of ajudicating such things reject these charges as fanciful. Yet I am supposed to believe you instead of them and four years of my own experience."
Yes, the insiders who are the ones with the means, motive, and opportunity to rig elections do reject such charges as fanciful, if not as conspiracy theories. I'm reminded of the elections official who told BradBlog that people had to trust him, just before he was convicted on numerous criminal charges.
There is only one way that the ballots of fraudulently registered voters who do not actually attempt to show up at the polls to vote could sway an election and that is if the elections officials use their mailed-in ballots or their voter registrations for the purpose of substituting their ballots with fraudulent ballots or manufacturing votes that had not actually been cast.
Bev is concerned that if people register and don't vote, corrupt elections officials might cast fraudulent votes in their names. This would apply equally to both properly registered, eligible voters as to improperly registered, ineligible voters, but it would be much harder to catch the fraud if the voters were properly registered and eligible. About half of the properly registered, eligible voters in this country don't vote, so corrupt officials who wish to rig elections already have plenty of registrations they can use and don't have to depend on new ones. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2943
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 12:16 pm: |
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I never said these ACORN registrations have ever come anything close to swaying the outcome of any election. I regard that as a stretch, at best. Don't put words in my mouth. I have said that ACORN's activities are criminal, per se, without any further need to embellish or extraploate further. I think the record on that is clear.
I don't require anything more than what has already been proven to be able to shout "CRIMINAL!" at ACORN. What they've admitted to is sufficient.
I have also previously written that ACORN's activities are analogous to planting unarmed land mines. I find the analogy apt.
Bev has opened a new chapter in positing a scenario by which that vulnerability could be leveraged into a more fraudulent action, and I think I follow her logic, although it would be very difficult in states with restrictive and highly limiting absentee balloting laws such as the one in which I live. We have a reputation for the most restrictive (some call it 'draconian') absentee ballot laws in the nation. Even in Presidential years, the percentage of mail-in ballots in PA is only 2%-ish.
So yes, I see where Bev is going, but I don't worry about that exploit happening here. From what I know, I would worry for the west coast and the Gulf states (the latter because they allow political party operatives to round up and deliver absentee ballots wholesale - a VERY bad practice).
I also applauded Nevada for doing what many states and locales ought to be doing - holding ACORN accountable for their criminal conduct. Yet most decline to do so in the face of overwhelming evidence. This makes Nevada the rather pleasant exception to a disturbing national trend.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 209
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 12:27 pm: |
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So, what purpose does the practice of requiring voters to register provide? Bev rather eloquently illustrates one hazard in having "registered voter lists" -- insider voting those who are on the list but choose not to vote. Do other nations require voter registration? |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 394
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 1:26 pm: |
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Kurt: "I never said these ACORN registrations have ever come anything close to swaying the outcome of any election. I regard that as a stretch, at best. Don't put words in my mouth. I have said that ACORN's activities are criminal, per se, without any further need to embellish or extraploate further. I think the record on that is clear."
Okay. Insider trading, car theft, and home burglary are all criminal, but they don't have anything to do with election integrity, so they wouldn't be appropriate topics here. Almost all insider trading is done by stockholder and financial managers who tend to be pro-corporate in their political views, but what has that to do with election integrity?
Kurt: "I don't require anything more than what has already been proven to be able to shout "CRIMINAL!" at ACORN. What they've admitted to is sufficient."
And I don't need anything more than derivatives in order to be able to shout, "CRIMINAL!" at banksters and deregulating legislators, but if it doesn't have anything to do with fraudulent elections, why would I do it here?
Kurt: "I have also previously written that ACORN's activities are analogous to planting unarmed land mines. I find the analogy apt."
Unloaded guns are just as dangerous as unarmed land mines. Are you opposed to gun sales because criminals might steal unloaded guns from law-abiding people and use them to harm others? The analogy is apt in that requiring registration and certain rules for gun ownership theoretically makes it less likely that guns will be misused, but it doesn't prevent that from happening. Even if every gun purchaser had to submit to a sainthood test, it would not prevent criminals from stealing some guns and misusing them.
Kurt: "Bev has opened a new chapter in positing a scenario by which that vulnerability could be leveraged into a more fraudulent action, and I think I follow her logic, although it would be very difficult in states with restrictive and highly limiting absentee balloting laws such as the one in which I live. We have a reputation for the most restrictive (some call it 'draconian') absentee ballot laws in the nation. Even in Presidential years, the percentage of mail-in ballots in PA is only 2%-ish."
Many states have huge numbers of mail-in ballots and some have mail-only voting.
Kurt: "So yes, I see where Bev is going, but I don't worry about that exploit happening here. From what I know, I would worry for the west coast and the Gulf states (the latter because they allow political party operatives to round up and deliver absentee ballots wholesale - a VERY bad practice)."
When Bilbray was sworn into Congress here in California, at least 58,000 mail-in ballots (that was the ROV's figure) remained uncounted. In many states mail-in ballots don't need to be counted at all. Whether they were legitimately voted and personally mailed in individually by duly qualified voters, or delivered wholesale, uncounted ballots are still uncounted ballots and miscounted ballots are still miscounted ballots.
Bob, as far as I can tell, the only purpose of voter registration is to give a patina of respectability to a corrupt process and thereby mislead voters into thinking that because it is sometimes difficult or inconvenient to register, their votes might actually be counted, might be subject to as much oversight as the registration process, might not be outweighed by fraudulently manufactured ballots, or in some way be of value. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 395
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 8:59 pm: |
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I understand that Kurt is concerned about what is criminal and that Bev is concerned that if this criminality actually exists, it might sway an election.
I'm concerned about what is completely legal.
It was legal for the Supreme Court in 2000 to stop the vote counting in Florida.
It was then legal for Congress to swear in a President without bothering to finish counting the popular vote.
Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.
Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.
It was legal for one Presidential candidate to concede to the other in 2004, thus ensuring that the votes of many Americans would never be counted.
It was then legal for Congress to again swear in a President without bothering to finish counting the popular votes.
Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.
Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.
It was legal in 2006 for Congress to swear in a Representative before his election had been certified and while at least 58,000 votes remained uncounted.
Could those votes, if they had been counted, have swayed the election? Many people believe so.
Was there anything illegal done or any crimes committed? No.
If anything illegal was done in 2000, it was done by the Supreme Court, the highest law of the land.
If anything illegal was done in 2004 and 2006, no court has ever found so.
80% of U.S. votes are counted secretly inside central tabulators.
Can secret vote counting sway an election? Many people believe so.
Is it illegal to count votes secretly?
No, it is not and no court has found so.
Therefore, I am more concerned about legal and fully Constitutional acts that could sway an election, than about criminal acts that might sway an election. If criminal acts are proven to have swayed an election, they can be prosecuted. If legal acts are proven to have swayed an election, they can not be prosecuted. But in neither case can this change the results of an election because once a President or Member of Congress in sworn into office, only Congress can remove them from office.
If Bev's worst case scenario was true, and as many as one in 10,000 votes in the CA50 2006 special election were cast by fraudulently registered voters, that would mean that no more than 6 of those 58,000 uncounted votes were fraudulent. Suppose that this actually happened and was known to Congress. Would that stop them from swearing in a Representative before the election is certified and with 58,000 votes remaining uncounted? No, it would not. So investigating and pursuing this potential threat would in no way safeguard or improve our electoral process.
When candidates can LEGALLY be sworn into office without first counting the votes, nobody's vote matters. When nobody's vote matters, votes cast by fraudulently registered voters, if such exist, don't matter either. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2944
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 5:50 am: |
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I am downright ecstatic to announce that Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) authorities have yesterday ALSO filed criminal charges against ACORN and several of its employees.
Let's start a stampede.
Open note to Bob Lee and the Philadelphia City Commissioners (whom I know read this board): get on board and have Lynn Abraham file some charges too.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2945
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 8:04 am: |
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Mark,
Good. Be concerned about what is legal but ought not be. That is a worthwhile thing with a bad name - politics. But don't delude yourself into thinking it's anything OTHER THAN politics.
It's not law enforcement, and it's not jurisprudence, and you don't get to wave the Constitution about it for any reason other than sloganeering and whipping up a frenzied mob.
You see, Mark, here is where I part company with Bev. I don't use language like saying we "have" certain rights until it is so borne out by statute or case law. I am more precise to say we "ought to have" certain rights, and in that even Brant seems to agree. That is ALSO the realm of politics. And that's okay. Politics SHOULDN'T BE a dirty word.
But both you and Bev (in my opinion) lose a measure of credibility when you use the language of jurisprudence in the realm of politics. They shouldn't be intermixed except for the purposes of getting people all riled up, and then you need to be cognizant of exactly what activities you are and are not engaged in.
And Mark? Your attempt to claim that there is no closer nexus between voter registration fraud and vote fraud that between securities fraud and vote fraud strikes me as bizarre on its face and barely worthy of a response. If the world in which you live is accurately described by your post, I'm glad to be not there. Registration fraud and election fraud are intimately connected in that in most states, the people who handle voter registrations and the people who program voting machines are the same people, and fraud in one can be used directly and causally to accomplish the other without any intervening step.
And Mark again? If the standard for taking governmental action is only "Many people believe so" we are truly scrod. "Many people" believe some of the screwiest stuff imaginable. The standard had better be well north of "Many people believe so".
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 396
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 8:21 am: |
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Previously, in his comments above, Kurt wrote, "I never said these ACORN registrations have ever come anything close to swaying the outcome of any election. I regard that as a stretch, at best....So yes, I see where Bev is going, but I don't worry about that exploit happening here."
Now Kurt is "ecstatic," for what can only be purely partisan reasons, that charges have been filed for something even he believes could not come close to swaying an election.
It isn't a matter of being opposed to criminality in general, even when it has nothing to do with election integrity, as I have seen no laments from Kurt with regard to Obama's statements that there will be no prosecutions for torture, in clear contravention of the Nuremberg Principles.
ACORN deserves to be prosecuted, in my opinion, for the crime of deceiving Americans into thinking that just because they register and vote, they might have a voice in government, something Kurt has disproved with his "prevailing theory" which explains that we elect tyrants to make our decisions for us, not representatives to further our interests. But deceiving voters into thinking that their vote might count when you have absolutely no reason to believe any such thing, isn't a crime on the books, anymore than retiring to a lucrative executive position with a corporation that their votes while in office had helped at the expense of their constituents, is a crime for elected officials.
To distract people by inciting fear about things that you have no reason to believe could sway an election, particularly people who are concerned about whether their votes actually count, in a system where there is no way to know if votes are counted as cast--a system where officials can be sworn into office without even bothering to count the votes--isn't criminal either. But neither is it moral, ethical, or honest.
(From Bev: I struck the speculation on people's motivations, per BBV policy. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2946
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 9:26 am: |
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Mark,
ACORN's activities pollute official public records with bogus entries, and as such are evil purely and per se.
Their activities cause scarce public resources to be expended processing bogus registrations causing a waste of public funds. Voter registration rolls presently are (but perhaps should not be) used for a variety of purposes beyond voting. Presently, many federal district courts use voter rolls as their jury pool source list. This means that even federal courts have to waste resources mailing jury summonses to bogus names and addresses that do not exist.
Mark, why can't you understand that monkeying with voter registration rolls needs to be treated as the crime that it is, even if no one ever actually uses it to attempt to rig an election? There are, as Bev indicated, apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples, plums, nectarines and peaches, too.
Just because voter registration fraud isn't ONE KIND of election fraud doesn't mean it isn't another equally as pernicious one.
Not every evil flows from a singular act of crime, Mark, unless it is the act that was the proximate cause of your having the unique political beliefs you possess. ...(Remember, this is the state that when the President was on the verge of mathematically clinching the nomination, this state STILL went pretty solidly for Hillary. There isn't a lot of patience here for "out of the mainstream" leftish politics.) Such rage, such doctrinaire extremism. I've never even encountered the likes of it here, unless it's in the protestors on the bridge toward whom I flip the bird every Friday evening.
What Californians, Oregonians, and Washingtonians call "progressives" when compared to THEIR maninstream? Trust me. They largely don't exist in civilized society here in the Keystone State.
Why am I so dismissive of them? Because if the best communication plan you have is to paint twin size bedsheets or 22x28 foamcore with hand-scrawled messages, you might just have "message merit" issues you need to work on.
(from Bev): Admin edited to remove remarks that focus more on personalities than issues - otherwise, good post. Hey guys, please don't make me go through everyone's posts to clip out the personal stuff - all of you're vetting of opinions on this issue is a good thing -- Bev
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 397
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 10:00 am: |
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Kurt writes, "Registration fraud and election fraud are intimately connected in that in most states, the people who handle voter registrations and the people who program voting machines are the same people, and fraud in one can be used directly and causally to accomplish the other without any intervening step."
Really? You are ecstatic that ACORN is being prosecuted for the way that they may have mishandled voter registrations because they are the same people who program the voting machines?
I have never heard of anyone in any way connected with ACORN being an elections official or being in a position to program voting machines.
Do you have any evidence for that statement? |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 398
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 10:15 am: |
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Kurt, only if the quality control system failed and bogus registrations were actually entered into the voting rolls, would there be a problem with the voter rolls. In this case, the quality control system did not fail and the bogus registrations were spotted easily, in most cases by ACORN itself. They are not being prosecuted for bogus registrations, but for an alleged pay-per-reg scheme of which they are presumably innocent until proven guilty.
While it may take time and effort for elections officials to weed through and spot irregular or fraudulent registration applications, that's part of their job description and what they are paid for.
Kurt writes, "Mark, why can't you understand that monkeying with voter registration rolls needs to be treated as the crime that it is, even if no one ever actually uses it to attempt to rig an election?"
Did ACORN ever monkey with a voter registration roll? Do you have any reason to suspect that ACORN might have monkeyed with a voter registration roll? Do you have any reason to think that ACORN has access to voter registration rolls?
If an ELECTIONS OFFICIAL fails to spot an improper registration (and that is very unlikely as registrations have been rejected due to an inserted or omitted middle initial, a change in address spelling, and many other minor irregularities), they would be guilty of monkeying with the voter registration rolls. Those who submit voter registration requests do not have access to and therefore cannot tamper with voter registration rolls--only elections officials can do that. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 399
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 10:32 am: |
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Kurt does have a point, in that it is a waste of scarce resources to sift through voter registration applications in an electoral system where candidates can legally be sworn into office without anyone even bothering to count the votes. In our system, it would save time to just allow anyone to register, since the votes don't have to be counted anyway.
But if the voter registration polls are used for other purposes (actually, where I live jury pools are selected from the Department of Motor Vehicle records, not from voter rolls), it might be a worthwhile expenditure. Does any state use voter rolls for jury pools?
If there are states that are using voter rolls for jury pools, then it is a worthwhile expenditure of scarce resources to pay elections officials to scrutinize registration applications.
My guess it that it might be unconstitutional for states to use voting rolls to select jury pools, as juries are required to be obtained from a random selection of citizens, and eliminating the half of Americans who choose not to vote would not guarantee a random selection. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 400
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 10:47 am: |
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Kurt writes: The standard had better be well north of "Many people believe so".
You're right. While there may not be absolute proof that the failure to count all the votes in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections and in the CA50 special election in 2006, swayed the results of those elections, there is absolute and indisputable proof in each case that all the votes were not counted.
In the case of the 2000 election there is the Supreme Court order stopping the vote count. In the 2004 election there are videos of Kerry conceding before the votes were counted. And in the CA50 case there are court records where the ROV admits that at least 58,000 votes remained uncounted and the election was still uncertified when the candidate was sworn into Congress.
If you believe that not counting the votes couldn't sway an election, then you would see no problem, since it is completely legal (not criminal or prosecutable) to swear candidates into office without counting all the votes.
If your only concern is with criminality and you are not concerned with election integrity, there is a potential problem if elections officials should fail to spot improper registration applications and actually enter them into the voter rolls, but no problem whatsoever with votes not being counted at all. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2947
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 11:24 am: |
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Mark,
Since you OBVIOUSLY don't have experience with ACORN-submitted forms, allow me to educate you.
ACORN intentionally has their amateur registrars alter one or two digits in numeric fields, such as "last 4 SS#", or DOB, or street address house number and/or alpha fields such as swapping the order or selection of hyphenated names used, or altering spelling, in minor ways so as to evade detection as duplicates. This was in their manuals. It is a TRAINING TECHNIQUE!!!
That IN AND OF ITSELF is criminal. THAT is far MORE OFTEN the so-called "quality control" that ACORN engages in. How do I know this? I saw it and REPORTED IT TO MY THEN BOSSES, who IGNORED IT out of political pressure or expediency. I saw literally hundreds of forms (keep in mind I saw a VERY small percentage of forms personally) where correct information on the forms was CROSSED OUT, and altered INCORRECT information was substituted in a clear attempt to evade detection as a duplicate registration.
The problems with ACORN forms are manifold. They attempt to register non-existent persons. They attempt to register real people under multiple addresses and name versions and DOB's, sometimes on the same date, and they hold forms until deadline day so that normal levels of scutinization are impossible while still getting the forms entered into the database in time for the election.
In 2004, I got over 2500 registrations dumped on my counter from a black trashbag on deadline day by ACORN in early October. The most recent date on one of those forms was in early July. If their excuse was "quality control", why were the forms dumped into a trashbag loose, and not in any kind of bundle?
Protect these thugs all you want, Mark. It only erodes your credibility. As if...
The Pennsylvania prosecutions, unlike the Nevada ones, aren't for the pay scheme, but the underlying fraud.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10504
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 11:33 am: |
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Okay let me tell you where I'm really going with this.
Kurt is correct that the concern is worst with mail-in voting, BUT the risks are not limited to mail-in voting, and mail-in voting is getting out of control. Many states are now pushing voters to get on "permanent mail-in" status.
Here are the pieces that combine for a system that is not prudent:
1) George Soros-funded Secretary of State project, in which his funded project has the explicit goal of selecting secretaries of state with a partisan political agenda (Democratic). I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is an equivalent project on the Republican side. The state's chief election official should not making decisions for partisan advantage, period.
2) The secretaries of state chosen by the Secretary of State Project are ALL, as far as I can tell, pushing mail-in voting.
3) Many of the mail-in states are now also pushing Internet registration, which allows a single insider to stuff the list. Without Internet registration, we've got groups like ACORN (and the DMV) with perennially poor quality control sticking multiples and ineligibles on the list. When the list is controlled by partisan secretaries of state and their hires, you've got a centralized system of insiders with unprecedented control.
4) The statewide voter databases and the mail-in voting software combine to form what is essentially a room full of dip-switches:
- Voter is ineligible / eligible, just flip the switch.
- Voter has cast a mail-in vote / has not cast a mail in vote, just flip the switch.
- Voter's signature matches / does not match, just flip the switch.
- Alternatively, Voter's signature image file, export from one database (ie. envelopes) into the other database (registration card image) to make it match. I already know that the envelope and reg. card signature image files are yoked together in relational databases. Unless the export functions are disabled, insiders can sit there signing envelopes and just export all the envelope sig images into the reg card images at the push of a button. For added fun, this software was developed by embezzler Jeffrey Dean.
More dip switches:
- Voter party affiliation;
- Confirmation mailer has been sent / not sent;
- Confirmation mailer has been returned / not returned;
- Ballot arrived by deadline yes / no
There are several more such fields, which can be used as flags. These dip-switches (or "radio buttons" if you prefer to visualize it that way) can be set wholesale in seconds. You can do wholesale flips of any dip-switch you want based on searches and sorts using any combination of the dip-switches, or any other criteria (ie, geographic, age, and in many states, race).
Those of you who work with databases should see exactly what I mean. I'm sorry if I haven't expressed it well.
Understand that with this room full of dip-switches, reality no longer matters.
You can mark a whole set of voters as "has returned their confirmation letter" even if they have not. You can adjust on the fly, and there is evidence that such adjustments have been done. Just one example: Mail-in ballots in Island County Washington for a set of citizens were "not received" and then, during the middle of the canvassing, were "received" and then after the canvass, were once again marked "not received." In Lake County Indiana, a set of absentee ballots was marked "ineligible" and during the days following the election, prior to certification, were adjusted in the database to be marked "eligible." The company managing the database admitted that it had done so, claiming it was "testing" something and that it "didn't affect the election."
Poll workers in Georgia found elderly voters marked as having voted absentee; when those voters showed up at the polls and objected, the instruction was to tell them to come back in the afternoon; when they returned, they were marked as not having voted absentee. In Colorado and Florida, voter party affiliations were found to have been switched. And I could go on. The evidence is powerful that this is already going on in various ways.
These databases are (unwisely) fluid, live creatures that literally change from minute to minute even during the period while the election is live.
5) Another check and balance is the US Census. We know that the Shelby County Tennessee voter list is stuffed because it has 650,000 registered voters out of an 800,000 population, an impossible figure given the percentage under age 18. Now ACORN has been selected to do the next census. At one point, Obama was trying to move the census process in under the White House, last I heard, unsuccessful. As I understand it, the census is now under the Dept. of Commerce, now under former Washington State Governor Gary Locke, a trusty partisan.
I know that partisan appointments like Ron Sims (Formerly ran King County) and Gary Locke, are a way of life in government. But when you take an organization of matching partisanship (ACORN) which has a record of, at best, sloppy quality controls, and you have it helping with voter lists AND doing one of the checks and balances, you are acting imprudently.
Look, I don't like seeing this. I don't want to look. I don't blame anyone else for wanting to get into denial and live there permanently. But taken together, we're getting into a system that is NOT PRUDENT. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2948
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 11:41 am: |
|
Also, Mark,
This "rant" that you keep returning to, ad nauseum, about elected representatives being somehow "required" to metaphorically slurp a finger moist and hoist it aloft, as opposed to exercising independent judgment to be ratified or rejected every 2, 4, or 6 years by the voters is REALLY GETTING TIRED.
This one:
"ACORN deserves to be prosecuted, in my opinion, for the crime of deceiving Americans into thinking that just because they register and vote, they might have a voice in government, something Kurt has disproved with his "prevailing theory" which explains that we elect tyrants to make our decisions for us, not representatives to further our interests."
If this still sticks in your craw, sir, I remind you that this particular discussion is as old as the Republic, and VERY VERY few scholars have adopted the "quasi-direct representation of the people's wishes" paradigm as the correct one. You seem to like it just fine, and that's okay. You are free to advocate it all you want. It's when you exepect it to be so that you get a little "out there".
Sure, today's technology makes it more possible than ever to effectively and timely communicate a sizable chunk of the electorate's wishes to a representative. However, where our new tech society has failed is in "sample selection". Those so motivated to use tech to reach out to their representatives suffer from the most poisonous of all statistical flaws - that of self-selection.
Translation: if it comes from the Internet, it's useless as public opinion reserach. Why? Because it includes only people already self-evidently passionate about an issue. Nothing in which people CHOOSE TO participate can be assumed to represent the public opinion at large. And unfortunately, that includes the biggest self-selection of all - public elections. It is ONLY their incredibly large sample size, in elections with big turnouts, that makes them even marginally useful as a tool for measuring public sentiment. In low-turnout ones, no one should delude themsleves about what they measure other than a 'game' with a 'score'.
Oh yeah, and that game has a prize - power. If that's not enough to get infrequent voters out to vote in low turnout elections, shame on them.
==========================================
Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
|
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 401
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 1:37 pm: |
|
Bev, the U.S. Census is not a check or balance on whether or not properly cast votes by duly qualified voters are actually counted. At most it could be a check on whether many additional voters were fraudulently added to the lists by elections officials.
ACORN does not help with voter lists, all it does is collect applications for elections officials to either add to those lists or reject. The Census has absolutely no influence over whether elections officials negligently add unqualified registrations to the voter polls. If there are more people counted in the census than actually exist, that leaves elections officials greater latitude to add fraudulent votes, but I really doubt if even the most corrupt elections officials would pay a group like ACORN to do them that favor.
Among the dip-switches you list, some are easier to use than others. Dip-switches are also used in elections, at least for the 80% of the country whose votes are counted by easily-hacked and unverifiable central tabulators.
One such dip-switch is:
Voted FOR candidate or proposition / voted AGAINST candidate or proposition.
Suppose some corrupt elections officials want to sway an election in favor of a particular ballot proposition. They could find and pay people to fraudulently register nonexistent voters, add those nonexistent voters to the voter rolls, and then vote their ballots for them, or they could just flip the dip-switch so that the votes of properly registered, fully eligible voters who voted against the proposition, are flipped to show that they voted for the proposition. Since the former method is more complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and has much greater risk of getting caught than the latter, why would they do things the hard way when they can just flip a dip-switch?
Kurt, I understand that you are enraged by what you allege are ACORN's attempts to do things that you consider time-wasting, and potentially, if they are abetted by negligent or corrupt elections officials, criminal, but it is your own credibility that is at question when you are not concerned about democracy.
Democracy is when the supreme power over government is vested in the hands of the people.
When "representatives" are not required to represent the interests of their constituents and cannot be forced to do so or held accountable if they don't, the people have no power over government and the system is not a democracy. Nor is it a republic because a republic is a form of democracy where the people exercise their supreme power over government through their representatives, but when people have no power over their representative, they have no power over government.
While Kurt may be perfectly happy with an oligarchy or tyranny, most citizens who vote do so because they have been misled to believe that elections indicate a democratic form of government and that their vote constitutes a voice in government. Were they to fully understand that even if their vote was counted as cast, it is only a vote for who would rule them, not who would represent them, they might not be so eager to vote.
Bev started this thread by writing, "To be clear, the criminal charges outlined against ACORN below are not about ineligible voters casting ballots, which would be election-tampering. This is about illegal and reckless compensation schemes, basically, pay-per-registration and a bonus program called "Blackjack" or "21+" that added bonus money for exceeding quota."
Bev clarified this by explaining that the only possible way in which this could influence elections is if elections officials deliberately or negligently entered ineligible registrations on the voter polls, AND if these registrations were actually voted. In other words, ACORN could not commit election fraud without the negligence or collusion of elections officials.
In other words, there is no way that ACORN could commit election fraud. To the best of my knowledge it has only been charged with, but not convicted of, an illegal payment scheme. There might be a way for negligent or corrupt elections officials to commit election fraud using registrations collected by ACORN, but elections officials would first have to negligently or deliberately add such registrations to the voter polls, and then illegally vote them. I see no reason that elections officials, who constantly complain of being overworked, would go to such extra efforts when they can achieve the same thing wholesale by flipping a dip-switch, do you?
Indeed, if there were corrupt elections officials who wanted to sway an election, they would have no need to enter fraudulent registrations on the voter rolls, as they could simply but illegally vote ballots for properly registered voters who didn't vote, illegally flip the votes of properly registered voters who DID vote, or even more simply and completely legally, just leave the ballots for areas known to vote in a way they didn't like, uncounted.
From what Kurt has written, and his four years as an elections official, I tend to believe him that elections officials don't usually make extra work for themselves when they don't have to. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10508
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, May 8, 2009 - 2:29 pm: |
|
You know, Mark, you're almost starting to remind me of those folks in New Hampshire who told me not to watch chain of custody because my job was to watch the memory cards and computerized voting machines.
"Black Box" means secret processes we can't directly observe. The voter database situation, as it is currently implemented, is Black Box.
Tool Kit 2008 divides voting rights protection into three areas: deceptive practices, voter lists, and vote counts.
Most of the ACORN discussion in in the voter list category; much of what you are introducing is in the vote count category.
I feel like you are saying "Bev, your job is to look at vote counts, don't look at voter lists."
I'm looking at voter list issues. Voter lists are very much a Black Box issue.
The census, and population figures, are very much one of the key checks and balances with voter list protection. In fact, in Lake County Indiana and in Shelby County Tennessee, we've been able to see that the lists are filled with inappropriate data just by comparing the quantity of registered voters with the number of human beings who live in the county. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 403
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 4:07 am: |
|
Bev, you are welcome to look at voter lists, deceptive practices, vote counts, and anything else you wish.
But if you or Kurt have any information that ACORN committed criminal acts with which they have not been charged, I feel that information should be conveyed to the proper authorities.
As I understand it, the only thing they have been charged with is improperly paying people who collected LEGITIMATE voter registrations, not with failing to flag bogus registrations or tampering with registrations.
Organizations that hire people to register voters have to follow certain rules. They cannot simply turn in every registration collected, they have to examine them first to ensure that they were properly filled out. But when they find a bogus registration, they cannot just throw it away. They are required to flag it as bogus but they must turn it in along with legitimate registrations.
I'd be very interested in knowing how such registrations must be flagged. Are organizations like ACORN allowed to make marks directly on the ballots to flag them as bogus? Or do they have to attach some easily-removed flag, like a paper clip or a sticky note to the ballot? Could a corrupt elections official who wanted to frame ACORN or wanted to add bogus registrations to the voter rolls, remove those flags?
Kurt wrote, "ACORN intentionally has their amateur registrars alter one or two digits in numeric fields, such as 'last 4 SS#', or DOB, or street address house number and/or alpha fields such as swapping the order or selection of hyphenated names used, or altering spelling, in minor ways so as to evade detection as duplicates. This was in their manuals. It is a TRAINING TECHNIQUE!!!
That IN AND OF ITSELF is criminal. THAT is far MORE OFTEN the so-called 'quality control' that ACORN engages in. How do I know this? I saw it and REPORTED IT TO MY THEN BOSSES, who IGNORED IT out of political pressure or expediency. I saw literally hundreds of forms (keep in mind I saw a VERY small percentage of forms personally) where correct information on the forms was CROSSED OUT, and altered INCORRECT information was substituted in a clear attempt to evade detection as a duplicate registration."
I don't doubt that Kurt's boss, presumably an elections official, was informed of criminal acts and did nothing. The fact that a person is an elections official does not mean that they aren't corrupt. But I find it totally unbelievable that Kurt, having evidence of criminal acts, simply remained silent after that instead of taking his evidence to law enforcement.
If the motive of his boss was political expediency, what was Kurt's motive for doing nothing subsequently? Lack of concern about criminality? Fondness for ACORN? Fear of losing his job if he reported crimes to law enforcement?
If I had evidence of illegal training techniques or of illegally doctored voter registrations, and reported these things to elections officials who did nothing, I'd take my evidence to law enforcement authorities. Is law enforcement in Kurt's area so corrupt that it would be a waste of time to report crimes to them?
This simply doesn't make sense to me at all.
Even if Kurt views elections not as an exercise in democracy but just as a political game for the reward of power, why would he want to conceal criminal acts from law enforcement--particularly if such acts were committed by an organization he does not want in power?
And how can I be sure that somebody who withheld evidence of criminal acts from law enforcement, whether to placate a corrupt boss or for any other reason, is being truthful? |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 404
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 4:46 am: |
|
On May 7th, Kurt wrote, "However, there is more than adequate, indeed VOLUMINOUS physical on-paper and electronic evidence of ACORN's registration misdeeds, in my county and countless others across the nation, (with the voter registration list in my PC I can find HUNDREDS myself in a few minutes) yet no one, not the registration commission nor the D.A's office, has any interest at all in pursuing it. Why? Politics, that's why. A previous D.A. in 2006 indeed DID prosecute and won convictions. Yet after 2008, no interest. Why?"
On May 8th, Kurt wrote, "I am downright ecstatic to announce that Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) authorities have yesterday ALSO filed criminal charges against ACORN and several of its employees."
Is it possible that the authorities only prosecute when they have reason to believe that crimes have been committed? If there were prosecutions of ACORN in 2006, 2008, and 2009, and Kurt himself mentions having had evidence of criminal acts that he reported only to his boss but not to law enforcement authorities, perhaps there were other elections officials who also withheld evidence from law enforcement. District Attorneys do not have the time and staff to examine every voter registration form. That is the job of elections officials. If elections officials are aware of crimes and do not report them to the District Attorney, the District Attorney has no basis for prosecutions.
It appears that prosecutions do occur whenever crimes are reported to law enforcement, but that authorities are unable to prosecute when crimes are not reported to them.
In this instance I cannot attribute motivation because for the life of me I cannot think of any possible motivation that Kurt might have had for not reporting evidence of crimes to law enforcement. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 406
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 4:54 pm: |
|
Anyone still following this thread might also be interested in the discussion here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/77776/80351.html?1241912734 |
Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 40
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 8:05 pm: |
|
The GOP's ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Scam Continues
(How else are they gonna be able to 'win' elections at this point?)
Posted By Brad Friedman On 9th May 2009 @ 16:35 In Pennsylvania, RNC, Republicans, ACORN | 2 Comments
Can't tell you how sick I am of the GOP's ACORN nonsense, having long ago exhausted myself in debunking the entire GOP scam [1] to try and use the group as a stalking horse to support their own insidious efforts at imposing polling place Photo ID restrictions in hopes of doing nothing more than keeping 20 to 30 million legal, largely Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast their legal vote, because they don't own the type of ID that would be required to vote under these draconian, unnecessary, Jim Crow disenfranchisement laws.
But, as a quick perusal of recent 'Daily Voting News' articles [2] will show, efforts are still being doubled, and redoubled, by the GOP in state legislatures across the country in hopes of passing such restrictions into law. It seems these laws, meant to combat non-existent "voter fraud", are the Republicans' last, best hope to be able to actually "win" elections at all these days.
So, with all of that in mind...here's the latest AP report [3] on charges filed against ACORN workers in PA on Thursday, for falsifying voter registration forms.
As I replied to the person who sent me the link, please note in the poorly reported story: "There's no evidence anybody voted illegally or was denied a vote because of the scam".
Further, "the scam" was carried out by workers, in violation of ACORN's policies (akin to workers at Wal-Mart stealing items off the shelf --- you'd hardly charge Wal-Mart with "theft" in that incident), and was discovered, in no small part, because ACORN themselves alerted authorities to "the scam", and cooperated with law enforcement in helping to bring charges against the fraudsters. Of course, that hasn't stopped Fox "News" from "reporting" the story as if ACORN themselves (versus their workers) had been charged.
ACORN workers "registered some 38,000 new voters in southwestern Pennsylvania...last year", according to the AP article. The charges now filed against 6 state workers (out of the group's 13,000 employees nationwide) involve 51 registration cards suspected of having been forged by the workers. And, again: "There's no evidence anybody voted illegally or was denied a vote because of the scam."
The ACORN thing is indeed a "scam", but not the one that the AP report --- and the GOP and Fox "News" opportunists hoping to use it to disenfranchise voters --- paint it as.
Readers of The BRAD BLOG [4] likely already know all of the above. And so it bores me no end to have to keep pointing it out and re-reporting the same idiocy over and over again. But as the democracy-haters haven't given up on their insidious nonsense, I guess I have little choice but to keep pointing it out from time to time.
As long promised, The BRAD BLOG [5] has covered your electoral system fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation [6] to help us keep going. If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details on that right here... [7]
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[2] recent 'Daily Voting News' articles: http://www.bradblog.com/?cat=9
[3] latest AP report: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090507/ap_on_re_us/us_voter_registration_probe_3;_y
lt=A0oGktnFxwNKqUwAsh51CqMX;_ylu=X3oDMTBxMmNlbTdlBHBndANhdl9uZXdzX3Jlc3VsdHMEc2V jA3Ny
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Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 41
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 8:21 pm: |
|
- The BRAD BLOG - http://www.bradblog.com -
State Officials Allege Bush DoJ Involvement in Nevada's Pre-Election ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Raid
US Attorney said to have worked with state was installed after US Attorney firings; Strongly suggests DoJ violations...
Posted By Brad Jacobson On 18th March 2009 @ 14:40 In Election Irregularities, AP, Election Fraud, Missouri, Election 2008, New Mexico, Photo ID Laws, Accountability, Dept. of Justice, FBI, Patrick Leahy, Nevada, ACORN | 3 Comments
Guest blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound [1]
Part of the reason I've been off the radar for so long --- my latest investigative report for RAW STORY [2]:
Federal agencies were involved in the decision to raid the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in Nevada last October, just weeks before Election Day, the offices of Nevada’s Secretary of State and Attorney General say.
The allegations raise questions of whether politics played a part in the raid and calls into question assertions by the US Attorney’s office that they were uninvolved. Federal guidelines instruct agencies investigating election fraud to avoid action that might impact the elective process.
Bob Walsh, a spokesman for Nevada’s Secretary of State, and Edie Cartwright, a spokeswoman for Nevada’s Attorney General, said that not only were the Nevada US Attorney’s Office and the FBI involved in investigating Nevada ACORN on allegations of voter registration fraud but that all four agencies jointly made the decision to conduct the raid. Both the investigation and the raid were conducted as part of the joint federal-state Election Integrity Task Force announced last July, the spokespersons said.
In initial conversations with Raw Story, Walsh wouldn’t specify the federal agencies involved in the decision to raid the ACORN office. But after being presented with previous statements he'd made in which he said the US Attorney and the FBI were involved, he said, “My comments don’t come with an expiration date.” Asked to confirm if that meant he did indeed stand by every statement he made in an earlier report, Walsh added, “Yeah.”
Cartwright corroborated Walsh’s two main assertions: that Nevada's US Attorney and the FBI were involved in the investigation of Nevada ACORN as part of the joint federal-state Election Integrity Task Force, and the decision to raid the ACORN office was made between these four agencies. Asked to confirm that her office agreed with Walsh, Cartwright answered without hesitation, “Yes, that’s right.”
Their statements appear to contradict those previously made [3] by Nevada US Attorney Greg Brower's spokeswoman Natalie Collins. In October, Collins said the US Attorney’s office and the FBI “have not been, and are not, at the present time, involved.” Collins later said
she was misquoted.
Told of the alleged involvement of the Nevada US Attorney’s Office and the FBI in the ACORN raid, Justin Levitt, an election law expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, expressed concern.
“The manual governing how federal prosecutors are supposed to act with respect to election crimes says you should do everything in your power to conduct your investigation so that the investigation does not become an issue in the election,” Levitt told Raw Story in a recent interview. “The raid is certainly not that.”
Read the rest of the story HERE [4]. (Many other interesting connections follow.)
• For more on the GOP's 2008 phony ACORN "voter fraud" scam, please see this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage Page... [5]
Cross-posted from MediaBloodhound [6]
The BRAD BLOG [7] has covered your electoral system, tirelessly, fiercely and independently for years, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work, which only you help to fund, with a donation [8] to help us continue the work so few are willing to do. If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details on that right here... [9]
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ml
[4] HERE: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/NV_State_Officials_say_feds_involved_0316.html
[5] this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage Page...: http://www.bradblog.com/ACORN
[6] MediaBloodhound: http://mediabloodhound.typepad.com/weblog/2009/03/story-of-the-day-feds-were-inv
olved-in-acorn-raid-in-nevada-officials-say.html
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Click here to print. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 409
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 11:32 pm: |
|
While I knew instinctively that reporting crimes to the proper authorities was the right thing to do, a friend just pointed me to this Wikipedia link (which may not be accurate because it is Wikipedia, but it could easily be checked in a law dictionary):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)
As I understand it from reading that link, somebody with knowledge of a crime who simply fails to report it to the proper authorities, becomes an "accessory after the fact," that is, an accessory to the crime, even if they had no part in the commission of the crime.
So reporting knowledge of a crime to the proper authorities isn't just the ethical thing to do, it is actually criminal NOT to do it.
I think that should be taken into consideration by anyone who is concerned about crimes. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10513
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, May 10, 2009 - 11:31 am: |
|
I agree in principle, Mark, but I have been told explicitly, by a law enforcement agent, that there is no legal requirement to report a crime. This came up in the context of Kathy Greenwell and I seeking to learn what consequences would be invoked on Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell, who failed (initially) to report a case of voting machine tampering. Only after local citizens asked for the report in public records requests did he file a report.
Kathy, bless her heart, had obtained hand written notes from a meeting attended by the sheriff and others, and these notes referred to a break in at the voting machine storage facility and tampering. Another Bullitt County citizen then asked for the police report on it, and was told no report had been filed.
I believe it was the KBI (Kentucky Bureau of Investigation) that told us there is no legal requirement to report a crime, even for a sheriff.
This seems counter-intuitive and I would love to be able to argue definitively that there is such an obligation. Not sure there is, though. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2949
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 - 7:19 am: |
|
Mark and Bev,
When you bring violations to the Board, who were then my collective bosses, and one of the three wants to refer the case to the authorities, and the two making up the majority tell you not only that THEY won't but YOU won't either if you like your job, then that's "game over". My deputy was similarly threatened. And then after they fired me a few months later, they told my deputy that he was going to tar me with their bogus allegations, and when he refused, he was framed by them on a trumped up personnel matter, and fired too.
In 2004, ACORN did "Phase 1" of their ramp-up. Prior to 2004, they operated ONLY in big city areas. In 2004, they expanded into SOME secondary cities. In 2006 and 2008 they GREATLY expanded to most urban areas.
I can't prove HOW they chose where they chose to operate in 2004, but I find it instructive that in every county they added to their list in 2004, the Boards of Election majorities in those counties were all "politically friendly" to the ACORN political paradigm. In other words, they had political cover there. In my county at that time both of the two people who made up the Board of Election majority were on the Kerry/Edwards local steering committee.
You see, political activity by the "referees" doesn't ONLY occur at the state level. It gets down to counties, too.
Mark seems to think only the political right plays these dirty games. And where he lives, that's probably pretty accurate. Power corrupts. But Mark should look around in a northeastern city. Virtually all the corruption is coming from the left. It's hard to be corrupt when there is no power to be wielded.
I suspect if I lived in San Diego County, I might see things more like Mark does, since I am NOT the type that tolerates corruption well.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10517
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 - 8:54 am: |
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Kurt, there is another former election official who was fired after she blew a whistle. Julie Anne Kempf, formerly King County elections director, discovered that Jeffrey Dean, who had been given a key and 24-hour access to the King County central tabulation room, was a criminal. She requested public records proving his criminal history and requested changes in access procedures for the tabulation room. She also obtained the criminal record for John Elder, in charge of King County's ballot printing.
She brought the information to her supervisors and was rebuked for requesting the public records from the Dept. of Corrections without first getting permission from the county to look into it. In charge of the county at the time: Ron Sims, who has been appointed to a federal position now.
Nothing was done to remove access for either of these convicted felons, but Julie Anne was subsequently railroaded out of office, ostensibly over an issue of mailing absentee ballots late. What no one paid any attention to was WHO mailed them late: the Diebold ballot printing plant, run by convicted felon John Elder - the very person she blew the whistle on - was in charge of mailing the ballots.
It was Julie Anne Kempf who brought Jeffrey Dean and John Elder to the attention of Black Box Voting, and within a week, we broke the story and it was covered by the Associated Press.
By the way, I am getting heavy pressure to back down on my criticisms of ACORN. The contention that ACORN flags all of its own bad registrations is not supported by the facts; unfortunately, I lost a hard drive with over 200,000 election-related news stories of all types. Earlier I had perused enough of those to become convinced, (around January of this year), that ACORN was responsible for Oops-Excuse dumping of ineligibles and duplicates into the system, and I do not understand why this organization has not implemented the necessary quality controls.
I note that several of the defenses of ACORN posted here by participants come from ACORN's own Web site.
I will see if I can recover some of those old ACORN stories showing that improper registrations DID make it into the system without being flagged by ACORN.
Earlier,, I was in exactly the same camp as Brad Friedman, Mark, and others, thinking that ACORN was a victim rather than complicit. As mentioned in the lead post, I have been forced to rethink this and no, I did not want to rethink it, I wanted to believe all is well.
And it is not just ACORN. The Department of Motor Vehicles registrations are also problematic. We should be requiring people to fill out their own forms rather than allowing persons from the DMV or registration organizations to fill everything in saying "sign here."
One of the states that just passed Internet registration, by the way, is Indiana, whose Republican secretary of state backed it. I have been trying to find out how they are dealing with presenting photo ID upon registering. He seems to think that a digital signature database suffices to authenticate the applicant; anyone who knows how databases work knows that unless you disable the export function on the signature data field, it will be a trifling matter to bypass that in wholesale fashion.
Data integrity protections: Registrations should be in person, not digital. Registrations should have the voter fill out their own form. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2950
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 - 11:23 am: |
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Also Mark,
In my 4 years as my county'S Director of Elections, my Board (of 3 elected people who were my collective boss) referred perhaps a dozen or so cases to the District Attorney for prosecution. These came from complaints from partisans of both sides, or other such action (I can think of one sua sponte referral.) The D.A. declined to prosecute any of them from 2001-2005. Most were campaign finance violations. Some were illegal advertising under PA law. A few were these registration form issues. One was a man who voted twice. No prosecutions.
D.A.'s don't often prosecute elections cases. There are usually bigger fish to fry.
In 2007, I filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth a lavishly documented campaign finance complaint. The Secretary agreed the complaint was meritorious and they referred it to the Attorney General. Nothing ever came of it.
Nothing can force (or even persuade) a prosecutor to actually bring a case. They almost never do amount to anything. It's called "prosecutorial discretion". It means "this is not worth my time".
No wonder people still cheat. Nothing happens to them even if they do, because prosecutors don't want to spend scarce resources on this type of case.
HOWEVER, one time well before I was the Election Director, a maverick Democrat who loved poking a finger in the eye of the other Democrats who ran city government got caught not properly accounting for a small ($500-isn, I think) campaign contribution, and the "powers that be" threw the kitchen sink at him, even stripping him of his right to vote for 5 years and barring him from ever running for office again.
It all boils down to whom the insiders want to screw around with and whom they don't. But I don't need to tell you that, do I, Mark?
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 411
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 - 7:09 pm: |
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Bev, please try to find those stories about ACORN. Many of us in the election integrity community have been following these stories for many years and we have seen nothing other than unfounded allegations about ACORN being "responsible for Oops-Excuse dumping of ineligibles and duplicates into the system." They are required to turn in all registrations, but they cannot enter them into the system, that is the sole prerogative of elections officials.
Kurt and Bev, the ONLY evidence that I have ever heard of that ACORN deliberately created bogus registrations is Kurt's assertion that he saw an ACORN training manual.
The FBI has been actively investigating ACORN nationwide for many years and is still seeking any evidence they can get against ACORN. Even if ACORN managed to destroy every such manual in existence, if such a manual ever existed I'm sure that the FBI would be very grateful to know about it. Since Kurt is no longer working in his former capacity, he has no reason not to take his story to the FBI. Even without proof, if they have any sworn testimony that such a manual existed, they could question people from ACORN who would have been responsible for using such a manual at that time and get corroborating evidence.
If the evidence ever existed and you had personal knowledge of it, Kurt, I think you should assist the FBI with their ongoing investigations by giving them a deposition to that effect.
Unless, of course, what you've said in this discussion is not exactly true and you really don't want to see ACORN prosecuted and convicted of the crimes of which apparently only you have any knowledge.
I'm getting very annoyed, as I don't see fear of being fired from a job from which you've already been fired, as a reason to continue withholding information from the FBI. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10532
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 10:14 am: |
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Mark,
You appear to be separating the employees of ACORN, who even ACORN admits have created bogus registrations, from ACORN itself.
My position is that if ACORN did not locate and yank the bogus registrations created by its employees, it is culpable.
Let's set this up correctly, Mark: You are lobbing all kinds of assertions. To be clear, are you saying that ACORN never submitted bogus registrations without flagging them?
That's the issue for me. If you want to make that assertion, I'll go hunt around for stories that prove you are incorrect. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10533
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 10:30 am: |
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Those defending ACORN, here is another issue I've been following that causes concern. It seems that two brothers who founded ACORN embezzled over $1 million. Despite repeated requests from some of ACORN's local chapters, there has been no accounting. The money was ultimately paid back (this is from memory; it is in one of the articles lost on my old hard drive, but probably readily findable on Google) -- anyway, it was paid back by one of the board members for a completely different organization and by the way, one that has been involved in making grants to election integrity groups. The man who embezzled from ACORN was retained on the payroll for eight years after the embezzlement.
We're all ready to jump on Jeffrey Dean, an embezzler, saying it is inappropriate for him to be programming voting software. I think this is an appropriate criticism. Why is there a double standard for a founding member, employee, board member of ACORN who embezzled over $1 million from ACORN and was kept on the payroll? It does not appear that it's prudent to hand the US Census over to this organization, especially when the census acts as a check and balance against the voter lists. This puts ACORN on both sides of one of the checks and balance. There is a principle in accounting called "segregation of duties." This treads on that principle.
Why would a board member of another organization (it was IHC or Tides, as I recall), step in and pay off a million dollars to get an embezzler out of hot water?
Obviously there are things I don't understand, or perhaps I have a memory hole and misremember the details. But I have to tell you, nothing about this smells right. |
Michael T. Aupperle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Auplvo11
Post Number: 42
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 12:08 pm: |
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"Why is there a double standard" There's not ! Lets burn them all at the stake ! No one is defending any crimes alleged to have been committed by acorn. My problem lies with all the nationwide government entities that ignore all of the other monstrous voting problems talked about on these web sites that are trying to correct the voting system.Look at what the SOS of California did. She has at least made moves on the real criminals in the voting machine industry and the county governments.How is it possible for sequoia to be De-certified for use in California and be the only system allowed to be used in Nevada."THAT'S MINDBOGGLING" It is what I cannot understand about the mind set of NV SOS and AG and all law enforcement to ignore sequoia and NV counties but investigate acorn. Who is probably more responsible for providing defective election "RESULTS" sequoia or acorn??? acorn should be investigated for any wrongdoing as the voting machine companies and county governments should be also ! |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2953
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 12:48 pm: |
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Actually Bev, I'm not all that bothered about ACORN having SOME involvement in the census, IF (big honkin' IF) what they're doing is delivering to their key constituencies the message that it is a BIG problem to evade the census.
We have to face the fact that there are some decent-sized urban populations that are EXTREMELY wary of ANYTHING attached to government. If ACORN can successfully deliver the message to subcultures that it is in their best interests to participate fully in the census, then that is a good thing. I strongly suspect the federal government's usual PSA's may miss the mark. Alternative message delivery may be required. People who live their whole lives in "typical white guy" places really are missing a great deal of what happens, and doesn't, in some core urban areas and cultures.
That is how ACORN's role is being portrayed. If that's what it's about, then it's not just benign, but valuable.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 413
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 12:52 pm: |
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Bev writes: "My position is that if ACORN did not locate and yank the bogus registrations created by its employees, it is culpable.
Let's set this up correctly, Mark: You are lobbing all kinds of assertions. To be clear, are you saying that ACORN never submitted bogus registrations without flagging them?"
No, Bev, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that even if ACORN failed to flag bogus registrations, that does not make ACORN culpable of "creating" them, as you have alleged. If ACORN is culpable of failing to flag bogus registrations, then it is culpable of failing to flag bogus registrations, not of creating them. You alleged that ACORN is culpable of "creating" bogus registrations when you wrote, "....by creating bogus registration forms like ACORN?" in the other thread:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/77776/80351.html?1242148027#POST53216
Your allegation that ACORN was culpable of "creating" those registrations, and Kurt's allegation that an ACORN training manual taught employees how to create bogus registrations, if true, are extremely serious and any information either of you may have about such crimes should, in my opinion, be conveyed to the FBI, which has an ongoing investigation of ACORN, would be extremely grateful for any such information, and has, to my knowledge, no partisan ties to the Democratic Party or to ACORN. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2954
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 1:05 pm: |
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Mark,
I think you are slicing the bologna a wee bit too thin.
You seemed above to hint that ACORN has an obligation to submit all forms they had filled out, but with flagging if called for. They asserted the same thing in 2004. I disagree with that analysis. ACORN has, according to my knowledge of Pennsylvania law, NO obligation to submit ANYTHING to my former office that they had any reason to believe was fraudulent. In fact, doing so is not only not required, I believe it's forbidden.
They did deliver a small package of "flagged" forms which they correctly thought were bogus. I asked them why they even brought them to me. They said they were required to submit them. I asked, "required by whom?" I still don't know by whom.
This is the core of the problem, Mark. ACORN has, within its culture of beliefs, things that they believe are legally required of them that are not, and also failure to do OTHER things that ARE required of them which they do NOT DO.
In Pennsylvania, unless the registrant fills out the form themselves without assistance (something ACORN typically does not allow a registrant to do), then if the ACORN "contractor" (they are NOT employees) submits the form, that is the legal equivalent of "creating" the form.
In short, the way ACORN operates, submitting IS creating. When they take it upon themselves to gather and deliver, as opposed to merely distributing forms for the registrant to mail in himself, they take that obligation (and risk) upon themselves.
This is the core risk of any national organization coming into a state to operate without state-based legal expertise. There are IMPORTANT differences state to state and ACORN has exhibited an astonishing disregard for those distinctions.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 415
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 2:04 pm: |
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Well, according to ACORN, which may or may not be true, since it is a FACT that other states require them to submit all forms, their lawyer advised them to do so in all states. If ACORN committed crimes in PA that are not crimes in other states, and are not only legal but actually required in other states, and the PA authorities refused to take any action, you probably do have a lot of corrupt authorities in PA. For one thing, if the PA authorities have ties to one or more of the major political parties, and the political parties are guilty of the same crimes as ACORN with regard to registrations, then the authorities might not have wanted to have singled out ACORN for prosecution for something of which several political parties may also be guilty.
I do however owe you and Bev an apology. If I interpret your post in the other thread correctly, you did not mean to imply in your post above that you had any evidence of intentional criminality by means of training manuals on the part of ACORN and only meant to say that you had inferred such criminality from what evidence you actually had seen:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/77776/80351.html?1242158897
I apologized in the other post and will do so here as well.
Kurt wrote above:
"ACORN intentionally has their amateur registrars alter one or two digits in numeric fields, such as "last 4 SS#", or DOB, or street address house number and/or alpha fields such as swapping the order or selection of hyphenated names used, or altering spelling, in minor ways so as to evade detection as duplicates. This was in their manuals. It is a TRAINING TECHNIQUE!!!
That IN AND OF ITSELF is criminal. THAT is far MORE OFTEN the so-called "quality control" that ACORN engages in. How do I know this? I saw it and REPORTED IT TO MY THEN BOSSES, who IGNORED IT out of political pressure or expediency."
If I understand Kurt's post in the other thread correctly, he is now saying that he never saw such a training manual and merely inferred that such training manuals must have existed from the way in which registrations were altered.
I sincerely apologize if I misinterpreted Kurt's unfounded allegations, "ACORN intentionally has their amateur registrars alter one or two digits in numeric fields...." and, "This was in their manuals," followed only a few sentences later by, "How do I know this? I saw it and REPORTED IT...." to mean that he had actually seen such a training manual or had knowledge of the existence of such a training manual, when all he meant was that he had simply inferred the existence of such training manuals from the ways in which bogus registrations were altered.
I also apologize for accusing Kurt of withholding information from the FBI. If such information existed, I'm sure he would have taken it to the FBI by now, but he obviously can't go to them with an unfounded allegation attributing motivation to ACORN, no matter how logical his reasoning.
I do sympathize. There are many times where some of us "know" that something is wrong, but cannot prove it to an election official, prosecuting attorney, or court's satisfaction. Sometimes they'll shrug something off as "a glitch" when we have meticulous logical arguments indicating that there was election fraud, but no actual evidence.
Just another of those things that can cut two ways. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2956
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 2:12 pm: |
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Michael,
"How is it possible for sequoia to be De-certified for use in California and be the only system allowed to be used in Nevada."THAT'S MINDBOGGLING"
Mindboggling? Perhaps. Yet far from unique. There are numerous examples of neighboring states having mutually exclusive views of the merit of the very same voting system. Danaher GEMS and their 1242 voting machine got arguably the best grades of any system in Pennsylvania, yet New Jersey found that the very same system was no longer usable there. To add to the mix, in Delaware, it's the only system used statewide.
How can these things be true? Because, dear Michael, there is no "truth" in these matters, merely opinion. And opinion on voting systems is informed by the peculiarities of state statute and case law, and [gasp] even a little political posturing and grandstanding (on the left AND right).
Don't look so amazed, Michael. Welcome to what happens when the federal government legislates in an area where they basically have no business, so that all they gave was broad stroke guidance, leaving states to figure out exactly what HAVA meant.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2957
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 2:36 pm: |
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Mark,
The political parties in Pennsylvania do not often do mass registration drives. The cost/benefit doesn't work this long since NVRA passed. The parties are far more interested in other activities that bear far more electoral fruit. Registration is more the retail level work of precinct Committeepeople.
By way of illustration, when ACORN came to me requesting 25,000 registration forms in 2004 as their "initial request", it was greater than all requests ever submitted to me, and far in excess of my total inventory on hand. No party had ever asked for more than 2000 at a time. (Yes, some groups send out their own forms online in bulk, and that's okay - PA registration does not have to be on an "official" form, just one that has the same information as the official form.)
Interestingly though, in PA there does NOT seem to be a "cause of action" against ANYONE who does do 'door to door' or 'random contact' voter registration for failing to submit even properly filled out VRMA forms. There seems to be NO PENALTY in this state if, for example, a Democratic Committeeman just "loses" all the new Republican regsitrations he inadvertantly got. (Same applies vice versa of course.)
However, there IS a penalty (supposedly) if you alter a form's contents after the registrant signed it.
So... to review the bidding - throw away or burn the "bad" party registrations? No penalty.
Change the content of a form post-signature? Penalty.
How can this be? Because there are no stautory rules on how to, or not to, conduct registration drives, but there ARE laws against altering legal documents before submitting them. Even any corrections or notes made on a VRMA by an official registrar are supposed to be made in red ink (a color forbidden for use by the voter) to distinguish it from anything put on the form by the voter.
This is why our county election offices SPECIFICALLY AND PUBLICLY encourage potential voters to NEVER NEVER NEVER attempt to register via a registration drive. We have always told people to take the form and mail it in themselves.
Registering by mass registration drive is a bad thing to do in Pennsylvania. It's high risk to the voter and rife with opportunities for mischief by the drive organizers.
This is why ACORN's activities are properly viewed with a jaundiced eye in this state.
Are we "outside the mainstream" in this state as compared to others in the field of registration? Perhaps. But not only in that, Mark, not even MOSTLY in that.
ACORN needs to calibrate their procedures for each state. AND THEY DON'T!
ACORN gets in trouble here because they think they can just import people and procedures from other states and operate with impunity. They have trouble recruiting "managers" for PA from within because most people even slightly familiar with PA law know ACORN's typical national techniques are illegal here.
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 417
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 2:12 am: |
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Shocking! ACORN actually tried to encourage people to register to vote, whereas political party operatives in PA had never done any such thing.
Somehow that doesn't sound to me like the radical, dangerous, subversive operation it may seem to you, Kurt.
If bogus registrations were turned it, it may have wasted a lot of your time trying to spot them, but if you negligently missed any and actually entered any bogus registrations into the voting rolls, that would be, at least according to what Bev just posted in the other thread, if I understand it correctly, the fault of your bosses for deliberately creating bogus registrations, not your fault or ACORN's fault. If your bosses didn't set up ironclad rules and procedures to ensure that bogus registrations were not entered into the voting rolls, they would be culpable.
Is it to late to investigate and prosecute them? |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 2958
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 6:25 am: |
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Mark,
ACORN's record would be more praiseworthy if it had resulted in more new net registrations, and those new net registrations had resulted in more net new voters. The actual record is pretty minimal in that regard.
ACORN registrations in 2004 (I can't speak to 2008 yet without delving into my new CD) resulted in a FAR smaller perecentage of new registrants than other organizations' drives (although a decent raw number due to volume), and the new people they DID get registered actually voted in horribly SMALL numbers. Now, due to the unique racial factors in the 2008 election, I am told that changed in 2008. I haven't yet studied it myself. But I do know that from the appearances of the voter history records in 2004 and 2006 that ACORN yielded VERY VERY few new actual voters. It seems that many people filled out a form to get the ACORN person to just go away.
By way of contrast, in 2004, one feminist organization did a mass email of registration forms to people on their email list, and that yielded many more new actual registrants than ACORN did, with FAR FAR fewer actual forms submitted. The "efficiency" of ACORN's operation is just really poor. Lots expended for very little electoral impact. I'd call it more trouble than it's worth.
Your analysis on my bosses was more spot on than you realize, even though I think you intended to be facetious.
In 2004, we were ORDERED (we, the employees ordered by the elected board through their lawyer and county administrator) to stop scrutinizing registration forms for errors and just enter them in as they were submitted. If the software caught a problem, fine, but we were not to question anything manually.
Culpable? I'd stinking say so! It's why the voter file in my former office is the flaming mess it is now - due to similar needs to just dump everything into the official files in 2004, 2006 and probably 2008. There was no time for proper srutiny of potentially bogus forms, and no file maintenance seems to have been done afterward, during the slow periods.
How do I know? Because I have the CD of the whole voter file, and I can pick out dozens and dozens of duplicate and bogus registrations just casually glancing at the Microsoft Access table screens - and I'm not even looking very hard for them. I was looking at the file to match registrations to petition signatures. But WHAMMO, there are the dupes and bogus stuff, staring at me, all with September and October 2004, 2006 and 2008 entry dates.
Oh, by the way, both of those Board members who made those orders and the administrator (but not the lawyer) are out of political office. The lawyer is still there, still a snake, and still doing evil. In my opinion, that lawyer needs his or her (I'm not here about naming names) ticket to practice pulled. I stood next to that lawyer while he/she lied to the President Judge in open court.
==========================================
Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 418
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 2:49 pm: |
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No, Kurt, I was not being facetious. I actually believe that most election fraud is due to insiders such as elections officials and their bosses. Organizations like ACORN simply do not have insider access to the system, so they couldn't commit wholesale election fraud even if they wanted to.
If you recall the topic of this post, it was a story about people convicted of trying to defraud an elections official. Elections officials don't have to "try" to defraud elections officials, because they ARE elections officials, so if they wish to perpetrate a fraud, they can do it directly without having to convince an elections official to do it for them. |
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