but the media's walk with this repugnant republican brouhaha is truly shameful, truly anti-democratic (note the little 'd') and epitomizes how large the bozo bus really is in this country.

And third, because if Republicans can push this lie aggressively enough, and Obama wins, it gives unhinged GOP activists a reason to question the legitimacy of his presidency.

That, my friends, "destroys the fabric of democracy" more than anything else.

Well, but this I suspect is exactly what McCain meant. It's the same logic as his claim it was Obama's fault that he's running such a gutter campaign, because Obama turned down the 100 town halls idea. He means that because Obama is leading, and so many Dems are being registered, it gives the GOP no choice but to delegitimize the whole electoral process. They didn't wanna, but the nasty Dems gave 'em no other option.

I was thinking the same thing when I saw CNN hyperventalating the other night. How pray tell (even if he managed to register)does a 2 dimentional cartoon character actually show up at the voting place and cast a vote. The patent foolishness of the MSM is beyond comprehension.
Shiny Object! Shiny object! QUICK! look over there

And fourth:

If the Republicans steal votes and win some contests, they have already covered their butts by pre-emptively blaming the Democrats for voter fraud.
Republicans blame others for doing something before they do it themselves.

The fact that you have to explain this again is a small tragedy and, again, forces everybody to take their eye off what is important to the American people.

I am a little pissed at Obama for not making the distinction between registration fraud and election fraud. It is easily comprehended by the average citizen and would have possibly averted, or minimized the impact of, this mess.

The fact that you have to explain this again is a small tragedy and, again, forces everybody to take their eye off what is important to the American people.

I am a little pissed at Obama for not making the distinction between registration fraud and election fraud. It is easily comprehended by the average citizen and would have possibly averted, or minimized the impact of, this mess.

McCain was right last night when he said, "I'm pretty sure Big Rat is a Republican."

The left is always entirely unconcerned about voter fraud, or registration fraud, or any kind of fraud for that matter, when it perceives that it benefits them. Hundreds of thousands of incomplete, inaccurate, or fraudulent voter registrations in Ohio. Noooo Problem.

Mike K and pluseyes,

You people are sick. If you keep it up someone is going to get killed. Already Acorn people are receiving death threats and two offices were smashed today. Nice 'movement' you have there guys. You are real quality people.

Mikey,
Just out of curiosity, are you suggesting that any of these "bogus" voter-registrants are going to show up at their assigned precincts on November 4 and cast a vote? Explain how that's going to happen, child---and feel free to take your time at it.

None of these yay-hoos even exist. They're figments of the imagination, dreamed up by the foot-soldiers who were somehow getting an ego-rush by turning in huge numbers of completed bogus registration forms. If you were really so worried about some kind of election fraud, then you'd be screaming for the heads of the fools that fraudulently filled out these phony applications in the first place. That's what the local ACORN offices have been trying to do for weeks now---report abuses in the system---but since we all know that Federal Law Enforcement is in your party's hip pocket, it's not supposed to work out quite that way---now is it?

Cool. Progressive blogger points out that the people pushing the ACORN nonsense don't know the difference between bogus registrations and voter fraud, and two trolls in a row pop up to illustrate the point.

I can't imagine this is going to make much difference in the long run, though. Unless you can find a way to show that Obama is committing poll fraud as well, there's really no getting around the fact that his supporters are much more numerous than McCain's. The only people that are going to believe the election is tainted by fraud if Obama wins are the ones who would never accept him as their President anyway.

You are so right. The Supreme Court used these rumors of fraud as justification for upholding voter ID laws that disenfranchise the poor and the elderly.

WHAT frigging voter fraud? There ISN'T ANY, and saying that is what got that US Atty from Arizona fired. What's his name?

This needs SERIOUS, in-depth investigative reporting.

Sigh.

I have generally stayed away from this boiling cauldron lately

Just how many times did you post about ACORN yesterday alone?

in the meantime, big ol voter purge thanks to the gop....

Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.

Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls. Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average state's rate of removal.

While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush. Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.

A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as "fraudulent."

Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging� ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse. There's more: - Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls." Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.

The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times. "Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats." The investigators level a deadly serious charge: "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."

Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current issue (#1064) of Rolling Stone.

Growing up in Kentucky and living there my young adult life, I am never surprised at these types of stories. Anyone with just a little foresight could have seen this coming years ago. Bush has been an utter failure - except to the crazy, so-called-Christian, neo-con fringe who only care about fetuses and beating up on gays and anyone else they consider "different". These are single-issue voters. Politics confuse them. They see their worlds crashing down around them and they can't fathom that they had anything to do with it. Of course it wasn't their beloved George that did this - it must be the lib-uh-ruls!

These are the folks that the RNC are catering to, that McCain and Palin are pandering to when they spout this voter fraud nonsense. Amazing that, 8 years too late, these folks are concerned that someone might steal the election. But that's what happens when you allow someone to steal an election: They believe from then on that they can steal every election, and that they have the God-given right to do so.

We must do everything in our power to ensure that these people are pushed back to the fringe where they belong.

Senator Danforth has distinguished himself at times in recent years in bucking his party by trying to battle the Republican culture wars. That makes it sadder that he would now engage in such a ridiculous stunt as trying to stoke the flames of this "voter fraud" nonsense.

Republicans engage in registration fraud, too.

Remember when they had a voter registration drive and simply THREW OUT forms from folks who registered as Democrats? No? Then you've got the right-wing blinders on.

ANYBODY who pays people to register voters or get names on petitions will get some doofuses who sign up as Mickey Mouse, etc.

ACORN has actually TURNED IN people they found out did this kind of thing.

Republicans simply deny deny deny that anything took place. They are BRAZEN because they really do not care about democracy. ALL they care about is money, money and more money for THEM and none for anybody else.

Dollar signs are not only in their eyes but in their hearts.

They are scum.

Mike K and pluseyes,
The registration fraud is a concern. I hate that it has occurred. I also think it is grossly dishonest of McCain to allege it will lead to the destruction of the fabric of democracy.

And you are just as concerned about the numerous voter suppression efforts of the GOP across the country, phone-jamming scandals by the GOP, and bogus voter fraud allegations by the White House right? As well as the Supreme Court interfering with a state's voting process in 2000 right? As well as the 2004 Secretary of State of Ohio promising to deliver that state to Bush right? It keeps you up at night, right? Right?

Riiiiight.

I have worked on many political campaigns for each party and I agree voter fraud is almost impossible in modern times.

Here's what one would have to do:

1) register thousands of fake voters (with name address and all that info) just filling out the cards would be difficult and giving them all different addresses would be necessary since someone (anyone from the county election office or elsewere) reviewing voter rolls would invariably notice if huge chunks of voters were registered at the same address.

2) get photo ids for all these fake people, a pain in itself.

3) have the fake voters show up at the polls, and you would need a small army rotating between polling places or the same place to cast all those votes,

4) these folks would have to be paid.

alternatively, if the votes were cast absentee.

One would need to request thousands of ballots to be sent to the same address, which would raise questions not only to the county workers who would send them out, but by the political parties who regularily obtain the addresses of people who request absentee ballot information in order send them political literature.

Even for a well designed machine the cost in either case would be substantially higher (by two ir three orders of magnitude) (10 squared is one order of magnitude) per vote than getting out the vote by pounding the pavement in the traditional method, or advertising on television.

If one breaks down what would be required to affect voting patterns on such a massive scale without detection (because you'd need a many hundreds thousand of votes to ensure you'd affect an outcome which you do not know in advance) the costs and manpower is prohibitive.

And fourth, because the GOP can't count on Democrats to engage in the same election year shenannigans they will, they need to paint the Democrats as guilty of their sins so that when the blogs do force the media to look at voter suppression, it will be "both sides" who are guilty. Only a partisan would think otherwise.

If the GOP is going to engage in voter fraud, they better have the Dems accused of the same so it's a wash.

Steve Benen wrote, "...the right's noise machine manufactured this controversy with tremendous speed, and those in touch with reality were caught flat-footed, perhaps assuming that no one could be foolish enough to believe such transparent nonsense."

THIS is precisely why we lose elections!

Has anyone noticed that Samuel Joseph WOrzelbacher was allowed to vote, even though his legal name is WUrzelbacher? Why no challenge of his registration status? The local Registrar admits it was a clerical error because of the legibility of his, or someone's, writing. Could he register using another spelling of his name and vote again?
Just asking...
peace,
st john

The whole electoral system needs to be created anew, with accessibility and transparency the guiding principles. ACORN is to the GOP as Diebold is to Dems. They are mostly an excuse for losing elections, but based in a legitimate fear that all votes are not being counted equally.

I believe the chances of vote theft are greater in unregulated vote machines, but any kind of vote fraud (or voter registration fraud) undermines the trust of the people. Perhaps now the GOP can get behind electoral reform and transparency; it is a bedrock issue for America's continued democracy.

"Today however, I see 200,000 bogus registrations described as a lie."

No, dear, you don't, which is why you can't support this silly little strawman of yours any more than you can support all of the other silly little strawman arguments you've spewed here over the years.

"I know you want to win badly but this is coyote ugly territory."

No, dear; "coyote ugly territory" is blatantly lying and pretending that ACORN is "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." *That's* ugly, and false.

"Are you going to gnaw your arm off the morning after the election to avoid awakening this nasty crud?"

No, dear; we're going to rejoice in the hard-won Obama victory and rejoice that the Republican attempts to deny millions of voters their Constitutional right to vote will have failed. What will you be doing, dear?

Add to all of this that registration fraud is much more likely to occur when volunteers--who have no one checking their forms before they're sent to the county elections office--register voters. I've been volunteering this year for the first time, and though I've intended to do everything by the book, the training all of us had was very minimal. Any of us could have unwittingly made mistakes.

Secondly, it also must be pointed out--though most sane people know this--that much of what appears to be registration fraud is a result of clerical error. Just ask Joe the Plumber who was registered incorrectly due to a typo.

But of course the MSM has big incentives to manufacture stories and make this whole election seem like a nail-biter. What happened to our investigative journalists?

There is actual voter fraud, and it can change elections. Recent example: vote fraud by Republicans in Daggett County Utah changed the outcome of the election of Sheriff. See:
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3972188

Today however, I see 200,000 bogus registrations described as a lie.

Odd how you pop in to tell a lie about something you insist is a lie.

They are not "bogus" registrations. They are registrations with errors, some of which may be bogus. As ethel08 pointed out, you seem to think that Joe the Plumber should not be allowed to vote because the clerk who entered his registration in the computer accidentally spelled his name "Worzelbacher" instead of "Wurzelbacher." Should he be arrested, too? After all, the name on his registration is not his real name, so he's committed voting fraud every time he's voted.

Steve Benen wrote: "Fox News, Republicans, and the right's noise machine manufactured this controversy with tremendous speed ..."

And as with the goring of Al Gore in 2000, and the swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004, and the coverup of the blatant Republican theft of both the 2000 and 2004 elections with massive voter disenfranchisement, intimidation and fraud, the Republicans and the right-wing extremist propaganda machine were aided and abetted by the corporate-owned media -- including CNN and corporate-funded NPR -- whose deliberately dishonest and inflammatory reporting amplified and legitimized the right-wing smear campaigns.

And I see that Mike K and SJRSM are the same viciously dishonest, weak-minded, sniveling little dittohead pukes they have always been.

Given the right's history with that psychological phenomenon known as "projection", all of this brouhaha on voter fraud means that massive vote stealing IS about to take place. But not on the Democratic side. I hope somebody figures it out before McCain wins the Presidency by 700 votes.

One aspect of this story which never gets addressed is that all types of fraud could just as easily be done by and used to help republicans.

But anyone actually trying to commit vote fraud would never do so through a known organization using cheap labor and the names of well known cartoon characters or athletes.

But how would republicans go about perpetrating vote fraud? Or anyone? Why isn't this the first question? This is somewhat like the terrorists following us home from Iraq like some stray dog you pick up while hitch-hiking.