Politics

The Republican campaign to steal the election, Part 5,728.4 (Now with documented BS)

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• Saturday 1st November 2008

1) Don’t vote for Obama! He’s not qualified to be president because, um, he’s got some relative that’s in the country ILLEGALLY! And it’s only 3 days before the election, and you can believe us, because this was leaked by a gen-u-wine GUMMINT OFFICIAL!!! And a MURDOCH NEWSPAPER!!! Did we mention that the election’s only 3 days away, and don’t vote for Obama?…

2) McCain adviser and vote-fraud expert can’t name a single instance of voter fraud.

Michaelson, who served for 27 years as executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections, said the sharp exchanges over registration fraud have undermined voters’ confidence in the electoral system.

“The fact that so many of these illegal registrations are being made public raises a perception in the minds of people,” he said. “That’s more of a general concern. You don’t want to perpetuate the idea that our election process is lacking integrity.”

Asked whether his own party was responsible for fostering that perception, Michaelson said, “Well, it doesn’t help. It has captured the attention of a lot of people.” Why do it, then? “Maybe it’s because there’s nothing else to talk about,” he said.

Michaelson could not cite a single real example of how registration fraud has led to voting fraud. He said that an election-rigging scheme starting with phony application forms would not make much sense. Michaelson joined the McCain team when asked by its general counsel, Trevor Potter, whom he knew from their days working together at the Federal Election Commission.

Michaelson explained why the mere perception of widespread fraud can do public harm: “When reports are circulating in the media that this one group has turned in 5,000 applications and 2,000 of them are invalid, for the minimally informed voter, they say, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s happening to our process? Our process is lacking integrity.’ It just plants seeds of doubt in the minds of people who don’t understand the process very well.

And in addition:

Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor’s report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and then “someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen's] name.”

3) You think the Electoral College is a twisted idea? Thank the Republicans for provisional ballots.

4) Diebold/Premier/ES&S/Sequoia electronic voting machines are flipping votes right and left. In an eyebrow-raising coincidence, while votes flip from Dem to Repub, they never seem to flip from Repub to Dem. Ever.

5) The AP has a generalized roundup of voter suppression tactics. They all appear to be by, um, Republicans.

6) The next 48 hours will be extremely chaotic, according to this report from the NY Times. Vote flipping, vanishing electronic votes, invalidated paper ballots and obstructionist local Republican voting officials will all contribute to the mess. This isn’t democracy, it’s a sham.