Ohio voter registration motto: "Get Out The Vote...

even if you need to "modify" facts while doing it" This Associated Press article of October 15, "About 200K Ohio voters have records discrepancies" has pointed out a little problem with this "get out the vote" drive:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VOTER_REGISTRATION?SITE=NVLAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that an initial review found that about 200,000 newly registered voters reported information that did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records...

Some may be clerical errors but that many? The Sixth District Court (Federal court, Ohio) did not think it was all "bona-fide error":

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides those names to county elections boards...

Just how bad was this error rate? Well, 666,000 Ohioans have registered since January. 200,000 entries have errors. You do the math. The Court has ordered that the information for cross-checking be made available, but...

Brunner previously cross-checked new-voter registrations with databases run by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle and the Social Security Administration and made the results available online, but the 6th Circuit said the information was not accessible in a way that would help county election boards ferret out mismatches.

Hmmm...the information needed is not accessable. So the Court is trying to avoid fraud by forcing the OH SoS to release the information to registrars of voters and, if necessary, requiring the voters on the list to use provisional ballots. Seems fair enough.

But Secretary of State Brunner does not think so:

Brunner, a Democrat, told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Wednesday that she is concerned the court decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters..

Or is this really an attempt by a DEMOCRAT to try to make sure that the party won't end up losing precious votes? It may well be that the newly-registered voters either:

1.) Are ineligible and are predominantly Democrats; or,

2.) The voters whose registrations turn out to be good are predominantly...Republicans.

Neither would bode well for Obama's chances in OH, would it?

The FBI is investigating into the activist group "ACORN" and their possible link to the accused voter registration fraud in several states. Including Ohio. The Associated Press reports in this story, "Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud" by Lara Jakes Jordan, that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a community activist group, were not exactly honest in recruiting new low-income voters.

Voters who tend to vote...Democratic...

ACORN says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters. More than 13,000 ACORN workers in 21 states recruited low-income voters, who tend to be Democrats.

But some ACORN employees have been accused of submitting false voter registration forms - including some signed `Mickey Mouse' or other fictitious characters.

Those voter registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least a half-dozen other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also recently questioned the group's voter forms.

ACORN has said the "vast majority" of its workers are conscientious, but some might have turned in duplicate applications or provided fake information to pad their pay. Workers caught submitting false information have been fired...

ACORN states that the "vast majority" of the workers are reliable. Fair enough, but...where were the supervisors? Were these little-more-than-kids (most workers for ACORN are college-age) left to work on their own when out on the street? Considering this is a "pay for performance" job--the more that register, the more they earn--direct, constant supervision would be a necessity.

Also, what is it with this "might" have turned in bogus registrations or fake information? ACORN admits that some have been fired for being caught...turning in bogus crap. In other words, ACORN KNOWS this is going on, and have already taken some remedial actions. Not that they could do otherwise...

[L]aws in a number of states require it to submit all registration cards it collects even dubious ones, so its workers segregate applications with missing, suspicious or false information and flag them ...

ACORN's "quality control" already picks up questionable forms and flags them! So they cannot be unaware of problems and which states they are occurring in.

And does this mean anything in this Presidential election year? A lot, since the beneficiary of a lot of new Democrats would be...Barack Obama. He has claimed that he has had no "significant" ties to ACORN...but then again...

Obama...and two other lawyers represented ACORN in 1995 in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois to make voter registration easier, and hired a firm with ties to the group for a massive get-out-the-vote effort during this year's primary.

Obama represented them in court in 1995, AND he hired a firm tied to them for a massive "get-out-the-vote" campaign just this year? That's not "significant"?

For instance, the 1995 case, "ACORN v. Illinois State Board of Elections" ("ACORN v. Edgar"), US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, would certainly be "significant" and precedent setting (no other case to that date applied to the Constitutional question Illinois raised). This decision modified the lower court decision that stated that Illinois needed to comply with the Federal order to obey The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1973gg et seq but that the Federal decree went too far in appointing a "czar", at least at that point in time. The key points in that decision, a major Obama bragging rights item talking point:

The decree made in this case declares that the State of Illinois is not complying with the "motor voter" law; declares that all provisions of Illinois law that conflict with the law are invalid; and enjoins the state officials who are the individual defendants, together with all persons acting in concert with them, from failing or refusing to comply with the law. So far, so good. But the court went on, in a fourth paragraph of the decree, to order the defendants to designate a chief state election official to be responsible for coordinating the state's responsibilities under the "motor voter" law; to delegate to that official "all necessary powers to achieve such compliance"; to take all necessary steps to enable people to register when they apply for a driver's license; to take all necessary steps to ensure that no one's registration to vote in federal elections is cancelled for failure to vote and that Illinois complies with the "motor voter" law before canceling any individual's registration to vote in federal elections unless the reason for cancellation is death, criminal conviction, mental incapacity, or the registrant's request; and to ensure that people who change residences within the same registrar's jurisdiction remain eligible to vote in federal elections even if they have failed to notify the registrar of the move before the election.

...

We are forced to the conclusion that the Department of Justice, in proposing such a decree, and the district judge, in entering it, failed to exhibit an adequate sensitivity to the principle of federalism. The value of decentralized government is recognized more clearly today than it has been for decades. This recognition, born of experience, enables us (and not only us) to see that federal judicial decrees that bristle with interpretive difficulties and invite protracted federal judicial supervision of functions that the Constitution assigns to state and local government are to be reserved for extreme cases of demonstrated noncompliance with milder measures. They are last resorts, not first...Since the State of Illinois, rather than seeking a declaratory judgment that the "motor voter" law is invalid, decided not to comply with the law, an injunction commanding compliance with it was a proper remedy, and of course a lawful one. ... But until it appears that the state will not comply with such an injunction, there is no occasion for the entry of a complicated decree that treats the state as an outlaw and requires it to do even more than the "motor voter" law requires.

Why would Obama have wanted to represent ACORN in the suit to get the Illinois law overturned? Well, it seems that Illinois had a little "concern" about the effects of the law...namely that if ACORN got their way, the DEMOCRATS might well outnumber Republicans in a then-Republican state. As for his claims that he has "never" been involved with ACORN within the organization but only represented them in that one case while in legal practice? Well, if that were true, then why bother to do anything that could get attention pointed to him his campaign would not like? Such as "modifying" his campaign website?

"Obama scrubs his website of ACORN". This post links to a blog page titled "Some ACORNs Can't Scrub Clean", by Steve Schippert and posted October 14. Schippert says:

The mess for Barack Obama based on his associations and cooperation continues to grow of concern for the Obama campaign. It continues well beyond the revelation that the Obama campaign has scrubbed his site to hide ACORN lies, altering the content from statements that he "was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity" to now reflect a more deft statement that "ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee." Perhaps this is the enlightened explanation of a new "free" trade agreement.

ACORN, an organization that has had Obama's support - and leadership training - and even his pledge that the organization will have significant input to his campaign and policies, continues its fraudulent voter registration and voting practices, particularly in swing states.

So, Obama has never worked for ACORN? Like, what about that training he did for them? Even if he were an independent contractor, they still had to PAY him AND he had to give them (ACORN) what they wanted. And why would a group such as ACORN have ANY input into a campaign for office? That in itself would raise serious questions of the independence of the Obama campaign and ACORN, and vice-versa, even without the allegations of voter registration fraud.

But then again, if you need to get out the vote, you "do what you have to do"..especially in a very important "swing state"...

Like...Ohio.