Orange County authorities are launching an investigation into possible voter registration fraud after a local newspaper reported over a hundred cases of voters being tricked into registering as Republicans by petitioners who asked them to sign petitions for, among other causes, legalizing pot.
The Orange County Register reported last week that the Orange County District Attorney's office announced it would team up with the Secretary of State on the case, following a Register report that 99 written complaints were filed since March by voters who said they were registered as Republicans without their consent.
Another 74 voters reached by the Register said they, too, were unwillingly made members of the GOP.
In a lengthy investigation published earlier this month, the paper pointed to an $8 "bounty" offered by the California Republican Party for each new registration as a cause for the problems. It identified multiple petitioners who work for vendors "with ties to the California Republican Party." Back in 2006, a similar scandal led to the convictions of several
Of course, the California GOP is a repeat offender where voter registration fraud is concerned. (And despite his guilty plea and conviction, it seems Mark Jacoby is up to his old tricks again.)
You know, the thing that was such bullshit about the whole fake ACORN brouhaha is that conservatives claimed liberal activists were enacting vote fraud by registering "Mickey Mouse" to vote. Thing is, Mickey Mouse can't show up to the polls to vote, unless it's someone whose actual legal name is Mickey Mouse.
But California is a closed-primary state. When you register someone to vote as a Republican, then they must vote in the California Republican primary. They cannot, as we do in Tennessee, show up at the polls on election day and say "Oops that's a mistake, I want to vote in the Democratic primary instead." Sorry. You have to vote in the primary for the party in which you are registered.
So it seems this piece of fraud perpetrated by the California GOP has actually disenfranchised voters.
I'm sure the California GOP will blame an "overzealous staffer" or "inexperienced people" at the unaffiliated organization hired to register voters.
But ... um ... ACORN!!!!!
