Yes, registering Mickey Mouse to vote so someone can collect $2 is so much worse than denying an entire race of people the right to vote simply because of the color of their skin. And then orchestrating a violent intimidation campaign against those who tried to register Southern blacks to vote.
Anyway, the truth is now starting to sink in that these are all phony allegations started by the GOP in an attempt to throw as much mud as possible in the final weeks of the election. And I’m happy to see the Obama campaign isn’t going to take it:
Obama lawyer calls for investigation over ACORN charges
(CNN) – Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer called Monday for a government investigation into whether the White House is working with John McCain’s campaign to raise allegations of voter fraud, telling reporters attorney general Michael Mukasey needed to step in to ensure investigators are "not misused for partisan purposes."
A special prosecutor is investigating similar charges against the Justice Department over the controversial dismissals of several U.S. attorneys, including David Yglesias, who said he was fired for resisting pressure to prosecute ACORN, the embattled community group at the center of a sustained Republican campaign alleging voter fraud among supporters of Barack Obama.
I hope the Obama campaign broadcasts this loud and clear. There is nothing wrong with registering poor and minority citizens to vote. There have been plenty of problems with Republican-focused voter registration drives, too.
For example, this one:
Ontario police arrest man in voter fraud case
SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.
State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.
Anyone know how many ACORN folks have been arrested?
Zero.
Pretty funny that the one guy arrested for voter registration fraud worked for the Republican Party!
Oh lookie, here’s another one from across the aisle:
Investigation into Trashed Voter Registrations
(Oct. 13) -- Federal, state, and local officials are gathering information about allegations of voter registration fraud that were first raised Channel 8 Eyewitness News.
An employee of a private voter registration firm alleges that his bosses trashed registration forms filled out by Democratic voters because they only wanted to sign up Republican voters.
The allegations have set off a political firestorm stretching from Las Vegas to Washington D.C., and beyond.
As with everything else in this election year, it's now become a political football being tossed between the two parties, with charges and countercharges, but at its core, there still remains the matter of registration forms that were ripped up and tossed in the trash.
A similar thing happened right here in Nashville during the last presidential election.
This kind of voter registration fraud is a lot worse than what has happened to Acorn. Because while Mickey Mouse isn’t going to show up to vote on election day, the people whose registrations ended up in the trash were expecting to vote. And if their forms were never turned in, they would be unable to do so.
Since John McCain has chosen to get down in the gutter with his Rove acolyte and participate in the mud-slinging, I fully expect he will be forced to eat his words when this and every other smear is revealed for what it so obviously is: a partisan political attack.
