actually, nevada GOP, we DID hear that. (those darn speakerphones.)

Sean Quinn rocks. From his opening line, “Gambly and whorish, Nevada is one of 2008’s biggest battlegrounds,” to this lovely vignette:

 

The strong Democratic turnout has Republicans mulling possible legal challenges. “We question whether these are valid registrations,” said Smith, the Washoe County GOP chairwoman.

While talking to Smith, she was interrupted by a cell phone call, which she inadvertently put on the speakerphone. It was the state GOP executive director Zachery Moyle, and the two discussed what could be done about the tsunami of Democratic Party registrations.

“I’m looking for people to sign on to a lawsuit,” Moyle said to Smith, who fumbled with the phone while turning off the speaker. “You didn’t hear that,” she said glancing in my direction.

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supreme court rulings aren’t good enough for bush–unless they’re in his favour. white house wants DOJ action on ohio voting case

The fucking nerve. From TPM:

 

The Washington Post reports that President Bush has asked DOJ to look into a request by House Republican leader John Boehner that would force Ohio’s Secretary of State to provide local election officials with information on 200,000 newly registered voters who have mismatched registration data. That could make it possible for Republicans to issue challenges to many of these voters, perhaps forcing them to cast provisional ballots.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio Republicans, who were seeking to force the Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, to provide the information on mismatches to local officials, did not have standing to bring the case.

. . . As voting rights groups point out, the mismatches at issue in this case are often nothing more than that the name on a voter’s drivers license includes a middle initial, while that on his voter registration form does not.

Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Post: “This is taking the politicization of this to a new level.”

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mccain’s acorns

Apparently, according to Keith Olbermann, McCain and Palin have gone suddenly quiet on the voter fraud attacks. I hadn’t noticed, since it’s only been a couple days and I can’t stand to listen to their madness all the time anyway. But my oh my, would you look at why what you’re hearing from them all of a sudden on the issue is… crickets. I’d really like to see McCain explain his own voter fraud connections here. File under: you just can’t make this stuff up. GOP hypocrisy ad infinitum.

 

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enough with the ACORN bogeyman already [updated]

Thank you to the New York Times for setting the record straight–and for those who have been suckered by the right-wing b.s. about this, for god’s sake, do your homework. The ACORN issue is so obviously a nonstarter, particularly the Obama connection, and comes up every year that Republicans want to discredit the voters most likely to vote Democratic. A favourite from the Rove playbook. Voter registration fraud (and it’s not intentional “fraud,” since it’s not ACORN, but individuals hoping to make more money for their work, who add names to their lists) does not affect actual votes on voting day, whereas the Republican strategies of denying American citizens their right to vote, whether already registered or wanting to, should have resulted in many more people tossed in jail over the years. I’ve not seen evidence that the right is concerned with policing its own, and, I daresay, has been more than thrilled about the “irregularites” that favoured Team GOP in 2000 and 2004.

 

Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities.

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.

The group concedes that some of its hired canvassers have turned in tainted forms, although they say the ones with phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in. The group also says it reviews all of the registration forms that come in. Before delivering the forms to elections offices, its supervisors flag any that appear to have problems.

According to Acorn, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized.

UPDATE: Oh, now I get it. ACORN is what the GOP uses as an excuse for its voter suppression tactics. Do you doubt it? In which case, may I refer you to the DOJ 2006 attorney general scandal, which took down Alberto Gonzales, where the torture issue (amazingly) hadn’t already.

 

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