With Montana voters now receiving mail-in ballots for the June 5th primary election, Media Trackers Montana is receiving reports of significant ballot errors across the state. Unconfirmed reports placed possible statewide errors in the thousands, with a possible 600 erroneous ballots being reported in Broadwater County alone.
Secretary of State, Democrat Linda McCulloch, who administers all elections in the state of Montana, received a request today from Scott Aspenlieder– the presumed Republican frontrunner to challenge McCulloch in November– calling for a full audit of all mail in ballots across the state. “On top of being sent invalid ballots, voters in Broadwater County’s precinct 11 are now forced to endure the confusion of having a second ballot mailed to their homes,” said Aspenlieder. “Then in Yellowstone County, we find out some voters were only sent one party’s Primary ballot, eliminating their right to choose the candidates they’d like to support. This failure of leadership is simply unacceptable, and Montanans deserve better. I call on our Secretary of State to begin a comprehensive audit of all of the 2012 absentee ballots to identify every single error, and immediately take steps to fix this process so a Montanan’s right to vote is never threatened again,” stated Aspenlieder.
A Media Trackers inquiry found state political officials in disarray; struggling to cope with the possible size of the damage. “Everywhere we are looking across the state, we are finding inconsistencies. Even on the Secretary of State’s website, the sample ballots are wrong” stated one high ranking official who asked not to be named. “About half of all Montanans vote by mail. With one of the top U.S. Senate races in the nation going on in this state and dozens of other hotly contested races on the ballot, this thing could have voter fraud written all over it.” Media Trackers will continue to monitor this story and provide breaking updated developments.
This report reveals the Left’s vote fraud strategy for the 2012 elections. Like a KGB operation, it is thorough, multi-faceted and redundant. It has overt and covert, illegal and legal elements, the latter of which are designed, at least in part, to facilitate illegal activities later. It is a deliberate, premeditated, comprehensive plan to win the 2012 presidential election at all costs, and is in keeping with the organizational methods, associations and ethics of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Barack Obama.
The Left seeks fundamental structural change to our entire form of government. In keeping with their amoral, means-justifies-ends philosophy, they will register any voters, dead or alive, legal or illegal, who will then vote as many times as possible, in order to establish a “permanent progressive majority.” As two New York Democrats recently caught in a vote fraud scandal told police, “voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections…”
Low income individuals are the perfect dupes for this strategy. An expanding welfare state makes them increasingly dependent on government benefits, a development that guarantees their vote for liberal-left candidates. At the same time, people with marginal attachment to society may be less inclined to report illegal activity at the polls—or actually participate. The “victim” narrative promoted in popular culture and press may even encourage such behavior. Meanwhile, a growing tax burden and public debt suck private enterprise dry—pushing ever more people onto the dole.
Politicians of both parties are not above engaging in vote fraud. But this kind of corruption is relegated to individual campaigns or areas where corrupt political establishments have been able to develop unchallenged. It is not a systematic component of overall national strategy, as it is with the Left.
This strategy has been under development for decades. They have constructed an entire industry devoted to this task and pursue a multifaceted strategy to accomplish it:
1. Swamp election officials with overwhelming numbers of registrations at the last possible minute, a huge proportion of which are deliberately fraudulent, in order to create systematic chaos. This accomplishes numerous goals:
Makes verification of registrations difficult, given the small size and limited budgets of state and local election offices.
Provides multiple opportunities for vote fraud.
Throws the entire voting process into question, providing pretext for lawsuits where concessions may be obtained from election officials.
When election officials challenge registrations, they are accused of “voter suppression.” This in turn serves complementary goals:
Charge of “voter suppression” reinforces the Left’s narrative about America as an oppressive, “racist” country.
Publicity and lawsuits intimidate election officials, who settle on terms favorable to the Left.
2. Activists sue state authorities for “voter suppression,” creating further chaos and pressuring them to become de facto taxpayer-funded voter registration operations;
3. Eric Holder’s Justice Department tacitly supports voter intimidation tactics, sues states and backs private lawsuits, and resists reform as “voter suppression.”
4. Leftist echo chamber discredits allegations of vote fraud, supports “suppression” theme, and promotes advantageous legislation.
The ultimate goal is a systematized, taxpayer-funded voting machinery that will guarantee maximum participation from the Left’s voting demographic while undermining the ability to manage elections and prevent fraud.
The ACORN Swamping Method
Key to understanding the Left’s vote-fraud strategy is the community organizing group ACORN. ACORN has become synonymous with corruption, complicity in the subprime mortgage crisis and especially vote fraud.
ACORN and its voter registration arm, Project Vote, hire marginal and unskilled workers at very low rates and use incentive bonuses or quotas to encourage them to collect as many voter registrations as possible. The resulting flood of registrations are fraught with duplicates, errors and omissions, and a large number are overtly fraudulent, including names like “Donald Duck,” “Mickey Mouse,” “Tony Romo” of the Dallas Cowboys, etc.[2] According to MatthewVadum, the senior editor at Capital Research Center, a total of 400,000 bogus ACORN registrations were thrown out in 2008 alone.
ACORN was supposedly disbanded in 2010 but resurrected itself under a slew of new names. Former ACORN President Bertha Lewis bragged that they created “…18 bulletproof community-organizing Frankensteins…” These are reproduced in the table below. Most of these groups occupy former ACORN offices, many with the same staff.
ACORN is directly connected to Obama and the Democratic Party. Counsel to The Advance Group, a strategic planning company, is Michael Gaspard, Patrick Gaspard’s brother. Patrick is currently the DNC’s executive director and President Obama’s former political director. He has worked for ACORN, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Working Families Party, a descendant of the ACORN-founded New Party which Barack Obama joined in 1996. Obama has bragged of “fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.”
ACORN’s former deputy regional director, Amy Busefink was convicted in 2010 of vote fraud stemming from a 2008 Nevada case. Judicial Watch found that, “while under criminal indictment in Nevada… [Busefink] managed an online program for Project Vote’s 2010 Colorado campaign, the ultimate goal of which is to allow people without a driver’s license or state identification to register to vote online.” Busefink is now national field director for Project Vote.
Barack Obama established his organizing bona fides with Project Vote in 1992, when he registered 150,000 Illinois voters.
Zach Polett (courtesy Anita MonCrief)
Project Vote was created and run for years by Zach Polett, who bragged that he trained Barack Obama in 1992 and said of Obama, “ACORN produces leaders.” Polett is listed in Manta.com as president of Voting for America, one of Project Vote’s former names, although his name is not on Project Vote’s website. Calls to that listing roll into a voice mail identifying the organizations as “CSI.” Polett’s extension is #3. CSI is the acronym for Citizens Services Inc., another supposedly defunct ACORN group that was used to hide over $800,000 paid by candidate Obama to ACORN in 2008.
This kind of duplicitous activity reflects a deliberate methodology. ACORN is a criminal organization.
The Cloward Piven Strategy
ACORN is the face of vote fraud, but its intellectual foundation is the Cloward Piven Strategy. Sociology professors Richard Cloward (Columbia University) and Frances Fox Piven (CUNY) were founding members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Cloward died in 2001 but Piven lives on.
Richard Cloward
In 1966 Cloward and Piven penned an article forThe Nation magazine titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” They posited that if the poor were organized into street armies to demand all welfare benefits available to them, they could overwhelm and crash the system.
It became known as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” and is credited with expanding welfare rolls 151 percent between 1965 and 1974 and bringing New York City to the brink of bankruptcy in 1975.
The Issue is Never the Issue
The Left’s solution to everything is socialism, although they are usually careful not to name it, instead identifying issues that seemingly only their policies can redress. But “the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution” as David Horowitz has explained. The “issues” are mere distractions.
Cloward and Piven initially claimed to be agitating for a “guaranteed national income.” Such a policy is plainly unsustainable; however, it wouldinstitutionalize their strategy, creating an enormous, permanent drag on the whole economy precipitating an even larger crash later on. Cloward and Piven’s true goal was to find any instrument to institutionalize their orchestrated anarchy, and poor people were the tool.
Wade Rathke, a veteran of those early efforts, was mentored by Cloward and Piven. Rathke and other radicals created a new organization, ACORN,and sought ways to further extend the Strategy.
White House ACORN photo: Bill Clinton center; Wade Rathke third to his left; Zach Polett in lower left-hand corner. Courtesy Anita MonCrief
With passage of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, ACORN and other activist groups got in the housing business. They began pushing banks to offer high-risk mortgage loans to low/no income borrowers. The Clinton administration aggressively ramped up the effort. To encourage lenders and investors, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwrote the risk. Since its passage, CRA lending has exceeded $6 trillion.[ii] The mortgage crisis was Cloward-Piven on steroids.[2]
Meanwhile, Cloward and Piven had not been idle. In 1982 they created the Human Service Employees Registration and Voter Education Fund (Human SERVE) to build political momentum for a law that would turn state motor vehicle and welfare agencies into low-income voter registration offices.
Motor Voter Signing Ceremony – Cloward in light grey suit, Piven in green. Source: the White House
Throughout the 1980s, Human SERVE field-tested legal and political strategies to promote this plan. The fruits of its labor were finally realized with “Motor Voter,” the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), signed into law with Cloward and Piven standing directly behind President Clinton.
The NVRA requires motor vehicle, military recruiting, public assistance and other state and local offices to offer voter-registration services.
The NVRA has become a beacon for vote fraud. Its minimal verification requirements opened the door to ACORN-style massive voter registration fraud, and in the confusion provide blanket opportunities for vote fraud.
Voter ID laws have become critically important. According to a Pew report, approximately 24 million or 12.5 percent of voter registrations nationally are either invalid or inaccurate, including about 1.8 million deceased individuals, and 2.75 million with multiple-state registrations.
And while the NRVA has provisions for purging the rolls in Section 8, they require a complex, process spanning multiple election cycles. In some cases, the NRVA replaced better mechanisms already in use. Many states have simply not followed these procedures with any regularity. The Left ignores all this, focusing on enforcing NRVA’s Section 7.
Section 7 Lawsuits
While capitalizing on the vote fraud swamping strategy enabled by the NVRA, ACORN, Project Vote and others sue states that don’t aggressively execute the voter registration activities required by Section 7 of the law. The narrative is always “voter suppression,” and settlements have forced state agencies to become de facto low income voter registration drives.
Not only must states develop, maintain and execute plans for assuring comprehensive registration, they are forced to report regularly to ACORN lawyers. A 2009 settlement between ACORN and Missouri’s Department of Social Services is illustrative. DSS must:
Create an NVRA State Coordinator position
Designate an NVRA Site Coordinator for Family Support Division offices
Keep detailed records of client visits and registration activities
Immediately send a letter offering registration to any individual who “may not have been given the opportunity to register…”
Report detailed compliance data to plaintiff lawyers every month.
State coordinator’s performance measured by NVRA compliance
ACORN will receive $450,000 in settlement.
In these settlements, ACORN effectively assumes an executive role over state agencies. Notably, there is no corollary requirement to ascertain the legality of registrations or to clean up the rolls.
Project Vote has taken recent actions against Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and New Mexico. They just announced their intention to sue Pennsylvania.
Project Vote formed agreements with Colorado in 2008 and 2010. According to Judicial Watch, after Project Vote’s involvement “the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average.”
Though largely unnoticed until now, this litigation tactic has been used since the 1980s, when Human SERVE’s legal allies sued state authorities for settlementscreating localized versions of Motor Voter.
While capitalizing on the vote swamping strategy enabled by Motor Voter, ACORN and Project Vote picked up the torch for SERVE, which closed its doors in 2000. Frances Fox Piven serves today on Project Vote’s Board of Directors. Significantly, President Obama has named the voter registration initiative of his reelection effort “Project Vote.”
Piven also has many other connections to Obama. She was a founding member of Progressives for Obama. Her Democratic Socialists of America bragged that it was responsible for the success of Obama’s “ground game” in 2008. Piven was one of 130 founding members of the radical left Campaign for America’s Future. Many CAF members also sit on the board of the Apollo Alliance, the executor of Obama’s “Green” jobs initiative.
DOJ and ACORN Team Up for 2012
Judicial Watch obtained several documents showing coordination between DOJ, Project Vote and the White House.[i] In one email, Project Vote demanded action on NVRA cases. Less than a month later, DOJ sued Rhode Island for NVRA noncompliance. Similarly, DOJ’s Louisiana NVRA suit followed Project Vote’s by a few months. Project Vote is promoting prospective employees for DOJ’s Voting Rights section.
The VRA outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests for voting. Section 5 requires certain states and other political subdivisions to obtain “preclearance,” or permission, from either DOJ or the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, on any change affecting voting. Currently, preclearance states covered in whole or in part include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia. Set in 1982 to expire in 2007, Congress extended the VRA for another 25 years in 2006.
The VRA has come into sharp focus this year as the Holder administration has used VRA preclearance requirements to stall or prevent voter ID laws from being enacted. Non-preclearance states have faced stiff court challenges from other leftist groups.
Alabama – Alabama’s new photo ID law has a 2014 effective date. Alabama has not yet applied for pre-clearance.
Mississippi – A Voter ID amendment was approved by voters with a 62 percent margin in 2011. A bill to implement the amendment passed April 10, 2012. Requires preclearance. No word yet from Justice.
South Carolina – DOJ denied pre-clearance for new ID law in December 2011. State filed for reconsideration.
Texas – DOJ denied pre-clearance for new ID law. Texas filed suit with three-judge panel seeking pre-clearance; DOJ asked court to postpone trial.
Wisconsin – State judge ruled Wisconsin’s voter ID law unconstitutional (read the opinion). State will appeal.
The Wisconsin case is an example of independent groups working to sabotage reform efforts. In a suit brought by the League of Women Voters, the NAACP and others, the judge found ID laws “unconstitutional to the extent they serve as a condition for voting at the polls.” This was a bizarre ruling. Wisconsin’s Constitution clearly allows mechanisms to establish voter eligibility.
Despite the Left’s best efforts, voter ID laws have been proposed this year in 32 states.
A Personal Testimony
J. Christian Adams is a former DOJ election lawyer who worked on the Philadelphia Black Panther voter intimidation case. He resigned in protest of Eric Holder’s race-based application of the law. According to Adams’ new book,Injustice, Eric Holder became directly involved in the Black Panther case. Mr. Adams agreed to be interviewed for this report. Some highlights:
DOJ is engaged in a massive campaign to force states to… become aggressive voter registration offices…
DOJ announced they would not enforce Section 8 because it won’t increase turnout.
States are infested with dead voters on the rolls.
Investigations into eight states with widespread voter roll problems… were spiked
Because of Motor Voter, voter rolls in many states seeing influx of illegal aliens.
Data show that illegal aliens are participating in American elections.
DOJ is using [VRA] Sec. 5 to stop voter integrity initiatives.
Every one of Holder’s 113 new attorney hires is a far-left radical.
Famed civil rights attorney Bartle Bull was a poll watcher at that Philadelphia location when the Black Panthers appeared. He testified in the case, calling it “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” he had ever seen.
ACORN’s swamping method is now being replicated all over the country, especially in swing states or those with critical elections like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall vote. Even local communities are affected. For example, the Wake County (Raleigh/Durham) registrar described a swamping effort conducted by North Carolina’s Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
While these organizations are nominally independent, closer inspection often reveals interlocking directorates and/or shared staff. Many are supporteddirectly or indirectly by George Soros foundations. The chart below, compiled byNorth Carolina Civitas Institute, includes many organizations that worked with ACORN there.
North Carolina Left/Liberal Organizations
A Textbook Case: Houston Votes
In July 2010, a newly-formed voter registration group named Houston Votes (HV) announced it intended to register 100,000 Houston, Texas area voters in a few months. Catherine Engelbrecht, Leader of True the Vote (TTV) and King Street Patriots (KSP), was skeptical. Her group checked about 1,000 HV registrations. The number of erroneous registrations submitted by HV andDemocracia—a group targeting unregistered Hispanics—was, she said, “off the charts.”
They brought their results to Harris County Registrar, Leo Vasquez, who reviewed HV registrations. He found that of 25,640 submitted, only 7,193 were “apparently new voters.” On August 24, Vasquez held an unprecedented press conference, announcing:
Evidence shows that the Houston Votes and Texans Together organization is conspiring in a pattern of falsification of government documents, suborning of perjury and a deliberate effort to over-burden our processing system with thousands of duplicate and incomplete voter registration applications.
He raised concerns that HV was, like ACORN, paying employees based on the number of applications they turned in, and cited specific examples of problematic registrations:
3,531 No match for SSN or driver’s license number
1,597 Multiple apps for the same person
1,014 Pre-existing voters
1,030 Incomplete apps
25 Non-citizens
325 Minors
129 Ineligible felons
1,133 No ID
1,323 Filed past deadline
Three days later, a massive warehouse fire destroyed Harris County’s 10,000 voting machines. The fire’s timing bred suspicions, fed almost exclusively by the Left, which sought through innuendo to implicate KSP. A Huffington Post headline two days later was typical: “Possible Arson and the Right’s Texas Voter Suppression Effort.” This theme was repeated ad nauseam in the liberal media echo chamber. The Houston Fire Department later cited “an unspecified electrical short” as the cause, an explanation that satisfied no one.[iv]
Maria Isabel, One of Houston Votes’ “non-partisan” Leaders
HV held a press conference the day of the fire, calling Vasquez’s allegations “reckless and false” and “an apparently coordinated, partisan effort to suppress voter registration and to intimidate citizens into not voting…” They demandedthe Justice Department investigate.
HV dismissed mistakes with the familiar ACORN refrain, blaming a few low-level employees who were fired when errors were discovered. However, Vasquez specifically cited 180 erroneous registrations turned in by Directors Sean Caddle and Neil Hudelson—more errors than usually submitted in total by traditional voter registration drives.
HV boasted their group was “non-partisan” but an attentive blogger quickly proved otherwise. One of the people training volunteers for Houston Votes wasMaria Isabel, an Obama operative made famous by the photo of her office sporting a poster of Che Guevara.
HV Directors Hudelson and Caddle were quickly discovered to be long-time Democratic activists. At last notice they had returned to Caddle’s home state of New Jersey, working for Democratic Jersey City Council-at-Large candidate Sue Mack. She lost.
A little more digging revealed Houston Votes to be part of America Votes, a Soros-funded organization tied to ACORN, SEIU, and a universe of otherleftwing groups.
America Votes specifically targeted Texas in its 2010 Redistricting Control Project. With 38 electoral votes, Texas is only exceeded by California’s 55. Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in Texas, not coincidentally home to the second largest illegal immigrant population in the U.S.
One quarter of Texans reside in the Houston metropolitan region and there are 25 state house seats in Harris County. Prior to the 2010 elections, Republicans held a slim majority of three seats in the Texas House. Winning in Houston had the potential to flip the House, giving Democrats control over redistricting. They wanted to “turn Texas blue.”
The Advisory Board of HV’s parent organization, Texans Together Education Fund, included a number of prominent left-wing Democrats. One was Grande Dame of Texas politics, Sissy Farenthold, who worked with the radical left Institute for Policy Studies in the 1980s. Another was DemocratKristi Thibaut, a state legislator trying to hold her District 133 seat. She hadworked for ACORN and was under investigation by the Texas Ethics Commission. Yet another was Sue Schechter, running for Harris County Clerk. Not only was HV extremely partisan, but plainly the Texas arm of Soros’s project.
America Votes failed in 2010. Republican control of the Texas state house increased by 44 seats in a nationwide sweep that brought Republican control to statehouses not seen since 1928. America Votes is targeting Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2012.
But the Left still wasn’t finished in Texas. The Texas Democratic Party sued the Harris County Registrar’s office, the Registrar and other employees.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee illegally campaigning at Houston poll during early voting in 2010. Credit: Warner Todd Huston
Harris County had settled another suit with the Democrats in 2008 stemming from 67,554 rejected applications, mostly submitted by ACORN. Democrats had charged “voter suppression” then too, over registrations rejected for incomplete or inaccurate information—the kind ACORN excels at.
Because Texas is a preclearance state, redistricting maps must be approved. This year’s maps were challenged in court by Latino groups. This delayed the primary, neutralizing any impact Texas may have had on the Republican presidential primary process.
Voter Intimidation
KSP organized approximately 1,000 poll watchers for the 2010 elections. This outraged the Left, unused to having its inner city monopoly threatened. Texans Together Education Fund sued the King Street Patriots, True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht and her husband. On the first day of early voting, the Texas Democrat Party also filed a suit, a move characterized by KSP’s legal team as a naked effort to intimidate KSP-trained poll watchers.
Throughout the 2010 electoral cycle, the Left hurled accusations of “voter suppression” and “voter intimidation” at Catherine Engelbrecht, TTV, KSP and the volunteer poll watchers they trained. This narrative was promoted uncritically by the local press. Blogger Ann “Babe” Huggett, writing for EmergingCorruption.com, reported:
ABC Channel 13 quoted Democrats suing KSP that KSP leaders could see jail time for voter intimidation. ABC’s own video, however, shows otherwise.
Channel 26 reporter Isiah Carey asked repeatedly if the King Street Patriots hadn’t created a hostile environment. KSP offered witness testimony that it was “the other side” doing the intimidating.
New Black Panther leader, Quanell X, threatened that his men would “protect” people from the TTV-trained poll watchers.
Emails from communist Van Jones’ Color of Change circulated through liberal circles, charging poll-watcher voter intimidation.
Local radio station Magic 102.1 FM repeated bogus charges about assaults on black voters… including spitting and physical assault… on black grandmothers.
But it was actually poll judges, poll workers and Quanell X’s Houston Black Panther group, who did much of the intimidating. Assistant County Attorney Douglas Ray disclosed after an investigation that Harris County poll workers and election judges had committed the violations blamed on KSP. He was silent on the Panthers.
Poll Watchers submitted 763 incident reports, detailing over 3,000 violations, to Harris County. These included intimidation, harassment and illegal voter assistance conducted by poll judges and workers. To date there has been no response from the County. Three poll watchers were willing to be identified by name and spoke to reporters at a KSP press conference. KSP invited the Justice Department to witness what was happening. Justice never responded.
Independent of KSP, poll judge Carmen Cuneo gave compelling video testimonyabout how the chief judge had her removed and threatened with arrest after she confronted Quanell X about his group’s activities at the poll.
True the Vote and the Wisconsin Recall
Union groups used the swarming method earlier this year in a recall petition of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. They reportedly submitted one million petitions, needing only 540,208. The Democrat-controlled Government Accountability Board (GAB), responsible for verifying petitions, flatly refused to do so.
In an astonishing, heroic effort, True the Vote joined an effort called Verify the Recall and developed a method to verify recall petitions online. They built a nationwide network of 14,000 volunteers almost overnight, who checked 92 percent of the petitions in 22 days. The findings were stunning:
819,233 records (not 1 million)
534,685 verified legitimate (65 percent)
In addition to numerous bogus “Donald Duck” petitions, signers included:
29 Wisconsin judges—one who later issued a restraining order against Walker’s Voter ID law.
A deputy DA, 19 attorneys and dozens of other DA employees. Some had been working on a heavily criticized “secret” John Doe investigation of Governor Walker at the time.
25 Gannett News journalists
Several members of WTMJ-4 news staff
School board members
Four University of Wisconsin regents and the university’s chief spokesman.
A Democratic activist charged with seven felony ID theft counts and two of felony vote fraud. He signed up family members and neighbors, including a deceased man, without their knowledge or consent.
The GAB refused to consider VTR’s work and certified 900,000 petitions, but it was clear that Walker opponents had committed extensive vote fraud. The fraud would have gone undetected if not for the work of TTV.
Leftwing “Reform” Efforts
Universal Voter Registration (UVR)
Cloward and Piven saw the NVRA as an intermediate goal. They made that clear in their book. The flurry of lawsuits and systemic fraud generated by the NVRA all build momentum to find a permanent solution. And the Left had the answer before they started: Universal Voter Registration.
UVR calls for automatically registering voters listed on various state and federal databases. Leftist groups argue it will solve all voter registration problems, but the left created most of them. UVR would create more:
Homeowners with more than one property create duplicates.
The many state & federal lists will create duplicates
Because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected.
UVR would institutionalize the crisis strategy, and provide countless opportunities for vote fraud.
National Popular Vote
The National Popular Vote bill seeks to effectively abolish the Electoral College by enacting state laws that give all electors from those states that have passed the bill to the winner of the national popular vote. Direct elections would become universal when enough state legislatures have passed legislation to make up a majority of the electoral vote (270 of 538). Eight states and the District of Columbus, totaling 132 electoral votes, have passed NPV laws. The Electoral College was created to ensure that less populous states would not be overlooked in presidential elections. If successful, this effort will make vast swaths of our nation completely irrelevant to presidential candidates, as they would then focus all their efforts on large population centers.
Felon Voting
Project Vote disingenuously argues that rights should be restored to formerfelons. Almost every state has provisions to restore voting rights to former felons. ProCon.org claims about 5.2 million felons are “disenfranchised.” But only current prisoners have no recourse—about 1.4 million. They exaggerate the problem for unclear reasons. The “wise Latina,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, favors felon voting.
Same Day Voting
Same-day voter registration in Ohio led to ACORN’s permanent expulsion from that state. Then-Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, an alumna of George Soros’s Secretary of State Project (see below), announced a “Golden Week” for same day registration and voting. ACORN submitted thousands of bogus registrations, including the notorious case where one man was paid to register 73 times.
Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold proposed a nationwide same-day voting law in 2009, but his state’s experience with it has been disastrous. An investigation into the 2004 elections by the Milwaukee Police concluded the only way to prevent widespread fraud is to discontinue same-day voting. A 2011 study found errors in one-third of same-day voter registrations in Milwaukee County.
The Soros funded Secretary of State Project seeks to elect leftist Democrats to that critical post. SoS Project-backed Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie demonstrated the value of this program when comedian Al Franken eked out a victory in his 2008 U.S. Senate race amidst numerous, well-documented allegations of vote fraud.
The SoS Project did poorly in 2010, however. Ritchie was one of only two SoS-backed candidates to survive the Republican tidal wave.
The project’s website, secstateproject.org, is no longer operational. There is a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/secstateproject. It does not appear to get much traffic. This may reflect a temporary lull in activity, or Soros and his minions have moved to more promising initiatives.
What Is To Be Done?
The 2012 election may be the most important election in American history. American citizens acting in the best interest of our country must be the bulwark against fraud. There are many things people can do, suitable to their time and resource constraints. Here is a list of options:
Volunteer with True the Vote (www.truethevote.org) and join your state’s affiliate. True the Vote is conducting training all over the country. Find your state affiliate.
Bookmark Protect Your Vote! (www.protectyourvote.us). This website provides state-by-state information about voting laws, vote fraud risk, and updated information about voter ID efforts.
Judicial Watch has done more than any other organization to expose the activities of this corrupt administration and Justice Department under Eric Holder. Sign up for email alerts at www.judicialwatch.org.
Read, print and distribute the Patriot’s Handbook. This free resource contains a wealth of information on how people can participate at any level.
The National Voter Registration Act was crafted specifically to bring calculated chaos to our elections, open the door to vote fraud and force states to become de facto voter registration drives heavily favorable to one political party. Similarly, Attorney General Eric Holder and his allies have abused the Voting Rights Act, turning preclearance into a political weapon to sabotage voter integrity efforts. The results are a voting system vulnerable to systemic fraud.
Our most fundamental right as Americans, to determine the size, scope and indeed the very nature of our nation, is being threatened. This must not stand.
With the highest respect and heartfelt loss in Andrew Breitbart’s passing, we will be posting some of his most groundbreaking pieces here, and leading you over to the new Breitbart site. He was a General in the war against the left and we salute him. With that please enjoy and go over to the new site and get informed. Get off the couch and join in the battle against the leftist/marxist/communist/Islamist’s taking control of our country. “We are all Breitbart now”!
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Breitbart.com has received exclusive tape of an Occupy Strategy Session at New York University, billed as a group talk on “The Abolition of Capitalism.” One of the headline speakers at this session was Stephen Lerner, former leader and International Board Member of the SEIU and frequent Obama White House visitor. Lerner argued in favor of people not paying their mortgages and “occupying” their homes; he spoke in favor of invading annual shareholders meetings to shut them down. But his big goal was to get workers to shut down their workplaces. That’s where the SEIU agenda and the Occupy agenda truly meet: once workers begin to occupy.
Here are the relevant portions of the transcript:
Let me just throw out a couple ideas here. One, I think a theme here that’s really important is Occupy Homes as a key part of the stew in multiple spheres. There’s eviction defense, there’s folks who are moving back into homes that they were evicted from that have been sitting empty, there’s community organizing, there’s a fight with Fannie and Freddie, but this notion that millions of people are losing their homes and we can physically help them save it, very important … This second question, this question of moving money, which has mainly been an individual act so far, you know, move your account out of a bank, getting institutions, schools, universities, school boards, to move money out of banks as a way to put them into either credit unions or things that do economic development, it captures both what is wrong with finance capital, but then it’s something everybody can do … In fact, it’s infused by the energy of somebody that just got thrown in jail for trying to keep their home …
Annual meetings, shareholder meetings. We have this wonderful myth that goes on which is corporations get together and they so-called have shareholders vote on what’s gonna happen … Maybe our goal ought to be able to shut down as many of the shareholder meetings as possible. Inside and outside, saying this is where they gather to make the decisions about the fate of the world, and we’re sick and tired of them doing it in a little room. So why don’t we all go to those meetings? $5 a share right now, Bank of America … The eyes of the nation will see the first convention in Charlotte, which is thousands of people coming to the Bank of American meeting saying “Let’s shut it down … Who the hell are these people to be meeting and deciding our fate without us there?”
But here’s the real crux of the matter:
How do we give workers the confidence? … How do we create a mood in the nation where we’re occupying our workplaces, where we’re shutting down our workplaces? … Where workers are sitting in, where workers are shutting down their places of work, and when the police come, when the injunctions come, we’re all there with them, so we can really deal with part of the reason that the economy’s so screwed up … which is a few people have got all the power. Think stew, think hope, death to the Stockholm Syndrome!
Lerner wasn’t the only one preaching this communist propaganda. The panel’s title told the whole story. This was an anti-capitalism panel. Lerner’s fellow panel members included David Graeber, who billed himself as “one of the original mobilizers behind Occupy Wall Street.” Graeber announced, “It strikes me that if one is going to pursue this to its logical conclusion, the only way to have a genuinely democratic society would also be to abolish capitalism and the state.”
Yotam Marom, an Occupy Zuccotti Park “veteran,” said, “Capitalism doesn’t wither away just because we don’t like it. It’s something you that you have to crash into and have an alternative to.”
Steve Max, a community organizer who worked closely with the revolutionary group Students for a Democratic Society, the parent group that spawned the Weathermen Underground, was also present. This is the same fellow who said after 9/11 that this was an opportunity to push the socialist program – because, after all, “How can anyone now say that they are for national security but not health funding”? He has walked in the same circles as President Obama.
At this event, Max grabbed the mic and said that he understood political violence. Members of the audience also argued in favor of political violence, citing the beauty of the Weathermen Underground.
This is where the unions and the Occupy movement and the academy all come together under one big anti-capitalist umbrella. Lerner, representing labor, says that the job of labor is to shut down business; Occupy says that its job is to smash the machines of capitalism; academia provides them the forum to recruit.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has an unlikely ally this week in his Florida primary battle against Mitt Romney: the Democratic National Committee.
The Democrats are targeting Mitt Romney as if he were already the Republican nominee running against President Barack Obama, with campaign ads, Internet videos, daily news conferences and dozens of news releases attacking the former Massachusetts governor.Traditional Democratic partners are jumping in, too. Both theAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ and Service Employees International Union’s political-action committees are running their own TV commercials in Florida this week — attacking Romney.
Gingrich and the other two Republican candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas U.S.Rep.Ron Paul, are being all but ignored by the DNC and its allies. Instead, they’re hammering Romney harder even than his rivals are, paying for TV and radio ads saying that Romney changes his positions on issues such as abortion; that his hard-line positions on immigration would be “devastating” to Hispanics in a state full of them; that his business record was characterized by “greed.”
Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker, is the latest Republican candidate to ride a “not-Mitt Romney” surge, winning South Carolina last week. The latest polls show him and Romney neck-and-neck in Florida as the Jan. 31 primary nears. But Romney has more national organization and money and remains the more-probable nominee.”Barack Obama and his liberal allies are terrified of Mitt Romney because they know if he is the Republican nominee, he will win in November,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said. “They have stepped up their false and dishonest attacks to distract from Obama’s failed jobs record, and they hope to prop up Speaker Gingrich. … They realize he would be an incredibly weak nominee and would get trounced by President Obama.”
Gingrich’s campaign did not respond Tuesday to inquiries regarding the DNC tactics.
The Democrats say they are merely responding to Romney, who until recently ignored his rivals to attack Obama for everything from his “Obamacare” health plan to his “European” and “failed” economic policies that undermine American individualism.
And they say they are working from the perspective that Romney is the national front-runner and the presumptive eventual nominee, notwithstanding Gingrich’s rapid rise in the polls.
“Mitt Romney has earned the distinction,” DNC press secretary Melanie Rousell said. “He attacks the president every opportunity he has. We are only trying to set the record straight, both on the president and on Mitt Romney’s record, which he doesn’t want to talk about.”
Rousell said the DNC has no interest in influencing the outcome of the Republican race, only to define the Republican candidates.
“We generally see the field as all the same: They’re all fighting to be the most extreme,” she said.
The DNC strategy is not new: Romney’s camp has noted increased Democratic attention since Iowa. But the stakes are getting higher with every primary.
In the three days since the South Carolina primary was decided Saturday night, the DNC has organized four news conferences for Florida media, released a video and issued at least 25 news releases attacking Romney’s record and background, with only rare mentions of Gingrich.
At a Sunday news conference, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston welcomed Romney to Florida, where, she said, voters will learn “he will say anything to get elected.” On Monday, Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith told reporters that Romney likes to play by different rules. Tuesday, DNC Executive Director Patrick Gaspard picked apart Romney’s newly released tax returns. And Smith critiqued Romney’s performance in Monday night’s Republican debate.
“I don’t think he connects well with people,” Smith said. “In North Florida, I don’t think he’ll connect. I think in South Florida he has a problem with the immigration issue.”
Rollins College political scientist Donald L. Davison said the Democrats could have a variety of reasons for their attacks, including a decision that “they would rather face Gingrich,” whose multiple marriages and $1.6 million in “consultant” earnings from Freddie Mac in Washington could make him a weaker nominee.
He noted that the most extreme historical precedent for such a strategy was when President Richard Nixon‘s Committee to Re-Elect the President worked hard in 1972 to get Democrats to pick Sen. George McGovern, an outspoken liberal whom Nixon beat easily.
“Ultimately, it is in their [Democrats] interest to see the Republican Party tied up in knots — which the party seems to be doing a pretty good job of all on its own,” Davison said.
The Romney campaign is annoyed by the two-front attack — Gingrich on one side, the DNC on the other — but ultimately thinks the Democrats’ attacks will have little effect on the state’s Republican voters.
“Fortunately, Floridians are smart enough to see through it,” Williams said.
Breakdown of the Connections Between The Working Family Party, SEIU, ACORN, The New Party, The DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides, George Soros and The Obama Administration:
The Working Families Party was established in the 90s by key members of the the socialist organizations The New Party, ACORN, SEIU, and a coalition of other labor unions and community organizations.
Patrick Gaspard, the current executive director of the DNC, former director of Obama’s Office of Political Affairs, was an organizer for the New Party, the executive vice president of the SEIU Local 1199, political director for Bertha Lewis (the former president of ACORN) and a co-chair of the Working Families Party.
The New Party is a socialist political coalition co-founded in 1992 by academic and political activist Joel Rogers.
The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers’ Madison, Wisconsin home; Wade Rathke, ACORN and SEIU founder and Gerry Hudson from Democratic Socialists of America and SEIU were in attendance at those meetings.
The New Party’s influential Chicago chapter began to formed in January 1995. Its members consisted mainly of individuals from ACORN, SEIU and the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama attended a New Party function and received their endorsement in 1995.
In 1994, a New Party newspaper listed more than 100 activists “who are building the NP;” some names among the list of 100 were Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Wade Rathke, Cornel West, Jon Barton of SEIU, Maude Hurd of ACORN and Margaret Shelleda of SEIU.
Gerry Hudson, SEIU Executive Vice President and original New Party member, serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance organized by Joel Rogers’ group COWS Center on Wisconsin Strategy. The Alliance is a project of the Tides Center. Harry Reid credited the Apollo Alliance with helping to write the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
George Soros’ Open Society Institute is a major source of money behind the Apollo Alliance and the Tides Foundation.
Of course, SEIU laid out the plans for Occupy Wall Street Months ago, as brought to you by the Blaze in this exclusive video:
Jessica Shearer, labor and faith organizer, speaking at Personal Democracy Media’s From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street and Beyond on December 12th, 2011.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu.
Although it’s being deployed in several states like Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania and others, there are still many who have never heard of the Colorado Model. What’s worse, despite all the Left’s bemoaning of the “vast right wing conspiracy,” Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or whatever enemy they can dream up, there is still nothing like the Colorado Model on the Right.
In sum, the Colorado Model is one of the Left’s most effective stratagems that was “built” to turn “red states” into “blue states” in a very short period (with the exception, perhaps, of the 2010 election cycle). When combined with the tactics of Saul Alinsky and his disciples, the Colorado Model is akin to a Soviet platoon armed with AK-47s mowing down a militia armed with slingshots.
According to a 2008 expose in the Weekly Standard, in 2004 and 2006 “routed Republicans, capturing the governorship, both houses of the state legislature, a U.S. Senate seat, and two U.S. House seats.”
Conceived by four rich liberals, the Colorado Model is a fairly simple strategy:
Eric O’Keefe, chairman of the conservative Sam Adams Alliance in Chicago, says there are seven “capacities” that are required to drive a successful political strategy and keep it on offense: [1] the capacity to generate intellectual ammunition, [2] to pursue investigations, [3] to mobilize for elections, [4] to fight media bias, [5] to pursue strategic litigation, [6] to train new leaders, and [7] to sustain a presence in the new media. Colorado liberals have now created institutions that possess all seven capacities. By working together, they generate political noise and attract press coverage. Explains Caldara, “Build an echo chamber and the media laps it up.”
Unfortunately, the Right still doesn’t seem to embrace or, more importantly, understand the Colorado Model. What’s worse, because the Colorado Model requires cooperation, it is unlikely the Right will ever be successful in creating a model similar to that which the Left is deploying across the country.
Unlike Barack Obama’s OFA, which coordinates with the institutional Left, the Moveon.orgs of the world, hundreds of 527s, think tanks, unions, and the like, the Right largely consists of groups who work disparately, in disagreement with, and, often, openly fighting with one another. On the Right, we have the Keystone Cops facing the Red Army on the Left.
As opposed to disarray on the Right, the Left is largely unified in their vision, their messaging, and their tactics. As such, the Colorado Model is a prime example of the Left putting their ideas into action and, in so doing, turning America from a country of individuals into a country of collectivists.
The Democratic surge in Colorado reflects the national trend, but it involves a great deal more. There’s something unique going on in Colorado that, if copied in other states, has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide. That something is the “Colorado Model,” and it’s certain to be a major topic of discussion when Democrats convene in Denver in the last week of August for their national convention.
While the Colorado Model isn’t a secret, it hasn’t drawn much national attention either. Democrats, for now anyway, seem wary of touting it. One reason for their reticence is that it depends partly on wealthy liberals’ spending tons of money not only on “independent expenditures” to attack Republican office-seekers but also to create a vast infrastructure of liberal organizations that produces an anti-Republican, anti-conservative echo chamber in politics and the media.
Colorado is where this model is being tested and refined. And Republicans, even more than Democrats, say that it’s working impressively. (For Republicans, it offers an excuse for their tailspin.) Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank based in Denver, says Republicans around the country should be alarmed by the success of the Colorado Model. “Watch out,” he says, “it’s coming to a state near you.”
On the Right, after nearly three years of being engaged in the battle to save America from tax and spend collectivists, there is still a large knowledge vacuum in the nature of the battle, the groups and strategies involved, as well as the tactics used. America is nearing the end of a century-old ideological war waged by Marxists of varying degree—an ideological war that will determine the future of America. Until such time as the Right understands that fact and begins to work together, any “victories” at the ballot box will be fleeting and, in the long run, futile.
If there was ever any question whether the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a radical and militantly Marxist union, this SEIU jobs description for a Senior/Lead Internal Organizer, Home Care, posted on the SEIU’s website should remove all doubts.
The SEIU is advertising on its site for SEIU Healthcare 775NW in Washington State. Among the job duties listed includes the training of members in civil-disobedience, peaceful resistance (how to get arrested), as well as the occupation and takeover banks and state buildings [emphasis added]:
Leadership Development:
• Leading members and organizers to develop curriculum and lead leadership development trainings
• Train and lead members in non-violent civil disobedience, such as occupying state buildings and banks, and peaceful resistance.
• Implement leadership program with the goal of engaging 10% of members in active leadership and majority participation
Member Mobilization:
• Execute field plans mobilizing members around political campaigns, annual Leadership Convention, lobby days, regional meetings.
• Execute field plans for special campaigns including contract campaigns, ballot initiatives, COPE contributions, general membership growth and the broader campaign to fight for a fair economy.
• Plan and execute strategic direct action field plans including banner drops, bank takeovers, and capitol occupations with membership, other local unions, and coalition partners
Additional Responsibilities:
• Assignments to electoral, legislative and growth new organizing campaigns as required
• Other duties as assigned
Since the SEIU has already shown it has no respect for private property, the question that lingers is: Will 2013 be the year when a real attorney general finally begins to look at the entire SEIU structure with RICO in mind?
Boiled down to the essentials, union backing of leftist politicians is good business: Democrats push policies that benefit union bosses at the expense of employers, customers, and often the unions’ own members. This is doubly true of public unions; of course someone who gets rich taking money from government workers wants bigger government!
The case for union reform is tough to make due to Big Labor’s dishonestly political nature. Claiming to speak for all teachers/mechanics/factory workers/Middle Class Americans, unions have a rhetorical curtain thick enough to hide tens of millions in partisan spending. Democrats gain loyal constituents, union bosses get to make unsustainable promises, and corporations take the blame when jobs are cut or shipped overseas.
They’re in good Big Labor company, with 76% of SEIU (5) donations given to Democrats and each of these unions giving more than 85% of their contributions to Democrats: IBEW (9), Laborers Union (10), Teamsters (12), Carpenters & Joiners (13), CWA (14), UFCW (17), UAW (18), IAMAW (20).
Union bosses outspend by millions the corporations whose political influence they get rich demonizing. Democrats are expected to toe the union line as a matter of principle, while any Republican attempt at reform is framed as political payback. When GOP leaders are cowed into silence by this ridiculous double standard, union bosses win – and everyone else loses.
The chart above is one angle of what the GOP presidential candidate will be up against next year. Whenever you hear a Democrat complain about the corrupting influence of money in politics, agree with them – and then present this chart.
Nov 29, 2011- 5:04 - Former Rep. Tom Tancredo on the importance of border security and how the candidates will approach the issue.
BASHIR: STOP GINGRICH’S FOOD STAMP RHETORIC BEFORE SOMEONE GETS KILLED
MSNBC host Martin Bashir rarely misses an opportunity to dramatize and string-together current Republican happenings with obscure incidents from the past. Example. On Friday Bashir made the arguably far-fetched comparison linking the murder of a black British teenager in 1993 to Newt Gingrich calling President Obama “the most effective food stamp president in American history.”
Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo discusses the extent of the investigation into the Department of Justice.
Zach Polett (courtesy Anita MonCrief)
Richard Cloward
White House ACORN photo: Bill Clinton center; Wade Rathke third to his left; Zach Polett in lower left-hand corner. Courtesy Anita MonCrief
Motor Voter Signing Ceremony – Cloward in light grey suit, Piven in green. Source: the White House
North Carolina Left/Liberal Organizations
Maria Isabel, One of Houston Votes’ “non-partisan” Leaders
One quarter of Texans reside in the Houston metropolitan region and there are 25 state house seats in Harris County. Prior to the 2010 elections, Republicans held a slim majority of three seats in the Texas House. Winning in Houston had the potential to flip the House, giving Democrats control over redistricting. They wanted to “
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee illegally campaigning at Houston poll during early voting in 2010. Credit: Warner Todd Huston
COMMENTS (416)
AMPLEFORTH
Posted on October 7, 2011 at 8:42amThis protest is going to go nowhere. Why? It’s