Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Poll fraud?

McCain is claiming that vote fraud may cause him to lose Florida. How does he explain Obama's lead in polls in Florida? Does he think there's polling fraud going on?

Art Levine at The American Prospect was all over this voter fraud malarky back in April:
In October 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft launched an intensive "Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative" that required all U.S. attorney offices to coordinate with local officials in combating voter fraud. Yet even after the Justice Department declared the war against voter fraud a "high priority," only 24 people were convicted of illegal voting in federal elections between 2002 and 2005 -- and nobody was even charged by Justice with impersonating another voter. (The Justice Department declined to answer questions about more recent fraud prosecutions.) And despite the anti-immigrant frenzy fueling photo-ID laws, only 14 noncitizens were convicted of illegally voting in federal elections from 2002 through 2005 -- mostly because of their ignorance of election law.

ACORN operates on a shoe-string budget and has some lazy employees who have defrauded ACORN by taking a paycheck and not doing their jobs. (By all means, root them out and charge those folks with crimes.) Republicans are trying to use this to delegitimize Obama's win. Here's hoping for victories so resounding that this ploy won't work.

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