Nevada ACORN office raided; confusing role of Dem SoS?

Ross Miller, Nevada SoS, is not a Republican, but a Democrat--which complictes the story. That is, the raid on ACORN would appear to represent a blow against Obama by the centrist or Old Guard Democratic apparatus in the state.

That machine supported Hillary Clinton in the primary some months ago. To get some sense of how her angriest supporters feel about the raid on ACORN, check out what they're posting at

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?p=430366.

You will note that they're all foaming at the mouth about the dirty tricks, etc., that Obama's campaign played in that election--when all the evidence suggests that it was Clinton's team that worked the hardest, and the dirtiest, the suppress the vote back then. (Obama filed an FEC complaint against HRC's campaign for what they did, while her campaign did not do likewise, notwithstanding all the heated claims of wrongdoing by her followers.)

So what's at stake here is not just Obama's chances on Election Day, and the GOP's game plan to charge the Democrats with fraud. What also is at issue here is the far more important matter of our voting rights in general, since ACORN's voter registration efforts have been perfectly legitimate as well as wholly laudable. 

And so someone should ask the Clintons where they stand on this outrageous stunt in Vegas. Do they approve of it? If not, they ought to say so loud and clear.

MCM

p.s. My thanks to Allen Deddi Merion for alerting me to Ross Miller's (no relation!) party affiliation.

By OSKAR GARCIA - 3 hours ago

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada authorities seized records Tuesday from a group they accused of submitting fraudulent voter-registration forms - including for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," said Secretary of State Ross Miller, referring to star players on the pro football team.

State authorities raided the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to register low-income people.

Miller said the raid was part of a monthslong investigation, and he contended the group had submitted registration forms that used false information or duplicated information on multiple forms. He did not estimate how many.

Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, said the group has been working with election officials to weed out fraudulent forms from those submitted by the canvassers it hires.

"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans," Lewis said.

"For the past 10 months, anytime ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual," Lewis said.

She said ACORN had turned in 46 problem applications submitted by 33 former employees to election officials in the Las Vegas area, where it has registered 80,000 people.

According to its national Web site, the group has registered 1.3 million people nationwide for the Nov. 4 election. It has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri.

"The fact is, this is hard work and there were some people that probably sat down on a couch and filled out names out of a phone book," said Matthew Henderson, Southwest regional director for ACORN. "That's really what we're talking about here - not an attempt to steal an election."

Miller said no one had been charged or arrested in Nevada.

His spokesman, Bob Walsh, said investigators were using information from various sources, including the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Nevada.

"You don't have to read too many cop novels to know that sometimes people will tell you a grain of truth to try to hide the rest of the truth," Walsh said. "I'm certainly not suggesting that ACORN is that nefarious, but at the same time just because they handed over 50 to you doesn't mean there aren't 150 others out there."

On the Net:

 

 BRAD BLOG ALERT
October 7, 2008
Breaking News Edition

Today's incredible raid of an ACORN office in Las Vegas -- in hotly contested Nevada, as coincidence would have it -- by state police, has forced me to push this to the top of the heap right now.

ACORN's statement on today's nonsense in Vegas, is also posted at the end of this article.

Doubtless you've heard the smears by now: that ACORN is committing "voter fraud", on behalf of Obama, in hotly contested swing states. The media has been all too happy to pass that garbage on, without bothering to note that, in fact, the organization attempts to authenticate every registration form their workers submit and by law --- even if they find a registration to be fraudulent when they call the phone number submitted on the form, or if the forms are otherwise suspect or incomplete --- they must turn in every form to election officials.

They do so, and they flag any questionable registration forms as being suspect before turning them in.

The thanks they receive, for notifying officials about registration forms they have concerns about, is that the GOP's democracy-hating propagandists and election officials out there, run to the media, shouting "ACORN is committing voter fraud! They've turned in hundreds or thousands of fraudulent registration forms!"

That's precisely what occurred today, as GOP democracy-haters -- those who put politics first and country second -- hit a PR jackpot with the help of state officials in Vegas...