OpEdNews » The False Narrative of "Voter Fraud"

October 12, 2008 at 23:49:53

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The False Narrative of "Voter Fraud"

by Kenneth Anderson Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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A false election narrative of "voter fraud" is currently under construction in various swing states and being built by the Republican party and their media organ, Fox News. The narrative, that the Democratic party and, more specifically, Barack Obama, will steal the election through fraudulent voter registration, is being fleshed out by various state Republican party organisations, Republican Attorneys General and the McCain campaign. A false equivalence is being made between fraudulent voter registration and voter fraud.

Mere weeks before the crucial presidential election, the Republican party and their various agencies have uncorked a wide spread effort to save the failing campaign of John McCain. Critical swing states that are now seen drifting toward Obama have been targeted with outright and likely illegal voter roll purges, or, in states where the GOP is not completely in command of the election apparatus, specious lawsuits have been filed that demand voter registration verification against unreliable databases in order to exact large-scale purges of voter rolls. Despite federal law prohibiting voter roll purges within 90 days of election day, tens of thousands of voters in swing states have been recently stricken from voter rolls.

This now happening in Ohio, where a Reagan-appointed US District Court judge declared that Secretary of State Brunner is violating federal law by refusing to purge registration forms when mismatches occur between the state Motor Vehicles Administration database or the federal Social Security database, databases known to be fraught with errors. Ohio's Greene County sheriff, Republican Gene Fischer, has demanded the voter registration files of all voters who took advantage of an early voting window. Greene county is heavily populated by college students. Prior to this move, the state GOP filed a lawsuit to prevent early voting from happening at all.

In Michigan, the state GOP there proudly announced their intention to challenge voters in heavily Democratic precincts based on recent home foreclosures by claiming future discrepancies with voter registration addresses. It was a clear if nuanced signal that the GOP still believes only property owners ought to be able to vote.

In Wisconsin, Republican state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen filed a similar lawsuit as that in Ohio, demanding verification of all voter registrations completed since January, 2006. He lied through his teeth and claimed he had no communication with the state GOP in the matter. Van Hollen is the co-chair of the Wisconsin McCain campaign.

In Missouri, Republican election director Charlene Davis made the extraordinary claim that her board is "bogged down" in Kansas City by new registrations, and implied that these mountains of new voter registrations were coming in from ACORN. The process was being swamped, ACORN was surely up to no good. And what this vast problem supposedly being cause by ACORN? Three weeks ago, Missouri's election board found 135 "questionable cards." This led to the local FBI office promising to investigate the matter, as "officials in Missouri" were dispatched to seize documents from the ACORN office there. The problem: ACORN has done no registrations in Kansas City since August.

On it goes. El Paso county's Republican county clerk, Robert Blanik, spread misinformation in an effort todisenfranchise student voters in Colorado, where almost 20% of all the state's voters have been disappeared from voter rolls. Threatening "vote-scam" fliers were distributed in black neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Illegal voter challenges were planned by the GOP in Missouri. Ballots with "Barack Osama" as the Democratic candidate were sent to voters in New York.

The statistical target of these multi-state purges and the various other shenanigans is the heavily Democratic "new voters." Democrats now have 11 million more voters than the GOP, as that party has only watched its own number of registered voters decline every year since 2005.

The GOP are in trouble and they know it. With the McCain campaign looking in tatters and poll numbers darkening for them everyday, prospects for Senator McCain in an honest election grow dimmer by the day. Desperation has now set in. The strategy is set: purge voters, sew confusion, and stomp up and down about "voter fraud" emanating from a grass roots community organization most Americans have never heard of. Until now.

Purposing the False Narrative of 'Voter Fraud'

GOP-led vilification of the grass roots community organization, ACORN, is now in full swing, after state police in Nevada raided the office of ACORN in Las Vegas in a desperate attempt to paint the organisation as rife with voter fraud intent. The only evidence that voter registrations gathered by ACORN were problematic were actually provided by ACORN itself, which flags potentially invalid voter registrations and submits those registrations to state election authorities. The raid has been describe as a "stunt," a stunt designed to do bolster the voter fraud narrative. More raids in other critical swing states are expected. And let's be clear about one thing: ACORN actively canvases low income -- usually inner city -- neighborhoods throughout the country in an effort to get more low income citizens involved in the electoral process. This is exactly not the demographic Republicans want to see enfranchised in elections.

These GOP driven state-level efforts have attracted the attention of Fox News, which is now in full propaganda mode, breathlessly pronouncing the phrase "voter fraud" and "ACORN" at every possible opportunity. During one broadcast, a Fox News host pondered recent events:

"Barack Obama is ahead right now in many of the battleground states -- the same states where investigations are under way for voter fraud. Is this a coincidence?"

Clearly, this is not a coincidence. These "investigations" are being triggered by local Republican agents. They represent a direct response to the looming electoral defeat of John McCain and are occurring in conjunction with GOP-orchestrated challenges to new voter registration. But the Fox News implication is exactly reversed from reality, ridiculously claiming that pre-election polls of an Obama surge in swing states must be somehow be the result of fraudulent voter registrations.

This is senseless in the extreme. That doesn't matter to Fox News viewers, though, and it does serve the primary purpose: to inject "ACORN" into the national debate and to further the narrative that a program of massive Democratic "voter fraud" is in the works. This narrative has now moved up the chain, as John McCain and his "female Sancho Panza" are now routinely denouncing ACORN and "voter fraud" in front of their rabid fans, who respond in kind with a variety of threats and accusations against Barack Obama.

Even today and during the midst of a global financial meltdown, Treasury Secretary Paulson held a news conference to outline the latest plans to stanch the stock market bleeding. Fox News refused to acknowledge the event in favour of continuing a segment on ACORN, uninterrupted by trivialities like world-wide calamity.

Fox News, in the middle of their Brit Hume panel discussion (Brit wasn't there), didn't "bat a TV eye," nor mentioned a word about the news conference, but–after a commercial break–continued with an "ACORN" report (and alleged ties to Obama) throughout the entire time that Paulson was speaking to the nation, and to the world, about one of the worst financial crises we have ever faced.

The purpose of the narrative cannot be too lightly stated. In the event that GOP election rigging, voter disenfranchisement and the expected waves of confusion, failing machines and voter challenges at the polls on election night fail to deliver John McCain a win in November, "voter fraud" will the first thing to ring out from Republicans across the country. The narrative now being trucked out on the campaign trail and bellowed by the likes of Sean Hannity will serve in the event of an electoral loss to cast enormous doubt on the legitimacy of an Obama win. Lawsuits will be likely.

At this point, the purpose of the McCain-Palin tactic of inciting their hopelessly ignorant yet perfervid fan-base becomes understandable. Should Obama actually take the election, these people can be counted to to perform the heated street show of protest, fully invested as they now are that "voter fraud" will be the way Obama will have won the election. Facts don't and won't matter to these people, who are already displaying the characteristics of a mob. And that is exactly what the McCain campaign wants, a horde of unruly minions screaming in the streets that they have been robbed. And unlike the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida, the GOP won't even have to pay the stooges for their impassioned, possibly violent demonstrations.

***

As dreadful as it is, one can only marvel at Republicans' ability to force a false narrative into the public sphere. The country has experienced this repeatedly in the Bush era; 9/11 was a "failure of intelligence," Iraq is a threat with weapons of mass destruction, Iran has "nuclear weapons," Afghanistan was a success (prior to its looming failure), the economy is strong, Bush "won" the election in 2004. Some of these narratives have openly unraveled. Others, like the 2004 election, have been crucially buried by a complicit corporate media.

We are witnessing another one spooling out before us. Despite evidence of a politicized Justice Department expending enormous energy and expense hunting for voter fraud were none could be found, and punishing those who refused to engage in false prosecutions, and in spite of the DoJ's own report that vote fraud was virtually non-existent, the narrative of "voter fraud" has now been fully launched by the GOP in the weeks prior to the presidential election.

It does not matter that voter fraud is not real. What matters is delegitimizing the potential electoral win by Obama. It is an effort to create sufficient outrage within the GOP base that legal challenges to the electoral results can and will be not only justified but demanded. Even if the corporate media refuses to openly admit that, in a truly honest election, Obama would win by a wide margin, that the race really has been over for months now, they will not engage in any meaningful way to counter this latest Republican narrative. Fox News, the Weekly Standard, theNational Review, and the fevered realms of right wing blogs will force the nominal media into accommodation.

After years of known electoral fraud, of Republican-linked corporations and their daft voting machines, after numerous, anomalous election results, suddenly and in a matter of days, the Republican machine has pressed the issue of "voter fraud" to the front and center of this election. It is a case that demonstrates the power centers of American politics, where GOP-connected corporations rig elections and are rewarded for their efforts, while humble, community organizations that encourage the poor and the dispossessed to vote are lambasted on the national political stage. This is a disgrace beyond measure, and it must be stopped.

An astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, Ken lives in Baltimore, where he devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media. He authors more...)

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18 comments

steve scheetz

no evidence at all....

As of July 2008, at least three ACORN workers have been convicted of voter fraud in Kansas City, and one is awaiting trial. These ACORN workers in Kansas City flooded voter registration rolls with over 35,000 false or questionable voter registration forms.

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 829 comments [52 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 7:49:22 AM

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David Spangenburg

Reply: Just curious..

were you quoting from Michelle Malkin's column (August 7, 2008) or directly from Rep. Tom Feeney's (R-FL) letter to Attorney General Mukasey?

by David Spangenburg (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:00:43 PM

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Kenneth Anderson

Reply: Yes, no evidence

Watch Fox News much? Because that seems to be the only way you could barf up this nonsense.

As law enforcement will confirm, ACORN itself helps prosecute any employees who submit fraudulent registrations. They liken the situation to employees who shoplift or otherwise steal from employers. ACORN quality control flags potentially false registrations, turns them into election boards, which they must do as required by law.

Key Facts:

1. In order to help 1.3 million people register to vote, we hired more than 13,000 registration assistance workers r. As with any business or agency that operates at this scale, there are always some people who want to get paid without really doing the job, or who aim to defraud their employer. Any large department store will have some workers who shoplift.

2. Any large voter registration operation will have a small percentage of workers who turn in bogus registration forms, Their goal clearly is not to cast a fraudulent vote. It is simply to defraud their employer, ACORN, by getting a paycheck without earning it. ACORN is the victim of this fraud – not the perpetrator.

3. In nearly every case that has been reported , it was ACORN that discovered the bad forms, and called them to the attention of election authorities, putting the forms in a package that identified them in writing as suspicious, encouraging election officials to investigate, and offering to help with prosecutions. We are required by law to turn in all forms, but instead of just turning them in and figuring that it is the responsibility of the board of elections to figure out which are valid, we spend millions of dollars verifying that forms are valid, and then separate out those that are suspicious.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that a phony registration form ever leads to the registrant voting illegally. It just doesn't happen. The fraudulent forms are the result of individual ACORN employees, who, for one reason or another, choose not to do the actual work, but fill in false registrations in an effort to fill in their numbers. ACORNS fires such employees and cooperates in their prosecution.

I find it hard to believe that anyone visiting OpEd News doesn't understand this. There have been multiple sources of information about ACORN and their record in prosecuting employees who have been found falsifying voter registrations. Your ignorance here is astonishing, considering the site you have visited in order to make this comment.

Either that, or you're just a troll. In which case, shame on me.

by Kenneth Anderson (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:48:42 PM

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David Spangenburg

Reply: I'm no troll

My comment was directed at Scheetz's response not your article!

by David Spangenburg (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:03:55 PM

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Kenneth Anderson

NO evidence of widespread illegal immigrant registration

On the other silly point, the latest news coming out of Texas:

_________________

WASHINGTON - County elections administrators reject the conclusions of a report alleging that up to 333,000 noncitizens may be registered to vote in Texas, saying there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the Lone Star State.

The report by David Simcox, the former head of a think tank that favors less immigration, said an estimated 1.8 million to 2.7 million noncitizen immigrants in the U.S. may be illegally registered to vote, thereby potentially influencing the outcome of the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.

Using population estimates from the Census Bureau and Texas county registration data, Mr. Simcox calculated that Dallas, Harris, Starr and Presidio counties, as well as others, had higher numbers of registered voters than those who are eligible, which may indicate noncitizens are registered to vote.

But elections administrators said this week that there's no proof that county officials are registering a significant number of noncitizens to vote.

"I don't think we are, and I have no evidence that we have people overregistered to vote," said Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet.

Steve Raborn, elections administrator for Tarrant County, said a two-year investigation by his office of questionable voter registrations in 2004 and 2005 found only three noncitizens on the county voter rolls, and they were later removed.

He said he couldn't completely discount Mr. Simcox's findings. "We probably have some noncitizens on the rolls, just like we probably have some dead people or some felons on the rolls, but it's not a big problem," Mr. Raborn said. "If they're illegal aliens, they're going to stay under the radar."

___________________

CIS is described by the National Immigration Forum as "militant anti-immigrant," which seeks to blame everything on illegal immigrant. Simmcox an CIS are xenophobic nutters.

by Kenneth Anderson (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:01:46 PM

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Kenneth Anderson

Response to Sheetz, too

No, no, Sorry David. I was responding to him, too. Sorry for the confusion.

by Kenneth Anderson (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:06:04 PM

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steve scheetz

Reply: BTW

if you are going to use my name, please spell it correctly.

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 829 comments [52 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:39:29 PM

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E. Nelson

Wow the GOP is going all out on this

The hypocrisy is stunning. The GOP stole the past two presidential elections with ACTUAL millions of votes falesly recorded or completely disappeared on electronic voting machines and now their plan for this election appears to be that after they lose they will scream and squeal voter fraud on the Democrats.

It is unbelievable. It doesn't matter that the actual successfully prosecuted cases of voter fraud can be counted on one hand and the number of votes that were not mistakes but rather purposeful attempts at voter fraud can be counted on two hands.

Yet they make ludicrious accusations and claims that aren't proven or based in any fact and don't even involve actual votes that have been cast.

by E. Nelson (40 articles, 8 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 511 comments [57 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:19:51 PM

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steve scheetz

LINKS

On May 17, Carmen R. Davis became the latest casualty of an ongoing case of election theft on a grand scale. Davis, 38, a former ACORN worker, pleaded guilty in Kansas City federal court to filing false election paperwork. She had been among several defendants earlier charged with voter registration fraud and/or identity theft. Rathke and other ACORN leaders insist that the indictments were part of an organized effort to suppress minority turnout at the polls. But as Union Corruption Update indicated at length back in January, the evidence is damning: ACORN activists in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas padded the voter rolls with 35,000 or more fraudulent or questionable registration cards.

The link is in the beginning of the piece... I am just countering the ludicrous notion that there is no evidence concerning voter fraud... People have been going to JAIL from ACORN for years, and there must be a conscious effort to ignore reality to state that saying so is somehow wrong, or that it probably IS happening now, is a GOP tactic...

I have seen the Republicans AND the DEMOCRATS do all sorts of things to make elections go their way. for example... After making sure that it is next to impossible for a 3rd party canditate to appear on a PA ballot, depending on who needs our candidate to draw votes from, we are either helped by republicans or democrats to BE on the ballot..

I have seen ALL SORTS of criminal activity regarding the ballots and voting machines, and almost NONE of it goes to trial.. Why?? because BOTH major PARTIES ARE GUILTY AS HELL!

No evidence? PLEASE.. There is plenty of evidence, only nobody wants to take it to court because the election will have been over, and nobody cares at that point.

Ciao, CZ

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 829 comments [52 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:37:02 PM

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Kenneth Anderson

Evidence

Steve,

Certainly, ACORN workers have been convicted of fraud in voter registrations. That is not the dispute. The dispute is the extent of it.

And we must be careful to make the distinction between fraudulent registrations and "voter fraud," which implies actual fraud in casting a vote. That is where the evidence is completely lacking. No one has found a link -- at all -- between phony voter registrations, which are after all just forms, and any of those registrants casting illegal votes. Linking false voter registration with fraudulent voting is a false equivalence, as I stated at the beginning of the article.

You also fail to note that ACORN, as an organization, is the one that flagged Davis's phony registration forms. Beware of these insane numbers from the NPLC. There is no evidence that Davis turned in 35,000 false registrations.

From the DoJ USA office in Missouri:

"According to today's indictment, Davis used another person's Social Security number when she was employed as a voter registration recruiter for ACORN in August and September 2006. Davis allegedly caused three false voter registration applications – all in the name of the same person, but with different addresses – to be filed with the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners."

Three.

by Kenneth Anderson (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:54:39 PM

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E. Nelson

Reply: Wow Steve

Thanks goodness for your watchful eye and the millions of dollars the GOP is spending to root out all of these 3 fraudulent registrations.

I can sleep better tonight knowing that if Obama wins by 3 votes it will be fair and the integrity of the election will be sound thanks to Republicans like you.

by E. Nelson (40 articles, 8 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 511 comments [57 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 4:10:58 PM

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Yvonne

Sore Losers

Even with the three percent margin of error, the Gallup still has Obama ahead. I wonder how many senators will be in Washington, stating that there were so many white people who were stopped from voting? Oh right, that seems to only happen to the black democrats, not the white republicans. Watch it, they are setting it up now so they can ignore the blocking of the black vote once again. Proud to be an American?

by Yvonne (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 38 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:06:30 PM

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David Spangenburg

Links

Steve

You must have been channeling Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) because your original statement was word for word what he stated in his letter to Attorney General Mukasey, as reproduced by Malkin in her August 7, 2008 column. Your second comment has just vague similarities. I’m not being argumentative. I’m just trying to get your talking points straight.

by David Spangenburg (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:18:12 PM

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Barbara Bellows-TerraNova

More Support for Kenneth Anderson's article

Here is Mark Crispin Miller's latest posting -- an article regarding ACORN in Ohio: http://election-news-usa.blogspot.com/2008/10/mcm-acorn-and-ohio-gop.html (you have to scroll down past the charts and tables to get to the article).

We cannot announce it too much: VOTER FRAUD IS NOT RELEVANT!!!!!

IT IS TRICKERY USED BY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, INITIALLY IN MARCH 2005, TO DISTRACT FROM ELECTION FRAUD.

There is no evidence that Voter fraud has affected the results of any election.

There is a great deal of evidence that Election Fraud, through the use of electronic voting machines, vote suppression and voter registration purging (and more), has twice put an administration in power that has directly caused the deaths of more than a million people (according to the Lancet study).

Hmmmm, which one is consequential, eh?

See my own September 27th take on this subject, Busting the Fraud of Voter Fraud.

Thankyou, Mr. Anderson. We must keep putting the word out.

by Barbara Bellows-TerraNova (25 articles, 1 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 83 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 5:13:12 PM

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Tnut

Danger?

I am sorry to break in to a most important discussion on the demonization of Acorn. But something frightening just happened on David Gregorys' Race to the White House Show on MSNBC.

A senior McCain spokesperson was being interviewed. He was asked how McCain could change the dynamics at this late date. The spokesman said there may be an unforeseen crisis AND HIS SCREEN WENT BLANK, leaving Gregory stunned. He came back on 2 minutes later and Gregory did not ask what he meant by unforeseen crisis. The spokesman was visibly nervous and spoke to a dumb question for a few seconds and then left the air.

What are these guys up to. They see an election slipping away. What lengths will the go? This question about Unforeseen Crisis must be answered. I am Emailing MSNBC to demand a clarification of this, and if you think I am not overreacting I hope you all do the same.

Tnut.

by Tnut (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 16 diaries, 49 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 6:54:16 PM

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Barbara Bellows-TerraNova

LOOK WHAT THE BRITISH ARE READING TODAY

The Republican Voter Fraud Hoax by our own American investigative blogger and Election Integrity activist Brad Friedman, of www.bradblog.com .

Brad should know about Voter Fraud. He was the one who discovered the man behind the entire voter fraud hysteria that began in 2005, one supposed expert named Thor Hearn, who, oops, just also happened to have much more expertise as the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign's General Counsel.

by Barbara Bellows-TerraNova (25 articles, 1 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 83 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 7:24:17 PM

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Kenneth Anderson

ACORN Keynote Speaker: John McCain

This iust keeps getting better and better. John McCain was a keynote speaker at a February 2006 ACORN-sponsored convention in Florida.

by Kenneth Anderson (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:45:55 PM

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steve scheetz

I find it interesting...

that many of you will bend over backward to believe the lamest of explanations for the 45th or 46th time it is presented, but if a politician / group who you don't share values with offers a similar explanation, you will call it what it is...

A LOAD OF CRAP.

Sorry, but I see so many people defending ACORN so vehemently when I found over 116,000 hits for "ACORN employees plead guilty" on google. I am, posting talking points? LOL! This article is a list of talking points!

Ciao, CZ

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 829 comments [52 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:34:29 PM

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