Bush orders DOJ to probe Ohio registrations

Even though the Supreme Court of the United States already overruled the GOP's attempt to challenge the validity of new voter registrations in Ohio, George W. Bush (of movie fame) had decided to step in and take charge. He is, after all, the decider. He has apparently decided that these new Ohio voters should not be allowed to vote.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled an attempt by Republicans to challenge the validity of 200,000 voter registrations in Ohio, saying that the party lacked the standing to sue.

The Republicans had sued to force Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, to provide county election officials with lists of registrants whose personal information did not exactly match Social Security or driver's license data, a step that would leave those voters vulnerable to eligibility challenges.

Tensions began to escalate Thursday with disclosures that the FBI is investigating ACORN and the possibility that it's engaged in a vote-fraud scheme.

On Friday, Obama's legal counsel, Robert Bauer, wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey, charging that the inquiry is politically motivated and that it risks repeating the 2007 scandal over the Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department.

Bauer asked Mukasey to broaden a special prosecutor's investigation to examine the origin of the ACORN inquiry.

Thanks Nancy! First he was only throwing food and painting on the walls... now he's burning the entire house down.

But sure: why impeach?

President George W. Bush late Friday asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate whether hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in the battleground state of Ohio would have to verify the information on their voter registration forms or be given provisional ballots, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on last week.

The unprecedented intervention by the White House less than two weeks before the presidential election may result in at least 200,000 voters in Ohio not being able to vote on Election Day. Information on the 200,000 voter registration forms does not match up exactly with information on government databases. Republicans are claiming that's evidence of voter registration fraud.

But the mismatched information can be attributed to misspellings and other minor mistakes, not a malicious intent on the part of voters to cast fraudulent ballots.

Still, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Bush Friday asking that he order the Department of Justice to probe the matter claiming Ohio election officials are not complying with federal law. Boehner wants Mukasey to order the Ohio Secretary of State to identify the 200,000 voters by county and precinct and be given a provisional ballot until their registrations are confirmed. Provisional ballots largely go uncounted.

“I strongly urge you to direct Attorney General Mukasey and the Department of Justice to act." Boehner said in his letter “Unless action is taken by the Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of names whose information has not been verified through the [Help America Vote Act] procedures mandated by Congress will remain on the voter rolls during the November 4 election; and there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted. Given the Election Day is less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.”

Independent studies have shown that phony registrations rarely result in illegally cast ballots because there are so many other safeguards built into the system.

George George George... what ever happened to 'states rights?'

Worried about an Obama landslide? Or is this simply part of a much larger, intricate election stealing mechanism already in place?

Because - God knows - your chances of legally hanging onto your (abuse of) power grow slimmer every day.

Judges rule against GOP in Indiana and Nevada

The GOP just can't seem to win these days.

Two rulings came down today -- both in favor of voters (and against the GOP lawsuits thrown up to block or otherwise hamper early voting in urban centers.)

In Indiana, Republican attempts to shut down the early voting centers in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago failed today when Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider ruled against them:

The Lake County Board of Elections and Registration is hereby enjoined from terminating the operation of in person absentee voting currently being conducted in the offices of the Clerk of the Lake Circuit Court in the courthouse buildings in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago and the offices of the Lake County Board of Elections and Registration in Crown Point.

It is further ordered that all ballots that have already been cast at the early voting locations in Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, and Crown Point shall not be invalidated except for instances of voter fraud.

And in Nevada, the fight for/against voter suppression has taken a new twist.

Yesterday, Republican chair Sue Lowden asked the Secretary of State to invalidate the registrations of any Nevada citizen whose registration information contained errors or was in any way 'incomplete.' Interestingly, her greatest concern seemed to be the registrations from the urban areas (most likely to vote Democratic.)

Today Nevada Secretary of State, Ross Miller, responded that Nevada Statue 293.5235(6) requires the county to notify the voter of any deficiency and give them 15 days to correct the error. He ruled that because the voters have not been given advance notice of any errors in their registrations, the corrections could be handled at the polls.

Score two for the voters!

Get a clue, Lou

Lou... I swear. Sometimes you're right on the money, when you talk about the way corporations have taken over our government. And then there are those other times... when you are way out in right field, parroting back the paranoid propaganda being spread around by the RNC.

I just received an email alert from Lou Dobbs, letting me know that 'Democracy is at stake,' simply because the Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling that challenged thousands of Ohio registrations (based on complaints by Republicans.) And of course... all the mainstream media can talk about these days is ACORN, ACORN, ACORN; talking points in hand, the wild, frantic drumbeat grows ever louder (and a little more desperate as it appears we're just not buying it anymore.)

Once and for all: ACORN isn't out to destroy Democracy. You can rest assured that no one named 'Mickey Mouse' will show up to vote in Ohio. Even if someone - deliberately or by mistake - had managed to register a Mickey Mouse to vote in Ohio, you can bet that everyone would notice if this



walked into the polls and tried to cast a vote. Deep breath, lose the hysteria.

What you are seeing is a concerted Republican effort to suppress new voters -- voters that are expected to vote overwhelmingly for Obama. Are they to be turned away simply because it benefits the GOP's self interest?

Lou: if you were the GOP, and you couldn't stop the flood of new voters, what would you do? Might you question the legality of their registrations in an attempt to somehow keep them out of the polls on election day? That might make sense if you were losing -- right?

Lou -- were you upset with all of the voting irregularities that occurred in Ohio - under a GOP state government - in 2004? Because these irregularities were the turning point in a very close election, and left us with another four years of George W. Bush. Amazing how such an unpopular president managed to miraculously dodge those exit polls and win Ohio, don't you think?

Registrations don't steal elections Lou... elections are stolen when the votes aren't counted, or are falsely invalidated after they have been cast, or when legally registered voters are turned away from the polls, or when absentee ballots somehow 'disappear,' or when votes are electronically hacked from a basement. All of this actually happened in 2004. Where were you then?

If you want to be enraged about an issue, be enraged about the fact that we still don't have voting machine paper trails in many states. No one can vote without an ID; but their votes can still 'magically disappear' after they are cast, depending on who within state government is in a position to manipulate the system once the votes have been cast.

And Lou... that just ain't ACORN.

For God's sake, do a little research... would you? The UK media is way ahead of you.