The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

During the final debate, John "Chicken Little" McCain said ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.” This is utter nonsense.

ACORN is a non-profit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people because those people cannot afford to hire lobbyists to go to Washington and schmooze with politicians. They mounted a major voter-registration drive this year by hiring more than 8,000 canvassers. Out of the 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor and minorities, approximately one percent are thought to be fraudulent. By law, ACORN must turn over every single registration to the state, but they also divide these registrations into three categories - good, need more information, and suspicious.

This information, though widely available, is not mentioned by the McCain campaign. By accusing Barack Obama of having ties to ACORN and then saying that ACORN is trying to steal the election for Obama, McCain is trying to do two things: 1) he is trying to encourage outrage amongst voters and change their mind; 2), he is trying to delegitimize an Obama victory. There are no good consequences to either of these actions. He either picks up a few cheap votes on fear or he divides the country based on the claim that Obama stole the election.

This is just a continuation of Republican politics as usual - divide, scare and conquer. They can throw out the charge of voter fraud all they like, but it really isn't even voter fraud unless someone named "Mickey Mouse" tries to vote in Florida, in which case it would be "Mickey" who is doing something illegal (unless, of course, he really is Mickey Mouse), not ACORN or Barack Obama.

The Grand Old Party is no stranger to trying to manipulate votes. It has been involved with all kinds of voter fraud and attempts to purge voter rolls. For example, in Nevada, a firm that the Republican National Committee hired to register voters, Voters Outreach of America, was found to be throwing out registrations for Democrats while turning in forms for Republicans. In Florida, a Republican-majority legislature passed a law that so severely regulated voter registration drives that before the 2006 primary, Florida’s League of Women Voters stopped registering voters for the first time in its history. The League feared mistakes on just 14 voter registration forms could result in penalties equal to its entire $70,000 budget.

Moreover, the new robo-calls from the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee are just an extension of voter manipulation. McCain knows he cannot win on the issues (his campaign members have admitted as much), so they only have one bullet left in the gun - tear down and degrade the opponent. Although people will tell you that negative attacks don't work, the ballots tell a different story.

Chicken Little may say that the sky is falling, but, in reality, it's just a little acorn.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court ruled today that the Republicans cannot suppress the voter registrations from Ohio that ACORN submitted. They were trying to suppress all of them because a few were fraudulent. Who's trying to steal the election?

Here's an intersting book on voter manipulation:

"How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative"

by Allen Raymond.