End voter registration problems. Demand reform.

It's been a long election season, hasn't it? And now that we've chosen our next President, it's tempting to forget all about elections and go back to our routines.

But before we do that, let's think ahead.

We may have seen record turnout at the polls this year, but all the while, eligible voters across the country were disenfranchised because their voter registrations were purged from the rolls, clerical errors, or worse, weren't even processed in time.

Some didn't know they were required to re-register after a move, or they missed registration deadlines they hadn’t even known about.

American voters deserve better, and the first and most important step our government can take is to implement automatic and permanent voter registration.

Join me in telling our leaders it's time to make voter registration universal.
http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/autoregis

Automatic, permanent registration will provide a simple upgrade to our voting systems without creating big and expensive new bureaucracies. It's secure, it's accurate, it's modern and it will make sure every American is automatically registered to vote when they become eligible. And after that, the registration will last a lifetime.

Automatic voter registration won't fix everything, but it's an important first step towards ensuring that every eligible vote is cast and counted in 2012 and beyond.

Tell Congress we need automatic and permanent voter registration now! We can't wait until the next election comes around. http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/autoregis

Here's what's happening:

… In Philadelphia, fliers were distributed in a predominantly African American neighborhood which suggested that people with legal troubles or unpaid traffic violations will be arrested by undercover cops when they show up to vote.

…In Hamilton County, Ohio, Prosecutor Joe Deters - who is also the local chair of the McCain-Palin campaign - requested via subpoena personal information for 40% of voters who participated in same-day registration.

…In Montgomery County, Virginia, a registrar issued a memo giving incorrect and intimidating information to students at Virginia Tech University about the consequences of registering to vote, including possible loss of financial aid and tax dependence status.

…In Ontario, California, the owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters was arrested on suspicion of voter registration fraud after dozens of voters reported that the firm tricked them into registering with the GOP by asking them to sign a petition they believed to be aimed at toughening penalties against child molesters.

Will the GOP’s campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

A great article about voter suppression.

Block the Vote
Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote/2

McCain Employing GOP Operative Accused Of Voter Registration Fraud

You know the saying, when you point at someone three fingers are pointing back at you? Well, John McCain should be careful when he points. Why aren't we hearing about this on Fox, CNN, or ABC???

McCain Employing GOP Operative Accused Of Voter Registration Fraud
Sam Stein http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/mccain-employing-gop-oper_n_136254.html

John McCain's campaign has directed $175,000 to the firm of a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states.

According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.

In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law."

That Sproul would come under the employment umbrella of the McCain campaign -- the Republican National Committee has also separately paid Lincoln Strategy at least $37,000 for voter registration efforts this cycle -- is not terribly surprising. Sproul, who has donated nearly $30,000 to McCain's campaign, has been in the good graces of GOP officials for the past decade despite charges of ethical and potentially legal wrongdoing.

But his involvement with the Republican Party's voter registration efforts has the potential to create a political and public relations headache at a time when McCain can ill-afford one. For weeks the Arizona Republican and his allies have been seeking to tie Barack Obama to the community organization ACORN, which they have accused of potentially committing massive voter registration fraud. Sproul's contract with the GOP ticket -- in addition to news of Republican officials attempting to suppress Democratic turnout in California -- raises, for some, questions about McCain's own efforts.

"It should certainly take away from McCain's argument," said Bob Grossfeld, a progressive political consultant based in Arizona who has followed Sproul's career. "Without knowing anything of what is going on with ACORN, there is a clear history with Mr. Sproul either going over the line or sure as hell kicking dirt on it, and doing it for profit and usually fairly substantive profit."

As Republican Congressman Chris Cannon summarized during a joint hearing for the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law back in May 2008: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

Indeed, Sproul's history is filled with allegations of political misdeeds. During the 2004 election, Sproul & Associates (the former name of Lincoln Strategy) was accused of attempting to destroy forms collected by Democratic voters in Nevada. That same year in Oregon, Sproul & Associates allegedly instructed canvassers to only accept Republican registration forms in addition to destroying those turned in by Democrats.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, Sproul's firm was accused of actually firing workers who brought back Democratic registration forms, while other canvassers were allegedly paid "$13 an hour, with the $3 bonus for every Bush, undecided or Ralph Nader voter registration." Similar problems related to Sproul & Associates popped up in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

All of this was executed, it seems, through an elaborate web of deception. As Salon.com wrote back in 2004:

Canvassers were told to act as if they were nonpartisan, to hide that they were working for the RNC, especially if approached by the media... In letters the firm sent to the libraries, Sproul misrepresented itself as America Votes -- a left-leaning national voter registration group not affiliated with Sproul -- but said that it was interested in registering "all those who wish to register to vote." Shortly after Sproul canvassers began working the libraries, though, patrons began complaining that the canvassers were being especially inquisitive about their political leanings, and some were pushing people to register as Republicans.

Sproul has denied those charges, claiming often that his registration efforts were bipartisan and that any suggestion otherwise was nothing more than the testimony of disgruntled former employees. He did not return a request for comment for this article.

But there has been a wide array of public complaint over the scope and nefariousness of his activities. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004 asking that the Justice Department "launch an immediate investigation into the activities of Mr. Sproul and his firm." Three years later, members of Congress still weren't satisfied. Rep. Conyers complained in an Oct. 2007 letter that the Justice Department was not closely scrutinizing Sproul's efforts. "The alleged misconduct described by many witnesses," he wrote, "clearly suppress[es] votes and violate[s] the law."

Indeed, those who have followed Sproul's rise in Republican circles argue that the pattern of behavior is too hard to dismiss as anything other than ethically-blurry, brass knuckle tactics.

"The biggest single thing is that he is a true believer," said Grossfeld. "He might take this as a compliment, but he is as committed to the worldview and the neocon approach to life as any operative I have ever run across. He is absolutely devoted to whatever that ideology is and as a byproduct of that he will look for every opportunity he can, I believe to further his or his client's agenda."

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/McCain_Hired_GOP_Operative_Accused_of_Voter_Reg_Fraud_

The Truth About ACORN - Don’t Let The Right-Wing Noise Machine Get Away With It

How Bogus "Voter Fraud" Charges Aim to Camoflauge Voter Suppression
ACORN has just completed the largest, most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in US history. We helped 1.3 million low-income, minority and young voters across the country register to vote.Unfortunately, just as in 2006, that success in bringing people into the democratic process, have been greeted with unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate.

After a similar spate of charges against ACORN in 2006, we learned that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had fired Republican US Attorneys because they refused to prosecute ACORN and other voter assistance groups on trumped up fraud charges. This was the heart of the US Attorney-gate scandal that led Karl Rove, Gonzales and other top Department of Justice officials to resign. Because the press didn't catch on until long after the election, it was part of a successful strategy to create an unfounded specter of voter fraud and to suppress voting.

Key Facts:

1. In order to help 1.3 million people register to vote, we hired more than 13,000 registration assistance workers. 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.

4. This has nothing to do with "voter fraud" – nothing at all to do with anyone trying to cast an extra vote. There has never been a single reported instance in which bogus registration forms have led to anyone voting improperly. To do that, they would have to show up at the polls, prove their identity as all first-time registrants must, and risk jail. The people who turned in these forms did so not because they wanted an extra vote, but because they didn't care enough to make sure eligible people got to vote at all.

5. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. But for some reason, when ACORN turns voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus forms, it gets accused of "voter fraud." This is a classic case of blaming the victim; indeed, these charges are outrageous, libelous, and often politically motivated.

6. Similar attacks were launched against ACORN and other voter registration organizations in 2004 and 2006. The bogus charges were at the heart of the U.S. Attorney-gate scandal that led to the resignations of Karl Rove, Attorney General Ablerto Gonzales and other top Justice Department Officials. It turned out that it was the charges that were fraudulent, and that they were part of a systematic partisan agenda of voter suppression.

   1. Republican former US Attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias said he was fired because he refused White House pressure to charge ACORN with voter fraud he knew it had not committed.

   2. US attorney, Bradley Schlozman, who did politicize prosecutions against former ACORN canvassers was forced to acknowledge under cross examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee that ACORN was the victim of fraud by its employees and ACORN had caught the employees and had identified them to law enforcement.

7. The goals of the people orchestrating these attacks are to distract ACORN from helping people vote and to justify massive voter suppression. That's the real voter fraud; the noise about a small fraction of the forms ACORN has turned in is meant to get the press and public take their eyes off the real threat, while those hurling the charges are stealing people's right to vote in broad daylight. They have already tried to prevent Ohio from registering voters at its early voting sites. In Michigan, they planned to use foreclosure notices to challenge thousands of voters. In Indiana, Republican officials have gone to court to try to block early voting in Lake County, Indiana And if this year is like past years, they are preparing to use this so-called voter fraud to justify massive challenges to voters in minority precincts on Election Day

The Details:

Fact: ACORN has implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field but in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.

Fact: ACORN flags in writing incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in,. Unfortunately, some of these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards. In many cases, we can actually prove that these are the same cards we called to their attention.

Fact: Our canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the card. ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality controls have identified this happening we have fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement.

Fact: No criminal charges related to voter registration have ever been brought against ACORN or partner organizations. Convictions against individual former ACORN workers have been accomplished with our full cooperation, using the evidence obtained through our quality control and verification processes — evidence which in most cases WE called to the attention of authorities

Fact: Most election officials have recognized ACORN's good work and praised our quality control systems. Even in the cities where election officials have complained about ACORN, the applications in question represent less than 1% of the thousands and thousands of registrations ACORN has collected.

Fact: Our accusers not only fail to provide any evidence, they fail to suggest a motive: there is virtually no chance anyone would be able to vote fraudulently, so there is no reason to deliberately submit phony registrations. ACORN is committed to ensuring that the greatest possible numbers of people are registered

ACORN will not be intimidated and in this important moment in history we will not allow anyone to distract us from these vital efforts to empower our constituencies and our communities to speak for themselves.
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=17855

The Relationship Between Barack Obama And ACORN

Barack Obama never organized with or worked for ACORN. In Chicago he was a community organizer for a completely different organization, as described in detail in his memoir.

Was Obama a trainer for ACORN?
In the early 1990's, Obama accepted two invitations to be an unpaid guest speaker at trainings for volunteer community leaders organized by Chicago ACORN. He never worked for ACORN.

Was Obama ACORN's lawyer?
After law school Obama joined a civil rights law firm in Chicago and was one of the attorneys there who successfully represented a coalition of groups including ACORN in a legal case that won better enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act in Illinois.

Were Obama and Project Vote and ACORN connected?
In 1992, Obama ran a successful voter registration drive in Chicago for Project Vote which helped 150,000 people register to vote. At that time, Project Vote had no more connection to ACORN than it did with dozens of other national and local organizations with which it partnered on local registration drives. In 1994, over a year after Obama left Project Vote, ACORN and Project Vote began working much more closely together.

Has the Obama campaign or the Democratic Party paid ACORN to register voters during this campaign?
No.

Obama For America did contract with a political consulting group called Citizens' Services, Inc. for Get Out The Vote work in early 2008 for over $800,000. A small amount of this money was subcontracted to ACORN for recruitment and training of canvassers.

Did ACORN do campaign work for Obama in the primaries?
Obama for America contracted with Citizens' Services Inc., a national non-profit political consulting firm, for GOTV field services during the primaries. Citizens Services Inc. performs these same services under contract to a variety of candidates and ballot measure campaigns, labor unions and public interest organizations. CSI did sub-contract with some ACORN staff for a short period to help supervise door-to-door canvassing in this program, but this was a fairly small expenditure in the overall contract.

In 2008:
Because of Obama's record of working for positive change that helps working families, ACORN Votes, a federal PAC made up of ACORN leaders, endorsed Obama's candidacy for President. However, ACORN's successful effort to help 1.3 million people apply to become registered voters was a non-partisan effort to engage underrepresented voters and bring them into our democracy. Our voter registration organizers don't campaign for anyone as we help them complete registration applications. http://www.acorn.org/?id=17856

Demand an end to the smears!
Ever since right-wing conservatives got wind of ACORN's record-setting voter registration drive, their attempts to discredit the work and create an atmosphere of chaos and intimidation have multiplied daily against the organization. Rather than compete for the votes of these new voters, they have resorted to lies and smears to distract voters from the serious issues facing the United States as Election Day draws near.

Unfortunately, they have been aided in their attacks by "journalists" and "news" hosts like CNN's investigative reporter Drew Griffin and Lou Dobbs. You can take action here by signing the petition letting Griffin and Dobbs know how you feel.

It is every American's right to vote regardless of income, race, sexual preference, favorite flavor of ice cream, where you live, whether you rent or own, etc. In a true representative democracy, the more people that vote, the more fair the representation.

DO NOT LET THEM GET YOU DOWN!
Every vote matters, exercise your right on November 4th,
no matter how long the lines, regardless if you have to vote on a provisional ballot, or absentee ballot.

Are you sure you are registered to vote?

Has your name or address changed since you last voted? Is this your first time voting? Did you recently get married or divorced?

Be prepared to show proper identification when you arrive at your polling place. Laws differ by state and county - for the most part a Drivers license with current name and address will suffice for identification. Be prepared with a current utility bill in your name and current address, just in case. See your County website for laws that pertain to you (Anoka County, Minnesota http://www.co.anoka.mn.us/v2_dept/elections/election-day-registration.aspx )

If you have not updated your driver's license since the change - your best and easiest bet is to apply NOW. Your yellow receipt will do. Many DMV's will be open late on election day, but if you show up at 7:30 pm without proper ID, there may not be enough time to gather your credentials.

We need to be sure every vote counts!!!

If you aren’t registered to vote....

If you aren't registered to vote, you can do it right now without getting dressed or leaving the house. How simple is that???

Are you registered?

150 million Americans combined can't even match the wealth of the richest 400 Americans.
All we have is our vote. And there will always be more of us than them.

Every Vote Matters! Are you registered? In many states the last day to register is Monday....
Register today and vote November 4th.