Project Vote

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (but Not Equal Rights) Under Law

By Kevin Mooney, Organization Trends, February 2013 (PDF here)

Summary: Formed in the midst of the nation’s struggle to guarantee equal rights to all Americans, regardless of race, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has morphed into just another left-wing pressure group trying to gain special privileges for its favored constituencies, even if that means undermining the voting rights of Americans of every race.

Be careful about working to uphold the rule of law in areas of the country where both political parties are competitive. Otherwise, you can expect to hear from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which has joined forces with Project Vote, Demos, Common Cause, the Advancement Project, and other far-left groups in an effort to scuttle ballot integrity efforts. Thanks in large measure to a compliant, uncritical news media, the Lawyers’ Committee and its allies, have worked successfully to delay (but not stop) implementation of voter identification laws that would protect the best interests of the very racial minorities the Committee claims to champion.

While it is fair to point out that Republicans have been the primary driving force behind voter ID laws since the 2010 mid-term elections, the New York Times and other liberal publications do not inform readers that a broad cross-section of Americans, spanning political and racial lines, support these same laws. In fact, polls show that minorities actually favor voter ID laws by a slightly higher margin than whites.

John Fund, a senior editor with the American Spectator who has written two books on voter fraud, told the “True the Vote” Summit in Houston, Texas, last year that the poll results should not be surprising.

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Writer James Simpson has a wonderful new opus at the Accuracy In Media website.

Radical leftists are gearing up to try to steal the 2012 elections, he explains. In recent years Simpson, a frequent American Thinker contributor, has written extensively about the Cloward-Piven Strategy of orchestrated crisis and of the devious tactics of Alinskyite community organizers.

The new piece begins:

This report reveals the Left’s vote fraud strategy for the 2012 elections. Like a KGB operation, it is thorough, multi-faceted and redundant. It has overt and covert, illegal and legal elements, the latter of which are designed, at least in part, to facilitate illegal activities later. It is a deliberate, premeditated, comprehensive plan to win the 2012 presidential election at all costs, and is in keeping with the organizational methods, associations and ethics of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Barack Obama.

The Left seeks fundamental structural change to our entire form of government. In keeping with their amoral, means-justifies-ends philosophy, they will register any voters, dead or alive, legal or illegal, who will then vote as many times as possible, in order to establish a “permanent progressive majority.” As two New York Democrats recently caught in a vote fraud scandal told police, “voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections…”

Low income individuals are the perfect dupes for this strategy. An expanding welfare state makes them increasingly dependent on government benefits, a development that guarantees their vote for liberal-left candidates. At the same time, people with marginal attachment to society may be less inclined to report illegal activity at the polls—or actually participate. The “victim” narrative promoted in popular culture and press may even encourage such behavior. Meanwhile, a growing tax burden and public debt suck private enterprise dry—pushing ever more people onto the dole.

Politicians of both parties are not above engaging in vote fraud. But this kind of corruption is relegated to individual campaigns or areas where corrupt political establishments have been able to develop unchallenged. It is not a systematic component of overall national strategy, as it is with the Left.

This strategy has been under development for decades. They have constructed an entire industry devoted to this task and pursue a multifaceted strategy to accomplish it: [...]

Voter Fraud and the 2012 Election: The Advancement Project

By Kevin Mooney, Organization Trends, May 2012 (view PDF version: OT0512)

Summary:  The George Soros-funded Advancement Project, a radical left-wing group, is colluding with several other progressive groups to block investigations of voter fraud.  The mantra of the group, which is becoming a thorn in the side of the Republican Party, is that voter fraud is a myth made up by conservatives in order to disenfranchise the poor and minorities.  But voter fraud is a serious problem that needs to be taken seriously.

How serious a problem is voter fraud in America? Ask the left-leaning attorneys associated with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and they will tell you that the problem is overstated, even non-existent. A March 29 Washington Post op-ed by Brennan Center executive director Michael Waldman and attorney Justin Levitt goes so far as to equate voter fraud in U.S. elections with imaginary sightings of Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch, the mythical man-like hairy monster said to inhabit the forests of North America.

“Allegations of voter fraud—someone sneaking into the polls to cast an illicit vote—have been pushed in recent years by partisans seeking to justify proof-of-citizenship and other restrictive ID requirements as a condition of voting,” they wrote. “Scare stories abound on the Internet and on editorial pages, and they quickly become accepted wisdom. But the notion of widespread voter fraud … is itself a fraud. Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch.”

Throughout the United States left-wing activist groups are making a concerted effort to block the investigation of voter fraud. But at the same time these same groups aggressively promote voter registration programs designed to increase the vote count for Democratic Party candidates. Voter registration activists and their lawyers pose as defenders of democracy. But they would have the states allow voting with almost no standards or procedures for guaranteeing the identity and residency of those who vote and register to vote.

Protect Your Vote U.S.
Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III (a board member of Capital Research Center) and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell recently initiated a new campaign to support measures like photo identification requirements to protect the integrity of voting. Their campaign, a project of the American Civil Rights Union, is named Protect Your Vote U.S. [http://protectyourvote.us/]. The practical argument for the campaign is clear:
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Leaders of the resurrected radical group ACORN are lobbying the Obama administration in what appears to be a concerted effort to game the electoral system to help Democrats, new evidence suggests.

As I write in today’s American Spectator, at least five Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now leaders have visited the White House this year alone. One of those ACORN officials, Estelle Rogers of Project Vote, has been involved in vetting Department of Justice hires who may help to enforce the voter fraud-enabling National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), also known as the Motor-Voter law. The Department has come under fire for refusing to enforce Section 8, which requires states to remove the names of ineligible felons, the dead, and non-residents from voter rolls, while zealously enforcing Section 7, which requires states to register voters at welfare offices.

As I argue in my book published earlier this year, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, those on relief tend to support Democrats, so Section 7 amounts to a taxpayer subsidy for Democratic candidates. Project Vote founder Sanford Newman openly admits his group’s work helps the Left almost exclusively.”While our work is nonpartisan, it is realistic to assume that upward of 90 percent of the people we register on unemployment and othersocial service distribution lines will oppose politicians who have supported cuts in the programs on which they rely,” he said. ”They are likely to vote Democratic in most instances.”

The Left’s Army of Election Law “Experts”: They Are Getting Ready for the 2012 Election

By J. Christian Adams, Organization Trends, October 2011 (PDF available here:  OT1011)

Summary: Liberal foundations, public interest law firms and advocacy groups have created a permanent network of experts and organizations devoted to an arcane but critical task: monopolizing the narrative on election laws and procedures. Cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of civil rights and the right to vote, they seek to affect the outcome of the election. They challenge any effort to protect the integrity of the ballot box by denying the possibility of vote fraud and crying “Jim Crow.”

Americans used to believe their elections ran smoothly: You left the voting booth, the votes were counted and reported. Although voters lacked first-hand knowledge, they had faith that whomever gets the most votes wins. The presidential election of 2000 changed all that. The 36-day battle for the presidency revealed mechanical flaws in the electoral system; it showed elections can be decided in courtrooms instead of at the ballot box. In 2000 competing teams of highly paid lawyers argued over hanging chads, military ballots, and uniform statewide counting standards. Like a 15-round heavyweight prize fight, one team of election lawyers eventually knocked the other out.

These days Americans have grown accustomed to elections that end in legal maneuvering, but they assume both sides are evenly matched and similarly funded. Even if today’s electoral fights aren’t front page news, the public expects each contender to have a battery of lawyers and experts, equally prepared to tangle in court or before the media over the rules and procedures of the election.

That assumption is false. With the 2012 national election fast approaching, it’s important to understand that the Left is fully engaged. It is ready to dispute how the next election is organized and administered by state and local election officials. The conduct of that election has genuine consequences—and the battle over the interpretation of election law next year is already taking place.

Left-Wing Groups Dominate Election Law
Leftists dominate the field of election law. Like so many other institutions, from academia to foundation philanthropy to the media “experts” who cover every corner of our electoral system, they have financial sponsors who understand that there are battles to be fought over election law and voting systems long before voters cast their ballots. The dominance of the Left affects both the outcome and the integrity of elections, and the future course of the nation.

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One of the co-conspirators in a White House-approved plot to use federal resources to produce partisan propaganda to advance President Obama’s policy agenda has been chosen to lead an Obama 2012 get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort.

The Obama operative chosen to head the GOTV effort, Buffy Wicks, was deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. In that capacity she participated in a now-infamous 2009 conference call in which Obama officials urged artists to create art that would help advance Obamacare and the rest of the president’s policy objectives.

Wicks will head a GOTV effort named after the branch of ACORN that employed Obama in 1992. Perhaps to honor Obama’s radical roots, the “campaign-within-a-campaign” will be named “Project Vote,” according to Politico’s Mike Allen. Read all »

Le Corbeaunoir of Res Publica blog has an excellent, through article on Amy Adele Busefink of ACORN/Project infamy. Busefink (shown below in photo from that blog) was recently sentenced for her role in a voter fraud conspiracy. I wrote about it here.

Like a zombie in a horror movie, ACORN is alive! Even worse, it’s still in the business of registering Mickey Mouse and dead people to vote—and the person running its current get-out-the-vote operation is under indictment for felony voter registration fraud.

ACORN’s voter drive is being run by Amy Busefink, an ACORN employee under indictment in Nevada for violating election laws. It might be understandable for an employer not to fire an employee until she is actually convicted of a crime, but this is ridiculous. Busefink, an alleged co-conspirator in an election fraud scheme, should not be running a voter drive.

For more information, see Human Events.

The Human Events article is a shorter version of our November edition of Organization Trends. Read it here.

ACORN’s District of Columbia and Maryland chapters have rebranded themselves under one new name: Communities United.

Communities United registered as a nonprofit corporation with the District of Columbia government on May 4.

Here’s the top of my article on same from the Daily Caller:

For a supposedly dead organization, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now sure has been busy.

Despite ACORN’s reported demise, the radical group’s flagship Washington, D.C., office continues to go about its business below the radar as state chapters across the nation form breakaway groups.

On May 5 ACORN’s new D.C. spinoff group, Communities United, held a founding meeting in ACORN’s office on 8th Street Southeast in the nation’s capital.

“Communities United is just ACORN’s way of thumbing their nose in the face of everyone,” sources close to ACORN say.

The D.C. office is important to ACORN because the embattled advocacy organization runs its congressional lobbying efforts out of it.

The same office is also home to Project Vote, ACORN’s voter registration arm, which continues to operate. In the 1990s President Obama trained ACORN activists and worked for Project Vote. [...]

In today’s Washington Times I have an op-ed on ACORN’s latest legal troubles.

It begins

New election-fraud charges against employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in Wisconsin are a helpful reminder that the scandal-prone, far-left liberal group remains as determined as ever to cause trouble come election time.

In Milwaukee, Maria L. Miles and Kevin L. Clancy stand accused of felony election fraud for reportedly repeatedly registering the same individuals on voter-registration forms. Both face up to three years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Milwaukee ACORN canvasser Latoya Lewis already was convicted of election fraud in October. All three cases arise out of the 2008 presidential election cycle.

But ACORN isn’t worried. To the nationwide network of hundreds of tax-dollar-devouring nonprofit affiliates, it’s business as usual: another day, another vote-fraud scheme. Doing voter registration right is unimportant to ACORN because accuracy takes a back seat to volume.

ACORN routinely tempts fate by recruiting the dregs of humanity for its voter drives, often placing felons – including identity thieves – in positions of authority. It views the inevitable attacks from Republicans that follow its voter-drive free-for-alls as positive events to be used in direct-mail solicitations. ACORN views such attacks, in the vocabulary of social science, as encouraging cohesion within the group. In other words, volleys from rancorous Republicans boost morale within the group and help it get leftist charities such as Baltimore’s Annie E. Casey Foundation to keep writing big, fat checks.

And ACORN doesn’t mind offering up the poor, ignorant and gullible as cannon fodder in the class struggle. To ACORN, there are always more would-be voter-registration canvassers where they came from. [...]