October 2, 2004

Massive Voter Registration Fraud Probed in Florida

The U.S. Justice Department and Florida state police are investigating widespread allegations of criminal vote fraud in Florida, reports Florida Today. (Scroll down for reports today from Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado.)

Allegations range from phony voter registrations to forged party-affiliation change cards and absentee ballots. "Several law enforcement investigations are under way," wrote Elections Division Director Dawn Roberts in a Friday memo to election supervisors. Agency spokeswoman Alia Faraj said the Justice Department has agreed to review the allegations of vote fraud in Florida. She could not further discuss the active state and federal investigations.

A field director for one of the many national partisan organizations trying to drum up votes in Florida admits to routine efforts to rig the outcome. They include submitting thousands of invalid voter registration cards, as well as failing to turn in boxes of cards filled out to register Republicans.

"There was a lot of fraud committed," said Mac Stuart, former Miami-Dade field director for ACORN. Among his allegations - that ACORN "quality control" workers routinely kicked back Republican voter registrations while paying for Democratic ones. "They said they had enough," he said.

Stuart said he has been interviewed twice by an agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That FDLE agent declined Friday to confirm his investigation. Florida law makes it a third-degree felony to interfere with someone's right to register as well as to pay a per-card solicitation fee for gathering registrations. Stuart says ACORN did both.

Stuart said ACORN officials at state headquarters in Tampa were aware of what was going on, and discouraged him from talking about it. He said he was ultimately fired as "a loose cannon."

While Republican registrations were ignored, Stuart said those of convicted felons were eagerly sought, even though by law they are ineligible until they are granted clemency by the state. Stuart set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.

"We targeted them because ACORN had a goal: 103,000 new registrations from Dade County," Stuart said.

If you spot a news story about suspected voter fraud in your part of the country, please send me the link and a brief summary to voterfraud-at-gmail.com. Please click the "read more" button for more reports from Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin...

Common Cause For Concern in Colorado
An editorial in the Rocky Mountain News takes the liberal organization Common Cause to task for its lawsuit attempting to undermine Colorado's provisions for making certain voters are, in fact, eligible to vote. "We wouldn't claim Colorado Common Cause and its allies want to promote fraudulent voting, but if they succeed in a lawsuit, that's what could happen," says the RMN. "Common Cause has sued to invalidate a law requiring voters to produce identification at their polling place if they want to vote on all issues and candidates."

Michigan Update
Here's a report out of Macomb County, Michigan, about suspicious voter registration there, also involving Project Vote and the Michigan chapter of the Public Interest Research Group, another left-wing organization. And a report from the today's Lansing State Journal says more phony registrations produced by PIRG have turned up.

Wisconsin Update
Sean Hackbarth reports that two Wisconsin cities have asked their district attorney's to investigate suspicious registration applications, and a deputized registrant has admitted to signing registration forms of people he never met. Hackbarth:

The problems in Racine deal with an outfit called Project Vote. They claim they are a non-partisan organization that registers low-income and minority voters - prime targets for Democrats. In fact, Project Vote wants people to donate to the Working Assets Voter Registration Fund which helps "Project Vote, US Action, the NAACP National Voter Fund." Working Assets is a Lefty operation that donates a portion of phone and credit card sales to Lefty groups. This organization can claim all it wants that it's non-partisan, but much can be divined from the company it keeps.

It's not a coincidence that GOP-dominated Ozaukee and Washington counties haven't noticed suspicious voter registration activity. Project Vote and other like outfits are targeting Democratic areas to generate as many Kerry votes legally or illegally.