Lee, Lee, Lee
You do understand what the differences are between fraudulent voter registration, voter fraud, and election fraud, right?
Many of ACORN's detractors seem to think that just because some moron registers to vote as Mickey Mouse means that he will actually get to VOTE as Mickey Mouse. It doesn't work that way. In most states (possibly all of them) any organization that registers voters is required BY LAW to turn in ALL completed voter registration forms, even ones that are obviously fraudulent. What most of those organizations do (I know Catholic Charities did this and I am pretty sure that ACORN does it too) is that it separates out from the main pile any registrations that look fraudulent, and turns those in to election officials with the caveat that they are probably fraudulent and should be investigated. Then the authorities can investigate further if they so choose.
The fact that this is being pushed so hard is, to me, an indication of just how concerned many conservatives are about Obama winning. Registering people to vote is a good thing, and it should not be discouraged. But as more people register to vote, especially people at the lower end of the economic ladder, the more likely it is that there will be more Democratic voters, and hence the reason why so many conservatives hate get-out-the-vote efforts.
Now, actual voter fraud can mean several things. It can mean that someone is voting under someone else's name (like claiming to be a person that is actually dead), or it might mean that someone is voting more than once, or it might mean that some other act of fraud relating to voting has been committed, such as claiming that you live at a particular address when you don't, and thus basing your voter registration on something that isn't true. After doing some research, I discovered that for the entire United States over the last five years, the number of actual voter fraud cases that were prosecuted and resulted in a conviction was pretty damn small - less than 100. But there were a lot more instances of accusations and such, many of which had no basis in fact. This is what led to the whole scandal with the Bush administration firing those U.S. Attorneys. They wanted convictions for voter fraud, but many of the USAs (all of them Republicans and all of them appointed by President Bush) could not find any evidence of voter fraud taking place, and they refused to trump up charges. So the Bush administration fired them, and replaced them with people who were more compliant to the administration's wishes. The fact that so many accusations and charges are being leveled just before the national elections should be troubling, and if you think that these accusations aren't a form of political intimidation, you are kidding yourself.
The fact that no one in the government seems to care as much about election fraud, as opposed to voter fraud, should be REALLY troubling. Voter fraud is generally a vote here and a vote there and almost never swings an election, at least in recent American history. On the other hand, election fraud (ballot box stuffing, losing ballots, changing vote totals, etc.) can dramatically affect the outcome of an election. There is some pretty convincing evidence that election fraud took place in several places in recent years, such as in Georgia in 2002. In Georgia's case a patch was applied to computerized voting machines in two counties (and only those two counties) that were overwhelmingly black and Democratic. These patches were supposed to fix a system time synch problem, but they didn't. That got the attention of a few voting officials. And the election results for these counties showed a large number of votes that swung towards Sonny Purdue for Governor and Saxby Chambliss for Senator. The election results in these counties made no sense, and they did not match up with exit polls, which are the most reliable way of knowing whether or not an election is legitimate. Exit polls are used in foreign countries to determine whether or not an election is fraudulent, and so the idea that those polls are good for other countries but somehow don't work here in the U.S. is ridiculous. And the idea that thousands of black Democratic voters would suddenly decide to vote Republican (especially for Perdue or Chambliss) is also ridiculous.
