Moe Lane

Hey, guess what? Elections matter!

A voter fraud investigation triggered by allegations made earlier this week by the head of the state Republican Party will be combined with an inquiry also looking at identity fraud, Maine’s top elections official announced Thursday.

Secretary of State Charlie Summers Jr. also said he’s asked the state attorney general to work with his office in the investigation.

The voter fraud investigation began following allegations Monday by state GOP Chairman Charles Webster, who said he’d uncovered more than 200 cases of possible election fraud and asked that his information be reviewed by Summers’ office. The 206 cases cited by Webster focused on nonresident students in the state university system who had also registered to vote in Maine last year.

(more…)

Via Instapundit, it’s time for another game of…

NAME!
THAT!
PARTY!

Two high-level state officials have frozen nearly $150,000 in campaign contributions raised for them by a low-income housing developer now accused of bilking government agencies.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and state Controller John Chiang said they have put the money into separate accounts while they await the outcome of a federal probe into Advanced Development and Investment Inc [ADI]. The company has built dozens of subsidized apartment complexes up and down the state with taxpayer money.

(more…)

When I saw this title from The Conservatives.com (“Defeated Candidate to Sue ACORN Official for Costing Her Election”), I smiled. I also said to myself,You know what would be great? It’d be great if that sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] Scott Levenson was involved in this somehow. That would be great. But seeing as I can’t think of anything nice enough on the karmic scale to justify that kind of boon, I wasn’t really hopeful.

Well, maybe I’m getting this one on credit.

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

I agree with Brian that this is nonsense – if I’ve known that Scott Levenson has been a sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] for ACORN since the 2008 election season, then so should have the Materna campaign – but it’s funny nonsense that will put a spring in your step. Apparently Advance Group/ACORN couldn’t even bother to get mailings out on time, which just goes to show: it’s not that these groups are good at what they do. They’re actually pretty bad at it. It’s just that usually they don’t have anybody providing them with any sort of meaningful opposition.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes.

That sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted].

Crossposted to RedState.

Via Election Journal, somebody tried to steal this guy’s vote.

In fact, as EJ noted earlier, they still might – thanks to the Democratic party’s attempt to keep the rules for absentee ballots as loose as possible. If the absentee ballot is deemed the valid one…

Moe Lane

PS: Final question: how many people who didn’t go out to vote today ended up voting in NJ, after all?

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. And Big Government readers, too.

(Via Atlas Shrugs) For the next time somebody tells you that Democrat/ACORN/WFP election registration fraud does not equal election fraud, feel free to point this story coming from Troy, New York, where the one led seamlessly to the other.  Feel free to also point out that it doesn’t take all that much to flip some races:

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.

A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”

[Bolding mine.]

(more…)

Not voter registration fraud – which is, by the way, voter fraud – but actual, no-fooling, they-forged-absentee-ballots voter fraud:

Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant

Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy, the Times Union has learned.

[snip]

Documents at the county Board of Elections show the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties. A Troy housing authority employee, Anthony Defiglio, who sources said oversees vacant properties for the Troy Housing Authority, also handled many of the fraudulent ballots, according to public records and interviews with voters who said they were duped.

Via Big Government, which helpfully points out that the Working Families Party is another facet of ACORN, to the point where they share current officers like Bertha Lewis and former affiliates like Patrick Gaspard (who is actually working even now with the WFP in local NY politics).  This should surprise fewer people than it will; it’s long been an open secret that most of these groups live in each other’s pockets.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Admittedly, attempting to do so has been done so many times in this country…

…that someone surveying the situation might be forgiven in thinking that it’s implicitly permitted: but no, we don’t actually want election fraud to happen. When it does – like it did in Pennsylvania – and we can catch them at it, we put the people who did it on trial.

And then, apparently, we have the ACLU wander in and pick the wrong side to defend (via No Sheeples Here).  They’ve decided that paying people to commit election fraud is constitutional:

PITTSBURGH — The community organizing and voter registration group Acorn filed a federal lawsuit here Wednesday claiming that a state statute that is being used to prosecute some of its former employees is unconstitutional.

[snip]

Acorn hopes the lawsuit will prevent criminal prosecution of its local leaders and office, which have been under investigation by Mr. Zappala’s office for eight months, said Witold Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is representing Acorn.

See also the American Spectator, which in another article notes the real estate links between the NYT and ACORN.  Just in case anyone was wondering why the sympathetic tone.

(more…)