The voter fraud fraud

Another expose by AJ (actual journalist) Greg Palast proving yet again that the GOP is light years ahead of the Dems when it comes to the hardball tactics of winning elections. In a nutshell: the whole ACORN business is largely if not entirely a fabrication intended to keep the attention of the Sheople and the McMedia while the GOP feverlishly works to purge voter rolls and suppress votes. A sample:

Certainly ACORN collected some bad signatures. But despite McCain's claims, now morphed into media theology, none of ACORN's actions will have any impact on any election. ACORN hired 13,000 canvassers to register new voters. A small number of these workers defrauded ACORN by handing in phony registration forms using names they had invented (e.g. Mickey Mouse), or copied from phone books. In one case ACORN canvassers used cigarettes to bribe a homeless man, now a Fox News regular, to register 17 times. None of these activities constituted voter fraud. It is no crime to register 17 times; only the final registration counts. His multiple registrations would not allow the tobacco lover to vote 17 times. Nor is there any evidence the phone book registrants will cast multiple ballots. ...

ACORN took pains to screen its registrations and cull out those it considered dubious. However, federal laws make it a felony for voter registration groups like ACORN to discard registrations even when it believes them fraudulent. So ACORN flagged the forms it considered doubtful and handed them in to the registry. Ironically, it was those flagged forms -- the fruits of ACORN's diligence -- that have been flogged by Republicans as their best evidence of widespread election fraud.

The piece ends with some advice on how to make sure your vote is counted, including a 1-800 number for legal assistance. Well worth reading, and more proof that an AJ like Palast is worth 100 talking hairdos on CNN, Fox, etc. pretending to be journalists...