Anti-ACORN Hysteria, Racism and Anti-Americanism

[Cyre2067]

Found this article written by a newsviner, it was pretty good so I thought I'd share it here.

Link: _http://iarnuocon.newsvine.com/_news/2008/10/22/2025230-anti-acorn-hysteria-racism-and-anti-americanism

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. --John McCain, 3rd Presidential Debate, October 15, 2008

now we find out that ACORN is suspected of voter registration fraud. But the Obama-Biden Democrats would rather sweep these facts under the rug and use their mainstream media allies to bury this story. But we can't let that happen. We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election. Sarah Palin in email message to supporters

Destroying the fabric of democracy. Stealing the election. The GOP has gone to great lengths to play up duplicate registrations, specifically those by ACORN, as "voter fraud"-- and to what purpose? The answer is threefold

1. Guilt by association. If ACORN is doing something illegal and Senator Obama is tied to ACORN, that sullies Sen. Obama. It also shifts the discussion from issues on which McCain is losing the race to an issue which all Americans ostensibly agree on-- one man, one vote.
2. Laying the groundwork for voter suppression. If the legitimacy of the registration process is called into question, the GOP creates firmer justification for voter purges and voter challenges, either of which will be preferentially used, as they always have, to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. This, of course, will tend to harm Obama more than McCain.
3. Providing a basis to challenge the results of the presidential election in the event of very close races in any of the battleground states. By casting public doubt on the ability of election boards to ensure a fair election, the GOP strengthens any future position it may find itself in where its candidate loses a close race.

The problem with this strategy is that there is no plausible evidence that duplicate registrations lead to voter fraud. Leading experts on voting rights and election law say that the danger of "registration fraud" leading to fraudulent voting is virtually non-existent.

* Gerald Hebert, a retired U.S. Department of Justice voting rights expert who served under Republican and Democratic presidents, says the kind of fraud that the GOP is charging ACORN with is extremely rare. In terms of evidence, Democratic complaints that the GOP is suppressing legitimate votes carries the day over Republican complaints of voter fraud.
* The Brennan Center for Justice, after conducting a comprehensive study of voter fraud [warning: PDF], concluded It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.
* The Supreme Court, in considering the state of Indiana's voter ID requirements, found no credible evidence of voter fraud. Writing for the majority in Crawford v. Marion County, Justice John Paul Stevens stated, Indiana's voter registration rolls include a large number of names of persons who are either deceased or no longer live in Indiana. The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history. To find evidence of widespread voter fraud of the kind the GOP claims will taint the 2008 election, the Court had to go back to the New York City elections of 1868.
* Former US attorney David Iglesias says that he's astounded that this issue is being trotted out again. Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic.
* Richard L. Hasen, the William H. Hannon distinguished professor at Loyola Law School, notes The Justice Department devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out fraud over five years and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country. Of the many experts consulted, the only dissenter from that position was a representative of the now-evaporated American Center for Voting Rights. The American Center for Voting Rights was a front organization for the GOP, designed to raise questions about "election integrity" in Democratic hot spots. It consisted of little more than a PO Box and a few staffers.

In other words, although massive numbers of duplicate registrations have existed in every election prior to this one, no credible evidence exists that this "problem" leads to voter fraud, the dilution of legitimate votes, or disintegration of election "integrity." In the meantime, emboldened by the success of their anti-ACORN campaign, the GOP has stepped up efforts to disenfranchise legitimate voters. In Florida, the RNC mailed non-forwardable letters to Democratic voters asking them to "confirm" their party affiliation as Republican, raising doubts about their registration status and creating a basis for possible challenge lists; in Wisconsin, the co-chair of the McCain-Palin campaign (who also happens to be the Attorney General) has filed suit against the election board, which refused to purge voter rolls on the basis of dubious criteria; in Ohio, Republicans filed suit against the Secretary of State for allowing same day registration and voting-- a result of a law the Republicans themselves had written and passed. And in Michigan, the GOP recently abandoned its vote caging scheme to challenge voters on the basis of foreclosure lists.

But the trouble with allegations about ACORN go far beyond the simple possibility that the GOP will attempt (and probably succeed at) suppressing legitimate voters-- something it does in every Presidential election, as troubling as that may be. No, this election finds the GOP engaged in dangerous demagoguery that threatens to spill over into violence, as the heads of the GOP ticket turn a blind eye to rampant racism and bigotry displayed by their own party.

While Sarah Palin says I would tell these people, no, that's unacceptable when they scream out epithets and threats to Barack Obama, she can't avoid weaseling out of it with the claim that she "[has] not heard that." And she returns like a dog to her vomit by continuing to press the the claim that Obama "pals around with terrorists" (I would say it again, I would say it again...). Couple that with her identification of her small town supporters as the "real America," and the recipe sold by the GOP seems to be that Obama supporters aren't "truly American." That sentiment is reiterated by other GOP spokespeople--

* Michele Bachman has demanded investigations of Democrats to determine which are "anti-American"
* Republican Robin Hayes says liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.
* McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer agrees Northern Virginia has gone more Democratic. … But the rest of the state-- real Virginia if you will-- I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message. When asked to clarify whether she had said "the real Virginia," she responded with Real Virginia, I take to be, this part of the state that's more Southern in nature, if you will.

Let's consider that in its totality, for a moment.

The GOP seeks to disenfranchise poor and minority voters through voter suppression tactics. It accuses an organization dedicated to helping the poor and minorities gain adequate housing and secure the right to vote of engaging in widespread voter fraud which "threatens the fabric of democracy." It labels those individuals helped by ACORN as "anti-American" and not part of the "real America." And asked to clarify what that might mean, "real" is equated to "more Southern."

Keep this in mind-- in the South during the 60s, civil rights workers were murdered for registering poor and minority voters. The "real" America does not want the poor and minorities to vote. Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney were stopped one night on a Mississippi road by two carloads of KKK members, and were shot to death and buried in an earthen damn. Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker from Michigan, was shot in the head by Klan members after the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama. After her death, she was the subject of a smear campaign by the FBI. It is only a little ironic that "lynching" is a derivative term that was taken from the name of Col. Charles Lynch who was a landowner in "real" Virginia in 1790.

Voting is a fundamental American right. Thousands of people have died for that right, not just in wars, but on the back roads of the "real America," strung from bridges, trees, and telephone poles.

It is unconscionable, then, that Americans would protest the right of other Americans to vote. It is abhorrent that one of our Presidential candidates, in his own words and by proxy, would seek to justify the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Americans by inflating the virtually non-existent specter of "voter fraud" into "a threat to the very fabric of democracy." It is cheap, cynical, dishonest and cowardly, and the proponents of this tactic find willing helpers throughout the country, not least of all here on Newsvine.

John Lewis was absolutely correct when he stated

Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

If it does not give you pause that opponents of Barack Obama would slash tires at an Obama rally, or that a Wisconsin homeowner would attack an Obama canvasser (shouting that she "works for ACORN"), consider the vandalism and threats that have been levied against ACORN in the wake of McCain's demagoguery.

Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a @!$%#ing nigger, and he's a piece of @!$%#. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed."

"[an ACORN staffer] is going to have her life ended."

"you blue gums are not going to steal the election. All of you porch monkeys need to go back to Africa

It's a fact that out of ACORN's current 13,000 canvassers, only a few handful have been implicated in turning in intentionally fabricated registrations. It's a fact that ACORN is the victim of this activity, not the architect, and that ACORN itself has turned in such employees and identified potentially fraudulent registration forms. It's a fact that there is virtually no evidence to suggest that duplicate registrations taint the integrity of elections. It's a fact that previous such allegations against ACORN in 2004 and 2006 found no impact of "registration fraud" on those elections. It's a fact that ACORN cooperates with investigations into its practices. It's a fact that the bogus registrations that are complained about represent less than 1% of the total number of registrations turned in by ACORN. It's a fact that the GOP dropped it's 2004 lawsuit against ACORN once the elections were over. And it's a fact that so far the only organization that has one of its senior members arrested by the authorities for voter fraud is one hired by the California Republican Party to register Republican voters.

While the GOP inflames hatred, endangers those seeking to secure the fundamental right to vote for those who are least represented in American, and works hard to label its opponents as "anti-American," the only anti-American activity I see blatantly displayed publicly today-- indeed, proudly so-- is that of the GOP.

Senator McCain and Governor Palin are truly sowing the seeds of hatred and political division, and if we're not very careful, we will all be paying for it in violence by the end.

Links in the original, my comment was to reference the past two elections, indicate that this one likely won't be much different and that psychopathy and ponerology offer us the keys to do something about it, and then a link to the "Trick of the Psychopath's Trade" article where Laura and Henry discuss ponerology - that's one of my favorites, and most often linked bits.