Remember what I wrote last month?

“Watch Ohio.”

Well, there’s news breaking tonight — and it’s good news for election integrity. A federal district court judge has found Democrat Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner guilty of violating federal election laws. The ruling goes to the heart of the ACORN-centered voter fraud epidemic spreading across the country. This is the second judgment against Brunner. Here’s the press release from the Ohio GOP:

Court Finds Brunner in Violation of Federal Law
Secretary of State appeals ruling, fights effort to validate registrations

(Columbus) – A federal court ruled tonight that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner violated federal election laws by not taking adequate steps to validate the identity of newly registered voters.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith called the identification breakdown “a serious problem” and ordered Brunner to immediately comply with federal requirements to match voter registration data with the information in the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration databases. The court accused Brunner of failing to provide county election administrators with “an effective way to access and review mismatches.” She immediately appealed the ruling.

“For some reason, Jennifer Brunner does not want these new registrations checked,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. “Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio.”

Brunner’s effort to fight the court order comes just two days after the Democrat activist group ACORN admitted to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity.

Ohio ACORN officials “blamed the elections board for not scrutinizing ACORN’s suspicious cards,” claiming the group “can’t be expected to catch everything.”

ACORN is facing similar inquires in other Ohio counties as well as 10 other states. Members of the group’s “voter-mobilization arm,” Project Vote, regularly advise Brunner on election strategy, even recently issuing a news release that claims credit for Brunner’s directive restricting challenges to suspected fraudulent voter registrations. Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama also has strong ties to ACORN, working previously as an attorney and “leadership trainer” for the group.

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FOR THE RECORD: ACORN’s Ohio Fraud File

The Columbus Dispatch, 5/9/07: In what might be a Franklin County first, a Reynoldsburg man was indicted yesterday for voting twice in the November election. … [An attorney] said Gilbert was registered in both counties by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a nonprofit agency that has come under fire in 12 states for voter fraud.

Associated Press, 9/20/06: The mother of a 16-year-old has told the Summit County elections board that her daughter was registered to vote, just two months after a 10-year-old boy was summoned for jury duty because he was on the county’s voter rolls. …The board plans to issue subpoenas to the girl and the person who filed the voter registration application, Prentice McNary of Akron, a circulator paid by Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, [board director Bryan] Williams said.

The Columbus Dispatch, 9/1/06: Concerns about bogus names increased recently as Franklin County Elections Board staffers questioned the validity of hundreds of names on registration forms and petitions for a proposed constitutional amendment to boost Ohio’s minimum wage. Most of the disputed names came from lists provided by paid solicitors working for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The Columbus Dispatch, 8/30/06: Franklin County elections officials plan to issue subpoenas to paid solicitors suspected of forging hundreds of signatures on ballot-issue petitions and voter-registration forms. … Most have come from people paid by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which was blamed for similar problems with voter-registration forms in 2004.

The Plain Dealer, 8/11/06: Potentially fraudulent voter registration cards have turned up in at least three Ohio counties, and 500 have been turned over to a prosecutor to determine if a crime has been committed. Matt Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said the 500 cards his office referred to County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien Wednesday were collected between March and July by workers for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/23/04: Cuyahoga County election officials are investigating more than a thousand possible fraudulent voter registrations – including one for Jive Turkey Sr. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Friday that the name is one in a string of fake names on new voter rolls. Others include Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and Michael Jordan in Defiance County.

The Columbus Dispatch, 9/8/04: A part-time worker signing up new voters for a local community group has been indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on charges he forged a registration form. … The charges stem from an investigation that began in May after the Franklin County Board of Elections discovered dozens of voter registration forms with fake names or false information. They were submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which paid workers bonuses based on the number of voters they registered.

The Columbus Dispatch, 6/3/04: A nonprofit group registering low-income and minority voters in Franklin County has fired two temporary workers thought to be the source of fake names and forged signatures on official registration forms. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also has agreed to perform extra checks on forms turned in by its voter-registration workers before submitting them to the Franklin County Board of Elections, the group’s head organizer said yesterday.

“Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we’ve got Democrats in charge of the machines.”
- Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama (Columbus Dispatch)

Maggie Thurber has more (hat tip – Patrick Poole):

For about two weeks, I’d been trying to verify that Brunner’s office was actually comparing the new voter registrations to an outside source, either the BMV or the SS databases. My phone calls to the Secretary of State’s office this week have not been returned.

Both Ohio law and the Help America Vote Act require that new voter registrations be compared to an outside, independent database in order to verify the identity of the voter. I’d been told that the connection between the Secretary of State’s database and those outside agencies was either not operation or had been removed.

In light of ACORN’s admission to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity, the independent verification of identities by the SOS office is critical to ensuring a fair and honest election in Ohio.

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Now, watch this. Shelby Holliday continues to do terrific work from Ohio for Palestra.net. She’s got a new interview with a girl who fell victim to Acorn’s aggressive registration drive campaign.

Takeaway quote: “I can’t even count how many registrations I filled out!”

She also e-mails:

“We also stopped by the Acorn office in Columbus to see if we could get a comment. After circling the block numerous times and searching for the address, we were finally pointed to the office by a post office employee. (It was down a staircase in a hidden location with very little signage.) None of the volunteers were able to speak with us, but they put us on the phone with Charles Dickens (a national organizer?) and he told us that no local volunteers or employees could speak with the media.”

Stay on the trail! She and her colleagues are doing the job the Obamedia doesn’t want to do.

Accusations of RAAAACISM in 3, 2, 1…

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More vid from Palestra’s Tiffany Wilson:

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