I say not surprising because, as long-time readers know, Wisconsin and election shenanigans are like peanut butter and jelly.

Here’s the latest:

In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to save in her computer and then report 14,315 votes in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday’s election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said. Smaller discrepancies turned up in two other communities as well.

“I’m thankful that this error was caught early in the process. This is not a case of extra ballots being found. This is human error which I apologize for, which is common,” Nickolaus said, her voice wavering as she spoke to reporters.

She said she had reviewed numbers from all the other municipalities in the county to ensure that no other similar errors were made. She said she was not aware of any error of this size being made in any past election in her county.

Stay tuned…

Michelle’s written extensively on this subject, and here’s another one for the growing pile.

From The Hill:

Republicans on the House Administration Committee want to shore up voter registration rules in the wake of a Colorado study that found as many as 5,000 non-citizens in the state took part in last year’s election.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), the panel’s chairman, called the study “a disturbing wake-up call” that should cause every state to review its safeguards to prevent illegal voting.
[...]
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican, told the panel that his department’s study identified nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens but were still registered to vote in Colorado.

Of those non-citizen registered voters, nearly 5,000 took part in the 2010 general election in which Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet narrowly defeated Republican John Buck.

House Democrats were naturally alarmed by the report and were eager to help develop a bi-partisan plan to ensure only legal US citizens are allowed to cast ballots:

Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) raised doubts about the reporting, noting that the study itself said it was based on inconclusive data and that it was “impossible to provide precise numbers” on how many people who were registered to vote in the state were not citizens.

Did I say develop a plan to fix the problem? I meant pretend it doesn’t exist. Expecting congressional Dems to seriously address this problem is like waiting for Michael Moore to permanently seal off the tunnel between his basement and the fry vat at McDonalds.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Kris Kobach will bring his determination to fight voter fraud to the Kansas secretary of state’s office after defeating incumbent Chris Biggs.

The Republican was leading with 58 percent of the vote to unseat Democrat Biggs, who had 38 percent, with 53 percent of precincts reporting.

Kobach, 44, raised the profile of the secretary of state race by focusing on voter fraud. The issue helped draw much more attention to the race — from Kansas and elsewhere — than secretary of state contests usually receive.

Kobach said he would use his position to push for state legislation to require proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, for anyone registering to vote in Kansas.

He also wants to require voters to produce valid photo identification every time they go to cast a ballot. He said these steps would help prevent illegal immigrants from voting and skewing election results.

In Ohio, another huge win as progressive Democrat Jennifer Brunner will be replaced by GOP challenger Jon Husted:

Republican state Sen. Jon Husted has won his bid for Ohio secretary of state, giving the GOP the office that will oversee the next presidential election in the traditionally battleground state.

Husted’s victory Tuesday also gives Republicans a key seat on the powerful apportionment board, which draws the state legislative districts every 10 years after the census and is scheduled to meet next year.

The former Ohio House speaker defeated Democrat Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, a former Columbus city councilwoman and the clerk of Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

The Soros-ization of election bureaucracies has been a primary agenda item of the Left, via Matthew Vadum:

George Soros said he was staying out of the 2010 elections. It appears he wasn’t exactly telling the truth.

After helping Al Franken steal a U.S. Senate seat in 2008, Soros’s ultra-wealthy buddies in the Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that funds left-wing political infrastructure, are spending money to level the playing field for vote fraudsters. (Soros is also funding an effort to take away democratic elections for state supreme courts, as John Gizzi notes in a new Capital Research Center paper.)

Their money is flowing to secretary of state candidates directly and to the Secretary of State Project, a “527″ political committee that can accept unlimited financial contributions that it doesn’t have to disclose publicly until after the election. The SoS Project, which has raised at least $170,836 in this election cycle, is an officially approved Democracy Alliance grantee. Not surprisingly, members of the Alliance are opening their wallets to help secretary of state candidates across America endorsed by the SoS Project.

The purpose of the SoS Project is to destroy the remaining vestiges of electoral integrity. The group endorses left-wing, Democratic secretary of state candidates who have no respect for clean, honest elections.

It’s about time the progs were subjected to pushback on electoral integrity matters.

Kudos to Kobach and Husted.

How about the other 48?

My column today builds on Monday’s voter fraud round-up and spotlights left-wing efforts to demonize citizen election watchdogs.

New developments since I filed the piece yesterday: Dingy Harry turns to election bribery. Guess who’s operating Las Vegas voting booths? Rhymes with S-E-I-U. Chicagoans are plagued by a botched vote-by-mail system. In Minnesota, charges are still rolling in from 2008 voter fraud cases. And, as I reported last night, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just undermined Arizona’s citizenship proof rules for voting — sabotaging efforts to ensure that only legal U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections.

The NYTimes and NPR response? Move along, nothing to see here…

Must-read and share: J. Christian Adams compiles a voter fraud watch primer. Like I said the other day (to great consternation from the Left): We are all voter fraud police now.

And a must-download: American Majority Action’s voter fraud app. Use it!

***
The Left’s voter fraud whitewash
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. It’s the Democrats’ coping mechanism for midterm election voter fraud. Faced with multiple reports of early voting irregularities and election shenanigans across the country, left-wing groups are playing dumb, deaf and blind. Voter fraud? What voter fraud?

More cunningly, these organizations are seeking to marginalize complaints about election integrity by casting citizen watchdog efforts as racist “scare tactics.” Echoing President Obama’s message to the Democratic faithful on the campaign trail, they are accusing political opponents of suppressing the votes of minorities and the poor. On Tuesday, The New York Times quoted a liberal voting rights advocate, Wendy R. Weiser, wringing her hands over individual Americans taking clean elections seriously:

“Private efforts to police the polls create a real risk of vote suppression, regardless of their intent,” said Weiser, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “People need to know that any form of discrimination, intimidation or challenge to voters without adequate basis is illegal or improper.”

Weiser also turned up in a very similar story minimizing voter fraud and voter registration fraud that was published Tuesday by government-sponsored National Public Radio. The NPR report asserted that “most election experts” believe that fears of voter fraud are “overblown.” No word on how many “experts” they surveyed (besides Weiser) to report such a conclusion, which flies in the face of dozens of felony voter fraud convictions across the country over the past two election cycles — and that’s just among ACORN-tied cases.

Overblown?

In North Carolina and Nevada, early voters have encountered ballot machine glitches that favor Democrats in hotly contested races.

In Troy, N.Y., and Daytona Beach, Fla., police investigations into suspected absentee ballot fraud by elected government officials are underway.

In Harris County, Texas, the voter registrar admitted that 20 percent of voter registration forms submitted by liberal activist Houston Votes had problems. Election whistleblowers from True the Vote are now being investigated by the Obama Justice Department and have been slapped with an ethics complaint by the Texas Democratic Party and a left-wing billionaire George Soros-funded group called Texans for Public Justice.

In Yuma County, Ariz., election officials denied any fraud associated with thousands of requests for “permanent early voter list” status submitted en masse by open-borders group Mi Familia Vota (a social justice satellite group of the Service Employees International Union). But election officials admitted that some 6,000 out of 14,000 requests fielded by the Yuma County Recorder’s Office “were reviewed and rejected, under Arizona law, either due to the fact the request was a duplicate or the requestor was not eligible to vote in this election or within the jurisdiction.”

Liberals shrugged their shoulders at reports of illegal alien canvassers trolling for votes in Washington State. Never mind the radical goals spelled out by SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer and Mi Familia Vota founder Eliseo Medina, who views illegal alien amnesty as a powerful Democratic recruitment tool to capture millions of new progressive voters.

Funny. For the past two years, Democratic leaders have had nothing to say about the militant New Black Panther Party goons who took it upon themselves to police a Philadelphia voting booth in 2008 wielding billy clubs and shouting anti-white slurs to suppress votes. Now, they’re treating citizen election monitors as if they are the jack-booted thugs. When I lauded efforts like the Minnesota Majority, which is training volunteers to watch polls and report on voter fraud, liberal critics accused me this week of “fascism.”

Silence dissent. Criminalize watchdogs. Whitewash fraud. Discourage grassroots engagement. Deny, deny, deny. These are the signature tactics of the left in the age of Obama. On November 2, Americans get their chance to say: Enough.

***

Minnesota Majority’s Election Integrity Watch video:

Yes, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals strikes again.

And yes, Sandra Day O’Connor played a role in helping the liberal majority.

Facepalm:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned Arizona’s requirement that people show proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The split decision by a three-judge panel determined that the requirement to show proof of citizenship — passed by voters in 2004 — is not consistent with the National Voter Registration Act.

Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, temporarily sitting by designation, and Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta, with chief judge Alex Kozinski dissenting, said Prop. 200 creates an additional hurdle, while the national act is intended to reduce “state-imposed obstacles” to registration.

The court did uphold Arizona’s photo ID requirement.

But as you know from reading this blog, the Obama Department of Social Justice has also been actively sabotaging state efforts to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections.

More details on the 9th Circuit ruling:

A three-judge panel of the court said the proof-of- citizenship requirement conflicted with the intent of the federal law aiming to increase voter registration by streamlining the process with a single form and removing state- imposed obstacles to registration.

The federal law requires applicants to “attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury” without requiring documentary proof, the panel said.

“Proposition 200 creates an additional state hurdle to registration,” the judges said.

The law was challenged by voting rights and Hispanic advocacy groups.

The decision is “a warning to anyone who seeks to deter or prevent voter participation” that the Constitution “will protect our democratic process,” Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a San Antonio-based group that argued the case, said in a statement.

As I’ve noted before: No illegal alien left behind. That’s the progs’ plan.

***

Related: The threat of non-citizen voting

Here we go again. Desperation plus the by-any-means-necessary credo plus a nationwide force of Alinsky avengers equals another recipe for voter fraud.

In Colorado, it’s Common Cause of Colorado, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and the Service Employees International Union caught in an apparent scheme to foist some 6,000 shady voter registrations on the state:

A federal judge declined to force the secretary of state to reactivate approximately 6,000 new voters whose registrations were canceled under Colorado’s 20-day rule.

In a decision issued Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane denied a motion for a preliminary injunction that was requested by several labor and voting-rights groups.

When a new voter registers in Colorado, the secretary of state mails a nonforwardable notice of disposition that the voter’s registration has been received. If the notice comes back undeliverable in the mail, then clerks deem the voter’s registration inactive within 20 days.

Melody Mirbaba, an assistant attorney general, argued that the 20-day rule is designed to stop voter fraud and duplicate registrations.

In Arizona, it’s illegal alien amnesty-supporting, SEIU-tied Mi Familia Vota again and One Vote Arizona submitting massive, last-minute voter registrations. The race between rocket scientist Ruth McClung and open-borders radical Raul Grijalva is down to the wire. Maria Carvajal at Publius Pundit reports:

The Yuma Sun is reporting that two organizations — Mi Familia Vota and One Vote Arizona — submitted more than 3000 voter registrations in Yuma County, and more than 20,000 voters statewide. Even more, they have signed up 43,000 people statewide for the permanent early voter list.

What they didn’t tell you is that voter fraud on a massive scale could be taking place, ostensibly to help Raul Grijalva keep the congressional seat he holds by stealing the election.

Here’s what the article doesn’t tell you, by a source in the Yuma County Recorder’s Office:

* These 3000 voter registration forms were all dropped off at once by the one group on the deadline to turn in voter registration forms.
* Almost all of the registrations were for the Democratic Party, a statistical improbability at best.
* Today, these same 3000 newly registered voters — as a group — had papers dropped off at the Yuma Recorder’s office requesting to be signed up for the permanent early voters list… which means the ballots will be mailed early, with no accountability.
* The Yuma Recorder’s office is checking the voter registration forms and have found that already more than 65% of them are invalid due to the registrant not being a citizen, wrong/invalid address, false signature, etc.

Now, the question is: is voter fraud taking place in Yuma County… and is it taking place on an even bigger scale in Pima County?

So far, the partisan Democrat in charge of the Pima County Recorder’s Office, F. Ann Rodriguez, has been completely silent about any such activity, though certainly even just a few thousand votes could change the outcome of the race between rocket scientist Ruth McClung and boycotter Raul Grijalva.

In Washington state, it’s illegal alien amnesty-supporting OneAmerica Votes sending illegal alien canvassers out to drum up votes:

When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters’ doors, she’s not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally.

She knows it’s a risk to advertise this fact to strangers — but it’s one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers — many of them illegal immigrants — canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-and-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

Pramila Jayapal, head of OneAmerica Votes, says the campaign is about empowering immigrants who may not feel like they can contribute to a campaign because they can’t vote.

“Immigrants really do matter,” Jayapal said. “If we can’t vote ourselves, we’re gonna knock on doors or get family members to vote.”

In Florida, it’s suspected absentee ballot fraud — from within a city commissioner’s office:

When police raided Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry’s office this week and seized his computer, they say they discovered evidence of what election experts say has become a rampant, largely ignored and troubling issue in Florida — the widespread abuse of absentee ballots.

Police say Henry’s computer was used to obtain dozens of absentee ballots prior to the city’s Aug. 24 elections, in which he was re-elected.

The Daytona Beach probe started when an elections supervisor noticed that as many as 90 absentee ballots had been requested from two e-mail addresses, and that they came from a single computer. (It is illegal in Florida for anyone other than a family member to help in requesting an absentee ballot.)

Volusia County Election Supervisor Ann McFall said she grew suspicious “because 40 requests arrived in one batch on the night of Aug. 6, and another 15 the next day.

“The absentee ballots had no phone numbers on them, and my first concern was to get them in compliance. I emailed the sender and when I got no response checked with the Daytona Beach clerk, because all the requests were from Zone 5 and he didn’t recognize the address. Then I handed it over to the sheriff’s office,” she said.

Police tracked the computer to the office of Henry, the city commissioner from Zone 5, who was running for re-election — and who easily defeated his two opponents with 65 per cent of the vote.

In New York, FNC’s Eric Shawn reports on another absentee ballot scheme implicating the ACORN-tied Working Family Party and a ring of Democrat officials:

There are various allegations of possible voter fraud across the country, against both parties, but nowhere does there seem to be a more unusual case than in Troy, New York.

A special prosecutor investigating allegations of voter fraud, Trey Smith, is collecting DNA from the majority of the city council…all Democrats. Five city councilmen, including the council president, as well as four other city and county public officials and political operatives, have been ordered to or have had their saliva swabbed for DNA samples to compare to absentee ballots and absentee ballot applications that were allegedly forged.

The investigation centers on what has been called “a massive voter fraud scheme,” that involved absentee ballots for the Working Families Party, in September 2009. It has been alleged that Democrats tried to steal the primary election for city council and county legislature, by forging absentee ballots and ballot applications to ensure that their candidates also won the Working Families Party primary line.

‘No comment,” is what Democratic Council member Gary Galuski told us, as well as several other public officials who are under investigation.

In Texas, citizen watchdogs have joined True the Vote to monitor and strike back against election fraud in Harris County:

Talk about denial! A group of liberal activists is making the media rounds, assuring reporters and editors that election fraud is a fairy tale. Nothing serious, they assert, nothing to see here. Too bad for them that citizens in Houston, energized by the Tea Party movement, have formed a group called True the Vote. Their hard work has demonstrated that, in some parts of the country at least, our election system is still infested with problems.

True the Vote is composed entirely of volunteers — hundreds of them. They have pored over election records in Harris County, Texas, looking for signs of fraud. And they have found plenty. Indeed, their initial research into only a very small portion of the voter registration records has led them to ask the U.S. Justice Department’s Voting Section to conduct a federal investigation.

In a letter asking for an official inquiry, True the Vote discusses potential widespread forgery in voter application forms. For instance, it seems from the applications that someone suspiciously signs the letter “J” with a quirky “3” inside the loop. The “3” shows up in multiple signatures for different voters with the names Jenard, Jamark, Jamarcus, and Jones.

True the Vote reports that at least four noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County. The group provided Justice with the actual voter registration forms where applicants marked “NO” to the question: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?” The group also provided the voter registration numbers of these confessed noncitizens. Yes, astonishingly, Harris County registered them to vote anyway. They are now on the rolls and able to participate in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was supposed to stop this from happening. But this federal legislation is only as good as the Justice Department’s willingness to enforce it. If Harris County is registering noncitizens, then it is violating numerous provisions of federal law, including those that prohibit the registration of foreigners to vote in federal elections.

True the Vote uncovered other types of fraud as well. The group forwarded to DOJ seven voter registration forms with applicant names different from the signature name. For example: Ta’mackayn Harrison’s application was signed by “Bra Kelly.” Jason King’s was signed by “Jemma Noel.” Yet Harris County inexplicably approved all of these applications. Jason King, aka Jemma Noel, is now on the voter rolls in Houston.

The citizens group also found multiple registrations for individual voters. For example, True the Vote provided the Justice Department government documents showing that at least four persons, including Jose Gomez and Victor Nickerson, had registered to vote multiple times successfully.

These problems were found by True the Vote in just a small sampling of the county’s voter registration list.

In Kentucky, there’s not much detail, but state and FBI officials are investigating voter fraud in Breathhitt County.

In Illinois, disgraceful officials have reportedly been caught lying about the status of military ballots while DOJ twiddles its thumbs.

In Ohio, it’s Cincinnati schools under fire for busing students to vote and handing them Democrat-only sample ballots:

Three van loads of Hughes High students were taken last week – during school hours – to vote and given sample ballots only for Democratic candidates and then taken for ice cream, a Monday lawsuit alleges.

The complaint was made by Thomas Brinkman Jr., a Republican candidate for Hamilton County auditor, and the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending & Taxes against Cincinnati Public Schools.

“They plan to bring four more high schools (to vote) this week,” Christopher Finney, COAST attorney, said Monday after filing the suit.

It seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent school officials from participating or helping students participate in partisan politics during school hours or with school property or employees involved.

These cases underscore the need for voters to put secretaries of state into office who will protect election integrity from radical left-wing groups. I’ve said before we need candidates like Kris Kobach, running for secretary of state in Kansas on an anti-fraud, anti-corruption, anti-ACORN platform, in every state in the nation.

In the meantime: Vigilance plus citizen media plus the willingness to be sued for blowing the whistle equals the best defense for voter fraud. We must all be voter fraud watchers now.

America’s voter rolls are a mess. But you can’t count on the Department of Social Justice and corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder to clean them up. It’s another job the feds won’t do. Time for ordinary citizens to step up to the plate. Thanks to a provision in federal law, you can pick up the slack.

Former DOJ attorney/whistleblower J. Christian Adams fills you in at Pajamas Media:

In November 2009, political appointee Julie Fernandes told the entire assembled DOJ Voting Section that the Obama administration would not enforce the list maintenance provisions of Section 8. Section 8 “doesn’t have anything to do with increasing minority turnout,” Fernandes said. “We don’t have any interest in enforcing that part of the law.” End of story.

At the same time, Fernandes stressed that the DOJ would vigorously enforce the welfare agency registration provisions of Section 7.

She made these lawless instructions in front of me and dozens of other shocked Voting Section lawyers. The DOJ has never once denied that Fernandes gave these instructions, nor has the DOJ countermanded them.

This lawless policy couldn’t have a partisan motivation, could it?

Now, Americans are left to clean up the voter rolls on their own. Thankfully, Motor Voter provides a private right of action — that means private citizens can bring lawsuits against states and voter registrars who are allowing dead and ineligible voters to taint the voter rolls.

Americans are used to getting the job done themselves. Reliance on government tends to disappoint.

Using this private right of action, I have given sixteen states the legal notice required to alert them that they have violated Section 8 of Motor Voter. I am working with private citizens across the nation to help ensure that the elections in November aren’t plagued by ineligible voters…

…Every two years, states must report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) information about their voter rolls. The latest report is troubling. South Dakota, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana report in excess of a dozen counties with more registered voters than living people old enough to vote. Having more voters than living humans tells you something is wrong. In West Virginia, one county reported 113% of the voting age population was registered to vote. Baltimore, Maryland, reported 104% of voting age citizens on the rolls. Iowa and North Carolina also reported counties with more voters than living citizens of voting age.

All of these states received a notice letter.

Ponce de Leon wasted his time looking for the fountain of youth in Florida — he should have gone to Maryland, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, or Tennessee. These states report that they didn’t remove a single dead voter from 2006 to 2008. Some of the dead registered voters were resurrected on election day and cast ballots.

These states also received a notice letter.

Much more at Election Law Center.

Nicole Marrone, another former DOJ attorney, has related reporting at PJM on Philly’s dirty voter rolls.

Another swamp in need of do-it-yourself grass-roots draining.

***

More from Washington Times: Dead in Ohio, but still voting

And much more from Washington Times’ Quin Hilyer:

This developing scandal of mystery voters and dead voters resurrects the story about the Justice Department’s own website showing more substantial efforts to help felons reacquire voting privileges – even though the department has no statutory authority to do so – than to help ensure the opportunity for military personnel overseas to have their votes cast and counted on time.

From top to bottom, the Justice Department appears to be rigging voting-law enforcement in favor of interest groups usually seen to favor Democratic candidates. If so, the department is aiding and abetting vote fraud. Either way, this a major scandal that shouldn’t be buried.

I’ll be keeping tabs on voter fraud reports in the Mass. Senate special election today. Flag any reports you’ve seen/heard in comments or send me an e-mail.

1) Election Journal, the website that exposed the New Black Panther Party thugs’ voter intimidation tactics in Philadelphia in November 2008, is on the ground in Massachusetts today.

They’ve just posted video of a woman in Lawrence, MA, carrying around blank absentee ballots in Spanish today. She explains how she’s telling people to mark Martha Coakley’s name. The woman handing out the ballots identifies herself as “Isabel Melendez” and says she has a talk show in which she promoted Coakley’s candidacy.

The deadline to apply for absentee ballots for the January 19, 2010 special election for US Senate was Friday, January 15.

More on Melendez: She’s a “community activist” in Lawrence who has run for public office before.

Here’s a piece from 2003 on her involvement in aggressive voter registration campaigns:

Melendez, who said her fire for community activism was fueled by her own frustrations trying to make a good life for herself in Lawrence after emigrating from Puerto Rico, has been personally registering local residents to vote for several years. Now she hopes to take that a step further with a volunteer program that will go beyond registrations. Although the plan is in its infancy, Melendez said that in a nutshell, she envisions a team of volunteers on election days combing voter lists and asking those who haven’t voted to please come out.

“It will benefit the community as a whole,” she said..” Since my arrival here, I’ve noticed that the voter-participation percentage has gone down. And it ‘s not just Latinos; it ‘s everyone in Lawrence. I want to motivate everyone to vote.”

***

2) The Gouverneur Times reports on the Bay State’s “notoriously plagued” electronic voting system.

***

3) Steven Ertelt at LifeNews.com reports that phony calls are telling Massachusetts voters that MA Citizens for Life opposes Brown. Not true.

Behind in the polls to Republican Senate candidate Scott brown, supporters of pro-abortion candidate Martha Coakley have evidentially reached into their bag of dirty tricks. A Washington, D.C. based company is making calls to Massachusetts residents pretending to represent a prominent pro-life group.

The calls, from 202-461-3441, a Washington number registered to a company called SOOH, claim to be from Massachusetts Citizens for Life.

The caller claims the pro-life group is opposing Scott brown because of his stance against the health care bill, but as MCFL president Anne Fox told LifeNews.com late Monday, the opposite is true.

“Pro-lifers are receiving phone calls from people claiming to be Massachusetts Citizens for Life. The callers say that MCFL is not supporting Scott Brown because of his position on health care,” she said. “The truth is that Massachusetts Citizens for Life is supporting Brown because of his position on health care.”

The same number is also making calls to other state residents with various messages all attacking Brown.

“Pro-lifers are not the only victims of this scam. Our MCFL sleuths have found that this same number is calling people across the state claiming to be different groups with different messages — all anti-Brown,” Fox added.

Fox is hoping to get the message out to voters today that MCFL supports Brown and wants Coakley defeated because she is an extreme pro-abortion candidate.

***

4) Electioneering is not allowed at polling places. Can someone alert the Coakley campaign?

***

5) GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa is volunteering as an “election watcher.”

King is working with what he called a “band of constitutionalists” who have driven or flown into Massachusetts for the final push before tomorrow’s special election.

“There are about 12 different locations for the Brown campaign working across the state. There are phone-callers there; get-out-the-vote people; there are people who are poll watchers; there are people that are looking for something to do. A lot of Massachusetts people mobilized, too,” King said. “And I’m coming to the conclusion that there are more conservatives in Massachusetts than there are in Iowa.”

***

6) Hearing from readers that voters in Malden were asked to identify who they were going to vote for before they were allowed to vote.

***

7) Reader J. e-mails: “My mom, is an 82 year old election worker, at the Greenlodge School in Dedham, Ma..she came home for lunch today and told my dad of a large bundle of absentee ballots from the local nursing home (Care Matrix) that had been dropped off at her polling place…the poll workers were wondering how the ballots could be assured as authentic…I thought all absentee ballots were to be submtted to the town clerk’s office by last friday…hmmm…I sure would love to follow up on the nursing home vote…there are plenty of Alzheimer’s patients who can not possibly have the mental capacity to vote….who is it that ‘helps’ these people to vote?”

***

8. MA Secretary of State William Galvin is investigating voter fraud reports in Cambridge and Brighton.

***

9) Wonderful: A uniformed security guard waves a Coakley sign outside a polling place, via Election Journal:

***

10) Coakley’s last gasp: She’s claiming voter fraud in lib-dominated precincts in Democrat machine-controlled Massachusetts.

Triple-snort-worthy.

Weirdly, her press release decrying claimed fraud is dated…yesterday. That was quick: They’ve already fixed the date…

Campaign Manager Kevin Conroy:

We’ve received several independent and disturbing reports of voters across the state being handed ballots that are already marked in favor of Scott Brown. This is obviously a serious violation, and our legal team is taking immediate steps to protect the integrity of this election.

We do not yet know why this is happening, but you and everyone you know needs to be aware of the situation so that you can carefully inspect your ballot. If a vote has already been marked, you must return the ballot to the elections official, demand a clean ballot, and call our Voter Protection Hotline at 617-351-6866.

Note how quickly the Coakley legal team acted…as opposed to the negligent behavior of AG Coakley in response to allegations of SEIU abuse of taxpayer-funded resources to campaign on her behalf.

Jim Geraghty shares a note from a media source:

Kevin Conroy, Coakley’s campaign manager, says “we have gotten several disturbing incidents from the polls calling the integrity of this election into question.”

Nobody’s taking this live; the word “desperation” is being tossed around this newsroom…

***

11) Watchdog Group Raises Concern About Dead Voters on Massachusetts Rolls.

Nobody knows nuttin’ about the blatant cash-for-votes scheme involving the Ohio University College Democrats and the Athens County Democratic Party in Athens, Ohio.

They are all playing dumb and/or pointing fingers at each other. If it walks like a voter fraud scheme and smells like a voter fraud scheme, well, you know. Via The Athens News:

Ohio’s top Democrat this morning chided Athens County Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn for allegedly running a campaign that promised $5 cash bonuses to Ohio University student Democrats for helping to get out the vote. Meanwhile, the county party’s treasurer said he knew nothing about the program and doesn’t approve of it.

In an unusually strongly worded statement, Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said, “The Ohio Democratic Party had no role in this stupid idea, and I urge Athens County Chairwoman Susan Gwinn to suspend the program immediately and not issue any payments that may have been planned. I call for a complete investigation and prosecution for any wrongdoing in this case.”

In the latter respect, Redfern appears on the same page as Athens County Republican Party Chair Pete Couladis, who issued a release Monday night asking the county Board of Elections and county prosecutor to investigate an alleged offer by the College Democrats to pay people to vote.

As the story developed overnight, however, it became apparent that the get-out-the-vote financial inducements were for getting others to vote, rather than paying people directly. The latter question is the apparent focus of an ongoing investigation Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren, who earlier today said he’s looking into whether it’s illegal to pay canvassers to bring in other voters.

A representatives for the College Democrats said Monday that an e-mail cited as evidence has been misconstrued, and that nobody intended to offer anyone money to vote. In a follow-up news release late Monday night, Chris Mullen, communication director for the College Democrats, seemed to lay the blame for the get-out-the-vote cash bonuses on the county party.

“The GOTV (get-out-the-vote) program that has triggered the false reports was an effort by the Athens County Democratic Party to compensate volunteers financially for their time spent canvassing,” Mullen wrote. “This program was sponsored by the county Democratic Party, and was not originated by the College Democrats.”

He added that the OU College Democrats have not raised or spent any money to pay volunteers. “To date in this election cycle, no member of the group has received a dime for his or her canvassing work,” Mullen wrote. He said any questions about the program should be directed to Gwinn.

Gwinn could not be reached for comment Monday night or Tuesday morning. However, she told the Columbus Dispatch Tuesday that any plan to pay get-out-the-voter volunteers never went past the discussion stage. “The whole situation has been blown out of proportion,” she told the Dispatch. “I have no idea why (Galan) wrote that e-mail. There’s really nothing going on here.”

Tell it to Athens County law enforcement officials. They’re now investigating. At the state level, though, there’s not much hope. Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland is soft on corruption. And remember that last fall, Ohio was up to its eyeballs in voter fraud cases while ACORN-friendly Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was found guilty of election law violations two times.

More here.

My column today looks at the political corruption of the Obama Justice Department. With the crime-coddling crony Attorney General Eric Holder in charge, no one should be surprised, of course. Members of Congress who care about electoral integrity need to press the administration on who intervened in the New Black Panther Party case and why. Members of Congress who care about voter fraud need to press the administration on its decision to undermine Georgia voter verification rules. And members of Congress need to continue connecting the dots to ACORN and the larger plan to wield power to preserve and protect a permanent Democratic majority.

***

The U.S. Department of Injustice
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The seal of the U.S. Department of Justice bears a Latin phrase: “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur. The motto refers to the Attorney General “who prosecutes on behalf of Lady Justice.” But under Barack Obama’s politically corrupted DOJ, Lady Justice is getting the shaft.

To wit: Let’s examine the uproar over Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to protect hate-mongering thugs who harassed and bullied precinct workers and voters on Election Day in Philadelphia.

Oh, wait. There’s been no uproar. Let me tell you why.

Two weeks ago, in a highly unusual move, Holder dismissed default judgments his department had won against two of three defendants charged with violating the Voting Rights Act. On November 4, 2008, a billy club-wielding militant in military-style boots and beret stood outside a Philly polling location with a similarly-dressed partner. Citizen journalists from the Pennsylvania-based blog Election Journal captured the menacing duo on video. One of the watchdogs observed: “I think it might be a little intimidating that you have a stick in your hand.”

That was an understatement. Witness Bartle Bull, a Democratic lawyer who organized for Bobby Kennedy and worked for the civil rights movement in Mississippi, signed a sworn affidavit decrying the Election Day brutishness. Serving as a poll watcher that day, he called the behavior of Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson “the most blatant form of voter discrimination I have encountered in my life.”

One of them, Bull reported, taunted poll observers: “[Y]ou are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

If the pair had been dressed in white sheets, all hell would have broken loose. But the ebony-clad thugs were members of the New Black Panther Party who had been dispatched by Malcolm X wannabe Malik Shabazz to “guard” the polls. Translation: Protect them from scrutiny. Shield them from sunlight. Keep independent voters and observers out.

Who is Malik Shabazz? The bespectacled race hustler grabbed the spotlight in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks by defending Osama bin Laden, blaming President Bush for 9/11, bashing Israel, and blasting our founding fathers as “snakes.” His group also infamously rallied behind the Duke University lacrosse rape hoaxer. And on the day before the presidential election last fall, one of Shabazz’s “field marshals,” Minister Najee Muhammad, held a “black power” rally promising to send his forces to polls across the country “to ensure that the enemy does not sabotage the black vote.”

The Bush DOJ filed suit against Malik Shabazz, Samir Shabazz, and Jerry Jackson in early January 2009. None of the defendants filed an answer to the lawsuit, putting them all into default. Instead of taking the default judgment that DOJ is entitled to against all of the defendants, the Obama team fully dismissed the lawsuits against Malik Shabazz and Jerry Jackson. Jackson, you should know, is an elected member of the Philadelphia Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher. Witness Greg Lugones told me “Obama campaign operatives were on site throughout the entire episode.”

Former Justice Department official and voting rights scholar Hans Von Spakovsky added: “I have never heard of the Department dismissing a case it has already won by default. They have…sent the message that hurling racial epithets and slurs at voters and intimidating and threatening voters at the polls is fine with the Holder Justice Department – at least if you are African-American. I seriously doubt that would have happened if the races had been reversed in this case.”

Exactly. And to repeat: The harassment was aimed not just at voters, but at white poll workers trying to ensure a fair and lawful process in a city infamous for machine politics and street money pollution.

Who are the racial cowards, Attorney General Holder?

On the heels of this voter intimidation protection plan, the Obama Justice Department issued another decision that undermines electoral integrity – but bolsters Democratic voter drives. The department this week denied the state of Georgia the ability to enact strict citizenship voter verification rules previously approved by two federal courts. As the Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel explained: “DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists.”

On top of all that, Holder recently politicized the legal review process involving the contentious issue of D.C. voting rights. After careful study, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel had issued an opinion that a House bill on the matter was unconstitutional. Holder, who supports D.C. voting rights along with President Obama, overrode his staff lawyers’ ruling—and simply ordered up an alternative opinion that fit the White House agenda.

Lady Justice is now protected by a security force armed with billy clubs and lawyers who serve the cause of protecting the re-election of Barack Obama over the rule of law.

First, Attorney General Eric Holder and the DOJ protect the New Black Panther Party bullies who menaced a Philly voting station last fall.

Now, Holder and the DOJ are opening the voter fraud floodgates in Georgia. The Georgia secretary of state explains:

Obama Justice Department Decision Will Allow Non-Citizens to Register to Vote in Georgia
Decision Bars Georgia From Continuing Voter Verification Process

On October 27, 2008, a U.S. District Court three-judge panel again directed the State to continue its voter registration verification process and challenge ballot procedures through the November General Election.

***

No illegal alien voter left behind: It’s all part of the plan.

The Palestra.net, which did incredible work documenting all the election shenanigans, has the story.

More from the Columbus Dispatch.

Sorry for the “distraction.” Move along…

As I mentioned in the column, blogger Stefan Sharkansky sued Sims over his refusal to release public records related to voter fraud during the 2004 contested gubernatorial election. Today, Sharkansky reports, Sims and King Count settled for $225,000, one of the largest settlements for public records violations in state history.

The lawsuit stemmed from my December 2004 request for a list of all voters who voted in the November 2004 election. The county did not satisfy my request in full until January 2007.

The documents that they eventually provided to me revealed that county election officials unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the 2004 election: a multiple of Christine Gregoire’s 133-vote “margin of victory” over Dino Rossi in the contested gubernatorial race. Documentation of these illegal votes was withheld from discovery in the election contest trial and not released to me until months after the trial. Consequently, the trial was conducted in ignorance of these potentially outcome-changing illegal votes.

Additional documents that were released last month in discovery for my case confirmed that county officials both knew more about the illegal vote counting than they had previously acknowledged, and also knowingly withheld responsive documents from me during 2005 and 2006.

The exceptionally large (for records cases) settlement, which King County offered before trial, clearly recognizes the county’s culpability in this matter.

Sims expects smooth sailing during his nomination hearing.

Want a bitter laugh? Re-read Obama’s first executive order ensuring transparency in government:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

The nation’s much-maligned election system passed a major test last week when more than 132 million Americans — a record — cast ballots with few reports of problems.

But now, election reformers are calling for a move toward a “universal voter registration” system, in which the government takes the lead in ensuring that all eligible citizens are registered to vote.

“This means the registration process would no longer serve as a barrier to the right to vote,” said Wendy R. Weiser, a lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It would also eliminate the ACORN issue and all the gaming of the system.”

In the United States, unlike other major democracies, citizens, not the government, are responsible for seeing to it that they are registered to vote. And when people move, even if across town, they must update their registration, usually with a local office.

In 2004, more than 1 in 4 American adults was not on the voter rolls. Since then, private organizations such as the League of Women Voters and activist groups like ACORN, an advocate for people in low-income communities, launched major voter registration drives. These groups do not put voters on the rolls. They simply turn in applications from people who sign forms saying they want to register.

But ACORN, among others, was sharply criticized for submitting a huge number of registration cards with questionable information and from people already registered.

“All across America, our people wasted untold hours dealing with duplicate registrations,” said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the National Assn. of Election Officials.

Many more Americans encounter a more mundane problem — failing to update their registration after they move.

“The current system is simply not designed for a mobile society,” the Brennan Center for Justice said in its report on universal voter registration.

Under its proposal, states could update their computerized voter rolls when residents move from one city to another. And they could add new voters who move to the state and apply for driver’s licenses.

Some proposals would automatically add teens to the voter rolls when they turn 18. Under some plans, Congress could create a national voter registration roll, modeled after the Social Security database.

Automatic, mandatory voter registration and tracking strikes me not only as a bureaucratic nightmare, but also ideologically unsound. I’m with John Stossel: Some people just shouldn’t be voting. Leave ‘em alone.

At least two Spanish-language ballots were pre-marked for Barack Obama at a rural Oakdale precinct Tuesday morning, causing election officials to confiscate and inspect all the blank ballots.

“I consider this extremely serious,” said Lee Lundrigan, Stanislaus County clerk and registrar of voters. “We’ve sent an additional person to the precinct, and everyone is now watching each other.”
The incident happened about 9:20 a.m. at the River Oak Grace Community Church polling place on Rodden Road just north of Oakdale.

Hector Parra, who doesn’t speak English, was handed a Spanish-language ballot, which he took to the voting station. A moment later, he went to the precinct workers seeking help. Since there was no designated translator working at the time, the precinct’s staff asked if anyone in the crowded room could speak Spanish.

Sylvia Moreno volunteered to translate, and she said Parra didn’t understand why the ballot he was given had been marked.

“He was going to vote for Obama, but it was already filled in for Obama,” Moreno said. “He just wondered why.”

Moreno explained the problem to precinct workers, who then took Parra’s ballot and put it among the “spoiled” ballots. Parra then was handed a second Spanish-language ballot.

“It was marked for Obama, too. It truly was,” said Moreno, who witnessed the fresh ballot being handed from the precinct worker to Parra in the middle of the room.