...Far, Far From the Tree: Massive Voter Suppression and Illegal Purging

In politics even the appearance of impropriety can apparently be mistaken for actual impropriety.  It is difficult to think of any time in which that concept has been more clearly demonstrated than during this election season.  In the debate last night as well as in uncounted ads John McCain has accused Barack Obama of appearing inappropriate.  Several times McCain made the suggestion that “we” need to know the full extent of Obama’s connection to Bill Ayres and ACORN, as if we don’t already.  

So, do we?  Really?  No we don’t.  The record is clear, it’s been clear on Ayres for a long time and his connection to ACORN is even more innocuous and just as public. 

ACORN ostensibly had a number of employees who were paid to gather voter registration and turned in false names.  This does NOT constitute voter fraud.  To use a common example, even if Mickey Mouse is registered to vote, he’s not going to show up and cast a ballot.  What’s more, ACORN is only being attacked for this affair because they did their jobs and openly reported to the FEC when any type of issue arose from the canvassing.  Invalid voter registration results in invalid registration, NOT voter fraud.

Justin Rood of ABC News reports: “’There's no evidence that any of these invalid registrations lead to any invalid votes,’ said David Becker, project director of the "Make Voting Work" initiative for the Pew Charitable Trusts.  Becker should know: he was a lawyer for the Bush administration until 2005, in the Justice Department's voting rights section, which was part of the administration's aggressive anti-vote-fraud effort.”

So this is a fake scandal.  John McCain had the audacity to go on television last night make the declaration: (ACORN) “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.”

I sure hope the fabric of our democracy is resilient enough to withstand Mickey Mouse not voting for anybody.  This assertion is so extreme in its deceit it’s practically obscene.   Which is exactly why it’s brilliant and oh so classically Roveian. 

It doesn’t take an Olympic poll-vaulter leap to suspect that this accusation has nothing to do with Barack Obama and nothing to do with ACORN.  It is in fact a smoke screen for massive Republican voter suppression and illegal purging of registration lists by states.

Classic Roveian tactics.  Accuse the other side of doing exactly what you’re doing.  Manufacture weaknesses for the opposition so that:

1. Everyone’s too focused on a nonsense issue to notice what you’re doing.

2.  If you’re ever caught doing the thing you accused the opposition of, it doesn’t seem so bad because we’ve heard it before and it’s just a sad sign of the times, and really we associate it first with the opposition anyway. 

3. If the opposition wins you have a tool to contest the vote or at the very lest besmirch the results as invalid or stolen.

Incidentally John McCain has his own innocuous association with ACORN, where he loved them up on a number of occasions.  With the world economy coming down around our ears, healthcare in a continuing crisis and the war in Iraq bleeding this country of cash but more importantly of actual blood, this of course only emphasizes what is already too clear.  What a sad desperate hypocrite he has become and why the choice is no choice at all.