the "keep your eye on the ball" edition

Hi everyone,

It's going to be a quick one tonight. The final (mercifully) debate is tonight, but first I've got to just get a couple notes to you.

It's Not Voter Fraud:
The right-wing, voiced mostly through Fox, is making a lot of hoopla about "voter fraud."
Check it out: it's a ruse and a distraction, and a way to racialize McCain's seemingly impending loss, should it come to pass just 20 days from now.

What they are so exercised about is "voter registration fraud." There are no cases of people voting illegally in this election (and in the last five years, only a very few)...only of some fake voter registration forms (numbering in the hundreds, at most) being turned in, and then rejected. No "precious right" is at stake here, although lots of Repubs would have you believe that the very health of our democracy is on the line.

Here's how it happens. Some groups, like ACORN (who seem to all of a sudden be the devil, according to Repubs, more on that below), pay people to go out and register voters. To make money, some people have defrauded ACORN by getting paid and turning in phony voter registration forms. ACORN is legally obligated to turn in all forms--only state offices that process voter registration forms are allowed to discard forms. (Because believe it or not, some people actually ARE named Mickey Mouse and Han Solo.) So ACORN sometimes flags forms that look suspicious. These forms are then discarded. There's no way that fake people are actually going to cast ballots. You can disagree with ACORN for paying people to register voters, but this still doesn't add up to voter fraud.

So the Repubs are hoping to stir up a shitstorm and confuse the media and electorate about the legitimacy of this election. Then they can claim that it was stolen from them or that there was massive widespread fraud. And because they steered many states to buy paperless voting machines, there won't be a record to contradict them. What's even richer is that McCain apparently has a bunch of people on his "Clean Elections Committee" who have questionable histories when it comes to voter rights.

Racializing a McCain Loss
More disgustingly, though, this smokescreen is about race. You see, ACORN is a poor-people's organization, one that's been around for 30 years doing the hard work of community organizing--one that McCain, when he was the keynote speaker for them a couple years ago, praised effusively. But this time around, the Repubs are so desperate to tear down Obama, that ACORN is now being used to paint him as a radical, black leftist...What you've got here is the operationalizing of a racially motivated resentment and resistance to a future Obama presidency.

Remember when Sarah Palin started dissing community organizers in her acceptance speech? And remember, just a few weeks ago, when the financial meltdown all of a sudden was being pinned on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone, and all the poor minorities who took out loans they couldn't pay back? ACORN was invoked as part of that, as well. I have to imagine that ACORN is now operating as a kind of racial code, to divide the electorate among racial lines.

What the Repubs want to do is say that McCain lost because there was fraud, the socialists took over the ballots, people were duped... They want to be able to contest anyplace where it might be close. Remember, this is the party that tried to get voters kicked off the rolls in Michigan because they were in foreclosure, even though they were still living in their homes. This is the party that in NH jammed all the Democratic office phone lines, basically paralyzing the communications hub for getting out the vote, on Election Day--and were found guilty of it.

The Purge is beginning--they're trying to kick people off the rolls all around the country. The Repubs don't like it when a lot of people vote--and a lot of people are voting this time. We should expect a lot more of this crap from them, and we have to fight it. They also want to distract from the real issues, especially the economy--McCain's own staffers said that "if we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose"--and by manufacturing a scandal, they can get the media to focus not on the 700 point loss in the stock market today, but on ACORN. Don't believe that it works? Media Matters does the math:

*Number of times CNN has mentioned ACORN since Friday: 67

*Number of times Fox News has mentioned Joe Biden since Friday: 130

*Number of times Fox News has mentioned Sarah Palin since Friday: 541

*Number of times Fox News has mentioned ACORN since Friday: 556

Finally, this issue is classic Karl Rove--hit your opponent on what you are actually weak on. It's kind of jaw-dropping that the Repubs are the ones accusing Dems of voter fraud--take a look at the "US Attorneys Scandal" at the dept of Justice a few years back--remember when all those attorneys were fired without cause? And then it came out that the DOJ had become totally politicized, and attorneys who didn't do the political bidding of the President and Justice Dept were cast out? Guess what...many of those attorneys refused to pursue bogus "voter fraud" cases in close elections where Repubs were trying to keep their seats...

This is a pattern. This is an outrage. And that's why we have to win by a landslide.

We might be up in the polls, and that lead might even last (though it would be very unusual) through Election Day...but we cannot become complacent. We have to win BIG. It has to be a rout. With the way these bozos rig elections, scare off voters, challenge voters at the polls...we have to win bigger than ever just to win at all.

• Sign up to do Voter Protection on Election Day.
  
  
• Volunteer to Get Out the Vote
  
  
• Donate to support that tremendous field operation which is making all of this possible. (Great description of the field operation here).

Thanks!