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The U.S. Justice Department has denied Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel’s appeal of its decision to reject Handel’s plan for verifying voters’ citizenship. Handel, a 2010 Republican gubernatorial hopeful, asked the department in August to reconsider its decision to reject the system. The Justice Department in May said the verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a “discriminatory effect” on minority voters. The decision meant Georgia had to halt the citizenship checks, which Handel launched in 2007 in response to the Help America Vote Act. That federal law required states to verify voters’ identity, but not necessarily citizenship. Handel...

The Politico’s Mike Allen appeared on Wednesday’s Morning Joe to both defend the mainstream media’s decision to ignore the ACORN controversy and agree that a double standard is at work.

The comedian Al Franken will be welcomed by fellow Democrats at a lunch on Capitol Hill today after he has been sworn in as senator, taking the party’s Senate vote bank to the magic threshold of 60. His arrival makes the Democrats the first party in three decades to attain the fabled super majority, allowing them – in theory – to override Republican filibusters and implement their legislative agenda. A week after Mr Franken was declared Senator of Minnesota, however, doubts are growing as to how politically useful a super majority will be when the hard bargaining over controversial issues...

Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged? Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit. Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006 when Democrat Mark Ritchie defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer to become Minnesota secretary of state. It was Ritchie who orchestrated the recount that gave Democratic challenger Franken a lead some...

Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged?Politics: The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged? Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit. Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006...

ST. PAUL, Minn. -Republican Norm Coleman conceded to Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota's contested Senate race on Tuesday, ending a nearly eight-month recount and court fight over an election decided by only a few hundred votes. Coleman announced his decision at a news conference in St. Paul hours after a unanimous Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Franken, a former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and liberal commentator, should be certified the winner. "The Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results," Coleman told reporters outside his St. Paul home. Coleman, appearing relaxed and upbeat, said he...

A review of Minnesota’s statewide database of registered voters revealed at least 2,812 deceased individuals voted in last November’s general election, according to a new report by the “traditional values” advocacy group Minnesota Majority. After obtaining the list of voters who participated in November’s election, the group hired an independent firm who specializes in “death suppression” for direct mailing lists to review the data. The process, which involved matching names and addresses to state death records, bore troubling results. According to Minnesota statute 201.13, the commissioner of health is to report monthly the name, address, date of birth, and county...

Republican Norm Coleman called on the Minnesota Supreme Court today to reverse a victory for Democrat Al Franken, and several justices sharply challenged Coleman's argument for counting more ballots. Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg said thousands of additional absentee ballots should be tallied under looser standards adopted by many local officials on Election Day. He said local customs led to counting ballots in Democratic areas that were similar to those rejected by officials in Republican areas applying a stricter standard. But several justices said he failed to provide proof that such practices were widespread or affected the outcome. "You're offering little...

WASHINGTON - One out of every four ballots requested by military personnel and other Americans living overseas for the 2008 election may have gone uncounted, according to findings released at a Senate hearing. Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said the study released Wednesday, while providing only a snapshot of voting patterns, "is enough to show that the balloting process for service members is clearly in need of an overhaul." The committee, working with the Congressional Research Service, surveyed election offices in seven states with high numbers of military personnel: California, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,...

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced Monday that voter registration fraud charges have been filed against an organization that works with low-income people and two of its employees in its Las Vegas office. The complaint includes 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters, both felonies. The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, Inc., also known as ACORN, operated a Las Vegas office that helped register low-income voters last year. Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada, the complaint said. ACORN paid the...

<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin man has acknowledged that he illegally cast an absentee ballot for Barack Obama in his wife's name to fulfill her dying wish. Stephen Wroblewski (roe-BLESS-key) of Milwaukee said Wednesday he plans to plead guilty to voter fraud to end the embarrassing episode.</p>

With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them. While Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has filed suit to contest the results of a disputed recount process that turned his narrow lead into a 225-vote deficit, his likely defeat stands to turn Franken, the polarizing former “Saturday Night Live” writer, into the senator who launched a thousand direct mail fundraising appeals. “I don’t know if we’ve...

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson says Republican Norm Coleman should concede to Democrat Al Franken in the U.S. Senate race. Carlson says Coleman shouldn't sue over the results of the recount. Carlson was a Republican governor who now considers himself an independent....

The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected Republican Norm Coleman's request to count an additional 650 rejected absentee ballots in the state's U.S. Senate recount. The court's ruling Monday likely paves the way for the state Canvassing Board to certify results showing Democrat Al Franken won the race. But Coleman's attorneys have said they are likely to sue if he loses the recount, meaning it could be weeks more before the outcome is final.

Minn. Court Denies Coleman Suit on 'Duplicate' Votes @ 3:15 pm by Michael O'Brien The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected a suit by Sen. Norm Coleman (R) on Wednesday that sought to prevent a state board from certifying election results Coleman had alleged includes errors. In a 5-0 decision, the court ruled that the state's Board of Canvassers had the authority to certify election results that might have included so-called “duplicate ballots.” The Coleman campaign had claimed that such ballots, created by local election officials to mirror original ballots that were somehow damaged, were sometimes counted twice by accident, and...

Even before the election, with the realization that a Barack Obama presidency lay on the horizon, many saw a silver lining in the cloud that drifted into Washington, DC, from the left coast. "The right will be re-energized," many thought, "and we'll have a better Republican candidate and improved prospects in 2012." Moreover, it was figured that Obama will exacerbate a bad situation, causing a meltdown in our economy and emboldening enemies without and within, thereby creating fertile ground for a Republican victory. Of course, the GOP nominee may in fact be better four years hence, although he is far...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008Vote Fraud in Nashville – UPDATED AND BUMPEDFriday, 10/17/08, 9:30 PM: A few hours ago, Nashville's syndicated radio talk show host Phil Valentine took a phone call from Lynn Greer, one of the two Republican members of the five-member Davidson County Election Commission. Mr. Greer was so angry he could barely control himself. (For the benefit of readers who aren't familiar with Middle Tennessee, Nashville/Davidson County is a Metro area, in which the city and county governments are combined.)He informed Phil and his listeners that earlier today, someone was bringing in vanloads of non-English-speaking Mexicans with no...

There's a minor brouhaha in Detroit, Michigan. It all started when John McCain announced that he was giving up on Michigan. Since then, one pizza restaurant has decided that it will give away a free pizza to anyone who brings them a McCain-Palin sign. The result: People (teenagers) stealing signs from people's yards to get free pizza. By the way, the owner of the pizza joint does not hide the fact that she is a Barack Obama supporter.

Republicans sue Brunner over voting observers Friday, October 3, 2008 4:27 PM By Mark Niquette THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Republicans filed a new lawsuit today in the Ohio Supreme Court against Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, this time challenging her position not to allow observers at in-person absentee voting sites. The lawsuit was filed this afternoon by former Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, who said he was turned away as an observer today. It is the latest in a series of lawsuits over disputes about absentee voting in Ohio. Brunner has advised county elections boards that because the legislature specifically...

CROWN POINT | Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley wants a federal investigation into hundreds of voter registrations bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people. "Fraudulent applications are the workings of ACORN groups operating from Milwaukee and Chicago who are getting out the vote for Obama. I'm Republican, but I want everyone who should vote to vote. But I want a clean election," Curley said at a Wednesday news conference. Lake County elections officials acknowledged they have found problems and had to reject a large portion of the 5,000 registration forms turned in recently by the...

JEFFERSON, Iowa -- White House hopeful Barack Obama came out swinging Monday when asked if he would fight another "stolen presidential election" like some Democrats believe happened the last two times. But his "fighting" stance contrasts sharply with the vote he took on his very first day in the U.S. Senate where he joined the 74-1 majority voting not to challenge President Bush's disputed victory in Ohio. The Congressional Black Caucus urged him to be the second "yes" vote, but he declined. At a town hall meeting in rural Jefferson on Monday, undecided voter Bruce Banister, 56, asked Obama, "The...

The House of Representatives almost turned into the Fight Club Thursday night, when Democrats ruled that a GOP motion had failed even though, when the gavel fell, the electronic score board showed it winning 215-213 along with the word FINAL. The presiding officer, Rep. Mike McNulty (D., N.Y.), actually spoke over the clerk who was trying to announce the result. In the ensuing confusion several members changed their votes and the GOP measure to deny illegal aliens benefits such as food stamps then trailed 212-216. Boiling-mad Republicans stormed off the floor. The next day, their fury increased when they learned...

The race for Virginia Senate is so tight, a zero vote could count. A precinct in James City County reports zero because it is a "ghost precinct". But that zero tally was causing problems with election results on Wednesday.SnipJames City County General Registrar Alan Cole, Sr. says the report on the state website that only 14 of 16 James City County precincts reported is incorrect, sort of. "James City County precincts were 100-percent reported at 8:18 last night. Part of the problem is 2 of our precincts are referred to as ghost precincts. We really only have 14 precincts."

Just a thought I had, but can you imagine the anti-war leftists if they succeed in giving Democrats control of the House and Democrat Charles Rangle, who would become head of the Ways and Means Committee, got his desire to reinstate the military draft? They can whine in their BDU's while I'll be smiling in my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted Republican" T-Shirt."

ONE MAN MADE THE DIFFERENCE A Veterans Journal Exclusive By David Brown In the 2000 election, President George W. Bush was elected by an uncomfortably-slim majority. The next election could be a repeat! The story behind that struggle for victory is about to be told by the man who, by single-handed tenacity, 'brought home the bacon' for George W. Bush.

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Gov. Chris Gregoire sent an invoice of nearly $50 million to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday, saying the federal government needs to reimburse the state for the cost of housing criminal illegal immigrants. Gregoire said that even though it's the federal government's responsibility to incarcerate illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, the state has been doing it for years. From July 2004 to June 2005, Gregoire said the state paid more than $27 million to house 995 prisoners. The Department of Justice has only reimbursed the state $1.7 million, and still owes $25.3 million. She's seeking an...

One of Chicago's most powerful aldermen has a conspiracy theory for the voting problems experienced during the March primary. Alderman Ed Burke wants to know why the Chicago board of elections would pick a Venezuelan company to supply the city's new voting machines, a company Burke believes has the ability to rig an election for political gain. Both the voting machine company and the board of elections are calling alderman Burke's suggestion of a conspiracy absurd. This happened during a city council hearing Friday on problems during last month's primary. Alderman Ed Burke, whose wife just got appointed to the...

MEMPHIS — The inspector in charge of supervising Election Day work at the precinct where at least two ballots were cast in the names of dead people last fall was convicted of forgery in 1987, criminal records show. Eddie Hayes, 58, has worked for 20 years a part-time inspector for the Shelby County Election Commission, but found no problems at the North Memphis precinct where several disputed ballots were cast in the special election won by state Sen. Ophelia Ford by just 13 votes. Hayes, who has not been accused of wrongdoing in the voting irregularities, also works as a...

NASHVILLE – A federal court judge in Memphis late Wednesday blocked a planned Senate vote Thursday to overturn the Senate District 29 election and expel Sen. Ophelia Ford. After a 50-minute hearing, U.S. Dist. Court Judge Bernice Donald issued a temporary restraining order barring the state Senate from taking any action to overturn the Sept. 15 special election that Ford won by 13 votes. She set a full hearing for Jan. 25. The Senate was all but certain to vote Thursday morning to void the election and remove Ford from the District 29 seat. Acting as a "committee of the...

Corzine elected governor of New Jersey 13 minutes ago Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (news, bio, voting record) was elected governor of New Jersey on Tuesday, defeating Republican Doug Forrester after an exceptionally nasty and expensive race, media outlets reported. Corzine, a multi-millionaire and former Wall Street executive, and Forrester, a wealthy business owner, spent an estimated $72 million of their own money in campaigns marked by charges of corruption and infidelity, including the Forrester campaign's use of damning quotes by Corzine's ex-wife.

After the 2004 election, there were widespread reports of serious voting problems in Ohio. The Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute made a commitment to investigate these reports and ascertain exactly what happened on November 2 in Ohio. An exhaustive five-month investigation by the VRI's research and investigative team identified grave problems in the administration of Ohio's voting system. More than 1 in 4 voters in Ohio faced problems at the polls, including illegal requests for identification, long lines, poorly trained election officials, and more. There were also dramatic disparities in voting conditions among different races; African Americans waited nearly...

A small, weekend item in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was missed by many, yet it's another example of a dubious trend: liberal Democrats switching between journalism and partisan political positions..... (AND) Election Decision Live Blogging GOP Loses First Round In Gubernatorial Challenge...

A Washington state judge found that more than 1600 votes were illegally cast in the gubernatorial election last year. They were nearly all cast in overwhelmingly Demonrat-controlled regions, and constitute several times the margin of "victory" by the Demonrat candidate, Christinie Gregoire. The judge acknowledged the injury due to the fraud. But, he found that as defined by the Washington State election statute the fraud provided no basis for overturning election. The statute states that the challenging party would have to not only demonstrate that fraud occured, but that the perpetrators of the fraud intended to commit fraud. Merely being...

A judge on Monday upheld Washington's 2004 gubernatorial election, rejecting Republicans' bid to nullify the 129-vote victory of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges denied Republican claims that election errors, illegal voters and fraud stole the election from GOP candidate Dino Rossi. He announced his decision in court, saying the state's election process was flawed but that he was not the proper person to remedy those flaws. "This court is not in the position to fix the deficiencies in the election process," Bridges said. "However, the voters are in a position to demand of their...

A state judge has upheld the election of Washington Governor Christine Gregoire. In turning back the Republican challenge to the Democrat, Judge John Bridges says there was no evidence of fraud in last fall's election. The judge did find there were more than 1,600 illegal votes, but he says it's up to voters to fix errors in the state's election system. Republicans have said they will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

OK, this thread may be partially vanity...but it looks like breaking news based upon what I'm reading on the soundpolitics web site. Go there and read it for yourselves...but it looks like the county jdge isn't gonna allow a new election. This looks bad for democracy. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Live thread, discuss.

We can't seem to get a good LIVE thread going here on FR, but they have them each day - each part of each day - over on Sound Politics. Here is a summary of Day Five, the Republicans rest their case. As with FR, the comments have good analysis and input, but you have to wade through a lot of chaff to find the wheat. Here they are in chronological order: Day Five MorningDemocrats Move to DismissDay Five AfternoonDay Five Closes with Democrats Helping Prove Rossi Case

Republicans win right to challenge Wash. state election: Republicans have won a victory in their challenge to the election of Governor Gregoire. The judge says Republicans will be allowed to use "proportional analysis" to prove their case that illegal votes swayed the election.

This Monday, May 2, is the date for the next hearing in the election contest. This will be the last hearing in Chelan County Superior Court before the trial starts on May 23. In this hearing the judge will consider all pre-trial motions. ***Below are two recent news releases regarding what's been happening lately with the election contest. Highlights of Dean Logan deposition King County investigating more felon voters To subscribe to the Dino Rossi for Governor e-mail update, please send us an e-mail at update@dinorossi.com.

Working from lists provided to them in the aftermath of the troubled 2004 election, King County prosecutors have identified 648 felons illegally registered to vote, officials said yesterday. Illegal votes from felons play a central role in the Republican Party's legal attack on the election of Democrat Christine Gregoire as governor in November. Gregoire edged Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes after a hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots, and the GOP is suing to set aside that result in a trial starting May 23 in Wenatchee. "The government is making our case for us," state Republican chairman...

It looks like Teresa Heinz Kerry is rubbing off on her husband. And on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. For the Republican Party, this is a good thing. You'll recall that last month, Heinz Kerry put on her shiniest tinfoil hat and blamed the Democrats' loss in November on rigged voting machines. As reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she openly questioned the election results and fixated on areas of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes. "Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry intoned, and it is "very easy to...

King County election workers counted as many as 660 provisional ballots in the governor's election before the eligibility of those voters was checked, Elections Director Dean Logan said yesterday. Logan promised better control over provisional votes in future elections and said new safeguards tested in a small local-levy election Feb. 8 worked without a hitch. "It's an area where we have to do better and we will do better," Logan said during his second appearance before the Metropolitan King County Council to answer questions about the Nov. 2 election. Sitting beside County Executive Ron Sims' chief of staff, Kurt Triplett,...

President Bush and Karl Rove are "working on a plan to attack Democrats in the U.S. Senate," and their number one target is Maria Cantwell of Washington, according to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In an email message to Democrats, DSCC Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that Republicans, buoyed by electoral gains in 2004, want to increase their majorities in Congress in 2006. "With increased majorities, they know they can appoint right-wing judges at will, pass legislation to restrict a woman's right to choose, and rollback our precious environmental protections," Schumer wrote. Republicans have already drawn up a list of...

Today's update on King County's magical binder of precinct-by-precinct reconciliation worksheets, which the lunatic-fringe blogs tell us are "sitting down there at KC Elections for anybody to inspect". The punchline is: the lunatic-fringe bloggers are living in a sick fantasy world (but you knew that). The binder is not now, nor has it ever been, available for public inspection. King County is perpetrating a cover-up. Two things happened today: First, County Councilmember David Irons confirmed to me that he's been asking for these documents for the last six weeks but that the Elections office has still not made them available...

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The Building Industry Association of Washington recently sent hundreds of surveys to King County residents, claiming its purpose was to help project housing trends in the Puget Sound region. Turns out the three-question survey -- enclosed with a $10 check as an incentive to return it -- was part of a plan by backers of former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi to search for fraudulent votes cast in the disputed November election, The Seattle Times reported Friday.

A Strategic Vision, LLC poll asked respondents if there was a revote, who would you vote for and Republican Dino Rossi was selected by 51%; Democrat Christine Gregoire was the choice of 43%; and 6% were undecided with a margin of error of ±3%. When asked who do they believe actually won the gubernatorial election, 53% said Republican Dino Rossi; 37% said Democrat Christine Gregoire; and 10% were undecided. "This poll is ominous for Christine Gregoire,” said David E. Johnson, CEO and Co-founder of Strategic Vision, LLC; "Even though she has been sworn in and is acting as Governor, a...

MIDI - SEATTLE An awful stench is in the air in Seattle Gregoire stole an office there in Seattle Once the fraud would begin, they'd recount till they win Though a voter may be dead, we get his vote the RATS said That is how they're being led in Seattle...in Seattle Extra votes kept being found in Seattle Like Cook County they think they are standing tall Christine had done what she must...come on, Feds, how 'bout a bust They did it in broad daylight, after all An awful stench is in the air in Seattle Gregoire stole an...

I've finished the massive project of trying to reconcile the King County voter list to the vote count as accurately as humanly possible. My conclusion: their numbers are off by at least 3,748 votes, or roughly 30 times former Attorney General Gregoire's alleged "victory" margin. The previously reported discrepancy of 2,150 (348 unverified provisionals + 1,800 unexplained more ballots than voters) represents only the net difference between ballots and voters. While many precincts counted more ballots than voters, a lot of precincts counted more voters than ballots. When you add up all the voterless ballots and all the ballotless voters,...

IF you were listening to the commentary after President Bush's speech yesterday, you kept hearing the same adjectives and analyses from friend and foe alike: "Incredibly ambitious."[snip] Still, the insta-comments were unanimous. Bush's speech was something new, something unexpected, something momentous. Ehhh . . . not really. [snip] The president's faith in what he called "the transformational power of liberty" in his 2004 convention speech has been manifest in almost every major address he has given since 9/11.[snip] It has been Bush's contention for more than three years now that the answer to Islamic radicalism and extremism is liberty...