By Rebekah Rast
The question remains, is ACORN still in business, or at least, are its voter-fraud-type methods still in play?
The voting fiasco that took place with the voting machines in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada, begs that very question and should take people back to the 2008 elections.
In 2008, ACORN made a concerted effort to file thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms. This became a national scandal and Congress acted to withdraw all federal funding from ACORN, and the scandal forced the organization to disband.
ACORN has fallen off the radar in national news, but Nevadans still remember that much of the scandal took place in Las Vegas where ACORN workers canvassed voter forms with false names, addresses and phones numbers in preparation for the 2008 elections.
Though maybe not under the guise of ACORN any longer, the “mishap” at the voting polls in Clark County was enough to get Nevadans thinking.
Nevada is a state ripe with the possibility of voter fraud for many reasons. First, the state allows early voting, which in itself is not a problem, as described on current Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller’s website.
Miller praises this form of voting, which allow people to go to any polling place in their respective districts to vote before November 2nd, using the reasoning that it makes voting more accessible to citizens, it increases voter participation rates and allows for more accurate and efficient ballot counts.
What he doesn’t mention is that it allows for more voter fraud as well.
Nevada’s design of early voting can become a problem because its state law does not require proof of citizenship when at the polling place. Because no form of ID is required at the polls, it could be plausible for a voter to stop at many different polling places throughout the days of early voting, use a fake name and address, and vote as many times as he or she would like. Under this design an illegal immigrant could also cast a single or multiple votes.
As ironic as it sounds, when Nevada Republican Secretary of State candidate Robert Lauer pushed for state legislation that would have required voters to show a government-issued picture ID at the polls to keep voter fraud at bay, it was never adopted by the state.
Why? Maybe Miller and Sen. Reid saw some advantages to the way the current system is designed as it could possibly tip elections in their favor.
This favorable tilt can give partial credit to George Soros. He is well known for his left-wing group, Secretary of State Project, which gives financial donations to select State Secretary candidates to better control the outcomes of the election process in the states. Those “select” candidates are Democrats, and that’s not a coincidence. The Secretary of State is often the state’s main election official and operates the office that registers candidates. When Miller ran for Secretary of State in Nevada in 2006, he received about $33,000 from Soros’ project.
Why is this significant?
Miller is now the one in control of the voting machines throughout Nevada, which considering what happened in Clark County, obviously have problems. Not only is the machine software 7 years old, according to Lauer, but Miller will not let anybody other than a Voting Machine Technician, a government employee who is a member of the notorious Service Employees International Union, get close to the machines.
Therefore, all the voting machines in Clark County are under the control of Miller and SEIU. This alone should shake the confidence voters in Nevada have in their own system.
So much so, that Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG), says, “The U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Nevada State Attorney General, and the U.S Marshals need to act now to ensure that the SEIU does not continue to compromise the integrity of ballots in Nevada, and anywhere else in the country. The democratic process is too precious to be tampered with and abused.”
Why would any of this make a difference to Sen. Reid? Well, he also would be able to benefit from such a system as he is a valued ally of SEIU.
“Senator Reid won re-election in the past by about 400 votes, so if they can maneuver 3,000 or 4,000 votes illegally through ACORN-type voter fraud, well that can certainly make the difference between losing this election and having to live with Harry Reid for another six years,” says Lauer.
While half of Nevadans will have already voted by the end of this week due to its early voting system, concerns of voter fraud are rising, especially since state leaders don’t seem to think the voting system in Nevada is in need of repair.
To sum it up, Lauer says, “Harry Reid and Mr. Miller go hand-in-hand and have made a concerted effort to block any reforms.”
But not to worry, Secretary Miller said in a press release that the “Nevada Election Integrity Task Force has not received any formal complaints of voter or election law violation, despite numerous media accounts and email chains that repeat rumor and speculation about suspicious election activity, including vote incentives and malfunctioning voting machines.”
As Bill Wilson says, “if there is nothing wrong with the system, it would seem logical that the Nevada Secretary of State would not mind law enforcement ensuring ballot integrity. However, given his historic opposition to making certain that only legally registered voters vote, this simple proposal may be too logical for him to accept.”
Rebekah Rast is a contributing editor to the Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
