Hopefully, soon will come the GOP's ACORN "voter fraud" fraud backlash, though I realize that's still very much a hope given the continuous rightwing media's full-throated reporting attempt to punk American democracy in regards this issue.

Palm Beach Post, thankfully, bothered to do some actual reporting yesterday, and led with the following good news:

The story goes on to quote FL Secretary of State Kurt Browning who says: "'we have not seen a persistent problem across the state of Florida' with registration fraud by ACORN or other groups."

And FL's Republican Governor Charlie Crist who says: "There's some who sort of enjoy chaos. That's kind of what's going on more than fraud."

Bingo, Charlie. And rather ironic, given the outrageous statement John McCain made during last night's debate; the GOP's own far-worse-than-ACORN's record of registration form problems in California; Crist's own record of voter purges in his own state; and the Republican Party's dismal history of trying to use ACORN at the last minute, just before elections, in order to wreak the "chaos" that Crist was referring to...

Guest blogged by DES

The Hill reports today that defense attorneys for Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) have filed a motion to dismiss 35 charges of corruption stemming from a sweetheart real estate deal, claiming the federal government secretly and illegally wiretapped Renzi's cell phone.

Ironically, Renzi appears to have been caught up in the very same warrantless wiretapping that he supported as a Congressman...

19 days until Election Day.

In a small but notable victory Vermonters for Voting Integrity were able to prove to the voters in Calais Vermont that it was a good thing to stand-up against the Secretary of State’s office and vote down the use of Diebold voting machines for their elections. The town will continue to hand-count their ballots. Congratulations and good work to VVI and the voters of Calais.

The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting Foundation report today on what states they believe will be the most likely to be trouble spots on election day. The report evaluates each state by four criteria: procedures for issuing emergency paper ballots, reconciling ballot tallies, providing paper records of votes cast, and post-election audits....

After being asked a question about keeping Obama supporters from also voting for Democrats down the ticket at a press conference in D.C., Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), a former chair of the National Republican Congressional Commitee (NRCC) said: "Well you're talking about voter suppression and we would never, ever do anything along that line, for the record."

The room broke into laughter during his comment! (video 1:14 mins)...

Ari at the Oxdown Gazette covered it also and notes that nearly one-quarter of John McCain's laughably and insultingly named "Honest and Open Election Committee," "chaired by Warren Rudman and John Danforth, has been involved in GOP voter suppression efforts or unfounded partisan claims of voter fraud. Of the 21 members of the committee, five have been engaging in these shady efforts."

See his report for the details on those liars, hooligans, and anti-democracy champions. Transcript of the above video follows below...

Yes, the photo is real. From Reuters, at the end of last night's debate. John Aravosis has a caption contest going on.

Depending on how things go on November 4th, this photo may eventually serve history as the perfect encapsulation of the entirety of the 2008 general election campaign, methinks.

McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis accidentally said something accurate in his otherwise wholly misleading and disingenous statement issued yesterday:

Yup. So please put country first, for a change, and knock it off, Rick. Thanks!

(See our "GOP ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Lie" special coverage page for more details if you need 'em.)

For the last time this year, in theory, a Presidential Debate open thread. Share your thoughts during and after in comments below.

I'll be on WBAI/Pacifica (99.5FM in NYC, streaming here) right after the debate, for post-game analysis. Listen in, if ya like. Will try to follow comments here even while on air...

POST-DEBATE UPDATE: ACORN issues a fairly scathing press release in response to McCain's comments about them group during tonight's debate. Their statement follows below...

20 days until Election Day.

“Experts” are all speaking out and warning of voting meltdowns across the country. Where were these “experts” six months ago? Where have they been since the last national election? Why have they not spoken out against these same voting systems that they are concerned about now? Of course it wasn’t political for them to take a position against the use of these machines until now.

1-866-OUR-VOTE; 1-866-MY-VOTE1 and now YouTube and WiredNews all want voters to report when they have problems voting. And what will happen with the data collected by these groups? Will any of it be compiled and released after the election? Probably not a lot of it is my guess....

Last week we reported that voters in one New York county were receiving absentee ballots with "Barack OSAMA" listed as the Democratic Presidential candidate running against John McCain. This week, the beat goes on in Virginia, but in this case, it's not a typo (as the officials in NY claimed about their "Osama" ballots.)

The Republican Party of Virginia has sent absentee ballot request mailers to voters in the state, seeming to compare Barack Obama to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijead, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

"In today's dangerous world, appeasement is not a foreign policy," declares the outside of the mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia, followed by photographs of the four leaders and the text "America must face the threat of terror head-on" on the inside.

On the back of the envelope used to send in the voter's absentee ballot request is a photo of what some Virginia voters, understandably, believe to be Obama's eyes, with the words "America must look evil in the eye and never flinch."

The complete mailer, with more of the pages and images than we show below, can be downloaded here as a PDF.

Decide for yourself, and note the additional graphic, now added as an update, comparing Osama to Obama (and calling for the latter to be waterboarded) as found on the Sacramento County, CA Republican Party's website...

-- Brad Friedman

So where's the "voter fraud"?

Fox "News" and its Rupert Murdoch-owned print brethren, the New York Post, continue to bang the GOP's phony ACORN "voter fraud" drum, but as far as I can tell, they've failed to come up with a single incident of any actual voter fraud committed by the dastardly "left-wing extremists."

Yes, Ann Coulter has committed felony voter fraud, but neither of the Murdoch outfits has yet to note that point, even while they go wall-to-wall with misleading reports claiming that ACORN is committing massive "voter fraud" on behalf of the Democrats.

So, as it's now been revealed that John McCain himself was a keynote speaker at a 2006 ACORN rally (on immigration reform) in Florida, where he declared to the ACORN volunteers in the room that they are "What makes America special," and as I've been going back and forth with commenters on my "Republican Voter Fraud Hoax" piece at the UK's Guardian (which today has shot up to one of their most read items), still, nobody seems to be able to show me an instance of any actual voter fraud committed by ACORN, or even anybody who registered via ACORN, for that matter.

Those who wish to believe in the hoax, however, attempt to link to article after article about allegations of voter fraud carried out by ACORN. And yet, the articles themselves --- if one bothers to actually read them --- reveal that either 1) They describe allegations and investigations brought by Republican agents, with little or no evidence of any wrong doing, and certainly no "voter fraud," 2) Where voter registration fraud has occurred it has been by rogue ACORN employees, originally reported to authorities by ACORN themselves (who are the actual victims of any such fraud by their employees), or 3) Smoke and mirrors are used to cloud the fact that not a single fraudulent vote has actually been cast by anyone.

Let's take a look at just two recent, oft-linked, oft-quoted New York Post articles from today and last week to give you an idea of how the scam works, and how the rightwing suckers fall for it. Every time...

21 days until Election Day.

Officials in West Virginia have just identified a ballot programming error that will affect straight-party voting. How counties got through their “Logic and Accuracy” testing without discovering this error should give everyone a hint as to why it is important to do testing that is thorough and robust. As to responsibility for the error; all evidence points right back to ES&S, of course. This is more evidence that straight-party voting is not wise. Voters should skip the straight-party option completely and vote in each race; but they need to vote in each race.

Today the NJ judge involved in the Sequoia voting machine problems has ordered the state to tighten up security around the voting machines. She wants everyone back in court on Friday to discuss what actions are being taken to secure the machines. It is also expected that she will finally rule on releasing the Princeton University report on the Sequoia machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

From the Charleston Daily Mail...

This last sentence is important. The county, and apparently other counties around the state, had already done their Logic and Accuracy testing and they had failed to find this problem. Thus the L&A testing was not thorough enough to find problems in the ballot programming done by ES&S. Of course, there is another question and that is who did the L&A testing? The county? Or ES&S?

And, as we've implored recently, do not use the straight-party ticket option when voting! Machines have failed across the country, in state after state, to count such votes accurately!

22 days until Election Day.

In what may be a program unique to Connecticut, UConn ‘s VoTeR Center performs a pre-election audit of the memory cards for the state’s Premier AccuVote Optical-Scan tabulators. This is a smart program that should be mirrored across the nation.

The University just released a report of its audit of the memory cards used in the state’s August primary election. The cards were programmed by LHS Associates, which also provides voting systems, programs memory cards, and does other election work for the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. UConn received 185 memory cards directly from LHS. Ten of those cards or 5.4% had nothing but “noise” on them. How many bad cards were sent out to polling places in CT? How many bad cards were sent to polling places in the other states LHS services? ...

Golly, for a group that's committed so much "voter fraud" for so long (if you're gullible enough to believe the lies that RNC/FNC has been telling you) it's mighty strange that, as News One notes, "McCain attended an ACORN convention just two years ago."

The once-honorable Republican's campaign has even seen fit to produce a video smear ad, attempting to tar Obama with "associations" with ACORN, and alleging the group has committed "massive voter fraud" to boot! (They've yet to produce any actual evidence for that, unfortunately.)

But more than just attending the ACORN-sponsored February 2006 rally, ACORN confirms in a statement today that McCain was actually the keynote speaker!

So now, they wonder, why it is that McCain seems to have "lost that loving feeling"?

"It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN," noted Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer of ACORN.

"We expected Senator McCain to support our efforts to give voice to millions of Americans who have never participated in an election before," she continued. "We are surprised at his efforts to vilify an organization that, until recently, he saw as an ally."

Hmmm...So, why was John McCain "palling around with" an organization that "has violated more Americans' civil rights to have their votes counted than any group since the KKK," as described by noted Florida 'vote-rigger' and McCain surrogate Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff)? Or was Feeney speaking out of school? If so, we've yet to hear McCain condemning the outrageous remarks, or distancing himself from Feeney, the three time winner of CREW's "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" Award.

Also, we can't help but wonder, in regard to McCain's meeting with ACORN, where he spoke on immigration reform, by the way...were there were any preconditions before he agreed to meet with them?

Special Coverage of the GOP's ACORN "Voter Fraud" Scam right here...

Now updated below with video of McCain's appearance, when he tells the ACORN crowd: "What makes America special is what's in this room tonight."...

Please read my column this week at the UK's Guardian on "The Republican Voter Fraud Hoax".

It's a disgrace that these issues are often covered better in Great Britain and even in Russia, than they are in my own country. If you can, please join me in trying to change that.