Much more rolling still as the story continues to build on Thor Hearne and the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) scam that we’ve been covering since March of 2005 here at The BRAD BLOG.
Today NPR finally jumped into the game on the heels of last week’s superb and detailed exposé of Hearne by Murray Waas at National Journal. (We’ve yet to cover that report, and some other ACVR items of late in detail, but we hope to soon).
I was contacted last week by NPR’s Peter Overby and spoke to him on the record for about 30 minutes. Part of that interview was used in a report today on NPR’s Morning Edition.
“One of the administration’s staunchest advocates in the voter-fraud debate has simply disappeared,” begins the report that details the ACVR’s “short but busy life” and includes an interview with “Liberal blogger Brad Friedman [who] has been following the center since March 2005.”
Overby was unable to get any of ACVR’s formerly media-friendly spokesmen to speak to them on the record, and they report how the group seems to have scurried back underground since the U.S. Attorney purge scandal began to shine a spotlight on their vote-suppression activities and direct connections to the White House. NPR also notes purged NM US Attotrney David Iglesias’s claims that ACVR “worked with the White House to forward allegations of voter fraud” and quotes Loyola election law professor Rick Hasen, who picked up on much of our reporting for his own widely-noted recent article on “The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights” as published last month by Slate.
Click below to listen to the NPR report in full, which is just over 4 minutes…
And again, we’ll have much more on ACVR and Thor soon, as I was contacted today by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which ran a story on them today with references to “Some of Hearne’s most vocal critics also are Web-based liberal blog sites, which several months ago began pointing to his ties to Blunt and a link to one of the fired U.S. attorneys “” Bud Cummins of Arkansas.”
Can’t imagine which “Web-based liberal blog sites” they may be referring to, but, oh, wait…yes, we can. Post reporter Jo Mannies says Hearne complained about us by name, and though she wasn’t able to contact me for comment before today’s report, she hopes to have more on all of this tomorrow. And, most likely, so will we.
Until then, here’s one of our initial reports connecting Thor to the Bud Cummins slice of the U.S. Attorney purge. It hardly takes a “Web-based liberal blog site” to connect the dots. But whatever they need to say is fine by us, as long as they bother to report it. At least it hasn’t taken two and a half years this time.
For more information on the “non-partisan” tax-exempt ACVR “Voter Fraud” scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney ’04 National General Counsel Mark F. “Thor” Hearne, and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG’s full Special Coverage of the “American Center for Voting Rights” at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.
Also, what’s up with the name “Thor”? What’s going on there? Does he think he’s some kind of “superhero” or something?
I AM THOR! FROM THE UN-JUSTICE LEAGUE OF VOTE FRAUD FRAUDSTERS! HERE TO SUPPRESS DEMOCRACY AND BLACK VOTERS…OUR MORTAL ENEMIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Big Dan, #1
Super-Jackass is more like it! These fucking republicans. Sheesh! I feel like I have to take a shower after just looking at them.
It was so great to hear you on NPR this morning. I was cheering! And I sent a note to a bunch of lists to listen – thanks for posting the link/clip. My question is how did this ACRV group appear from nowhere and get invited to testify to Congress? Who arranged all of that – there’s the real key. Please keep doing all that you are doing.
It’s too bad Overby didn’t cite any of the recent studies debunking the Republican Myth of Voter Fraud that show it is not only NOT an epidemic, but that there were only 20 or so verifiable, legitimate cases of voter fraud in the entire nation over the last several elections. Then again, there is only so much shameful anti-democratic, anti-American wrongdoing that can fit in a short 4-minute report.
The amount of money involved in keeping the Republican Myth of Voter Fraud alive is evidence that it is central to the Permanent Republican Majority Plan and it’s big money funders.
Spending millions to protect their Billions — that’s the (Republican) American Way.
Michelle Gabriel – Thanks for the kind words and for doing something with today’s report, like using it to make noise with your friends. That’s the only thing that keeps moving this story forward.
As to your question:
The quick answer is that now-jailed Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney invited them to speak before his committee back in March of 2005 in the only official Congressional “oversight” hearings that looked back at the debacle that was the 2004 election.
Of course, the ACVR was the only “voting rights” group called to testify at those hearings, just three biz days after the ACVR came into existance, and Thor represented himself as “a long time voting rights advocate” in his testimony, apparently forgetting to add, “…Oh, yeah, I was also the national general counsel for Bush/Cheney ’04”
Who pulled the string to get Thor into Ney’s hearings, we don’t know still. It may well have been Thor (or Rove) himself pulling those strings to create the hearings in the first place as what seems to have been a purposeful attempt to whitewash and distract from the real problems in Ohio in ’04.
Anyway, I’d refer you to the original stories on ACVR from way back in March of 2005 for the contemporaneous reporting and details as they emerged. All available at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.
And thanks again for both giving a damn, and spreading the word…
It bugs me that the MSM feels the need to be partisan about this issue. Vote caging should be a concern to any American voter regardless of party. With a little thought the same process could be used to exclude members of any “non-approved” demographic.
–> Insert obligatory Animal Farm reference here
Brad is on record as saying he is not a “librul” nor a democrat nor a republican.
Get the story straight NPR.
Other than that, great work NPR. Whew! (Some of the bloggers here were afraid that you were being sucked into the neoCon vortex of perverted anti-americanism.)
Back to the story … actually the ACVR has moved to Dubai to be close to Dickey Boy Haliburton, Thor’s “daddy”.
… Michelle Gabriel short answer
‘It’s a setup ‘ by Rove via the WH
It was just last week that Greg Palast responded to my email about his reporting on Griffin and caging coming up on The Diane Rehm Show, and how this may just be the time that Diane is ready to hear him out. He (my paraphrasing) let me know that he’ll never get on NPR, that they’re too stuck with the standard DC folk they always talk to, but thanks.
And now, good man, by George, YOU’VE DONE IT! As they talked about the politics in Missouri, I began to take a note to send them your recent articles connecting Thor to it all, when they sequed into…
THE AMERICAN CENTER FOR VOTING RIGHTS!!!!!
I was ecstatic, wishing I had a number to call you, Brad, and say “LISTEN TO WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT!” when, a heartbeat later, there you were.
In my mind’s inner stereo, I could hear Jim Morrison — “Break on through to the other side…”
This makes the 2nd time in less than a week that I’ve gone giddy over voting news (the first being when Griffin suddenly resigned as Greg and Conyers conferred).
The sunlight feels so very very good.
Brad: Great to see you getting much-deserved credit on this.
Not meaning to nitpick, but I am posting to correct the wording of one of your quotes from the NPR report, (which I had to admit, didn’t make any sense to me when I read it).
You render the quote thus: “One of the staunchest advocates for voter fraud has simply disappeared….”
The actual quote is: “…one of the administration’s staunchest advocates in the voter-fraud debate has simply disappeared.”
One final friendly question: Now that we’re making progress on this and other important issues, when are we EI advocates going to get back to pressuring that Congressional Task Force to expeditiously carry out independent black-box testing of those Sarasota County Florida voting machines so that we can prove that pervasive machine failure cost Christine Jennings her seat in Congress?
Perhaps another Brad Blog special section would be in order.
Until then, your readers are always encouraged to check out the efforts of a few of us at the web site below. (There’s also a link there to the Wikipedia Article on Florida 13 that I’ve been doing some updating to with source documents, etc.)
All the best…. 🙂
Mike Ridgway, http://www.voteroversight.org
FYI, I just posted this at NPR — always ready to further inform and push the dialogue…
Mike Ridgeway #11 –
Thanks for the correct wording on that quote. Have corrected the original article. Apparently I had jotted down that note quickly to go back and get the exact wording, but had missed it.
As to FL-13, thanks for all you’re doing, and I hope folks will check out your site, and your updates to Wikipedia on it. Doing what I can here, though often in the backround (behind the blog), even as it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with all of these stories which never seem to end! Urgh…
Barbara –
Wow. Great post and thank you for those exceedingly kind words. You have been paying attention haven’t you? Perhaps you should be nominated as Official BRAD BLOG Historian! While you’re at it, please feel free to write a book on it, since lord only knows when the hell I’ll ever have time to do one myself! 🙁
ACVR:
A – Against
C – Colored
V – Voting
R – Rights
“Thor” being made into movie:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ente...nt/6729307.stm