Friedman Rips Apart ACORN Voter Fraud Hoax

Update: See A Dose of Reality on the ACORN Hysteria.

Brad Friedman eviscerates the GOP voter fraud lie aimed at the group ACORN, the Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now.

The crimes of ACORN are as Friedman writes in The Guardian:

... that Acorn managed to register some 1.3 (million) low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up. ... Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of 'Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states' as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true

The fact that the GOP is simply engaging in another political lie (that shouted loudly and often enough may get to be heard) is known, but the media feels obligated to repeat GOP propaganda. Writes Friedman:

Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic('fraudulent', 'incomplete', et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming 'Acorn is committing fraud' know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

The GOP has its marching orders and that is to scream fraud. Well, fraud is what we expect from that Muslim-city-slicking-Arab-black man's people.

Concludes Friedman:

And where (the GOP) can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20 million, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)

Wisconsin has seen this effort up close and personal.

Fortunately, Republican REAL ID legislative attempts have been knocked down by Gov. Doyle who vetoed REAL ID legislation, J.B. Van Hollen's suppression suit looks doomed, so all the GOP can do now is scream and try to smear Obama as $trillions in Americans' retirement savings go up in smoke.

For a comprehensive knockdowns of the voter fraud lie see the Brennan Center.