High Times at the GOP

Back in 2008, some people who were hired by the community group ACORN to sign up new voters figured out they could pad their earnings by submitting fake registrations for Mickey Mouse and other fictional characters. ACORN submitted the registrations to the county clerks because they had to - most states require canvassers to submit all received registration cards regardless of fraud or error. (The reason is simple: to prevent gatherers backed by one party from arbitrarily discarding registrations for other parties based on made-up allegations.) The group alerted the clerks' offices, the fakes were caught and invalidated, and the dishonest canvassers were charged with voter registration fraud.

In other words, the system worked. But it was a huge scandal at the time, with the Republican Party and its media divisions (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc) all screaming about how the election would be tainted by a flood of fake ACORN votes. It was one of the reasons why the national group went under earlier this year.

Final tally of proven fraudulent votes based on ACORN registrations: zero.

So now we have another tale of fake voter registration, but it's somewhat different than the ACORN one. Earlier this month, the Orange County Register reported that the county Republican Party paid "bounties" of as much as $8 per head to canvassers who signed up new GOP voters. So the canvassers went around asking people to sign petitions in support of beach cleanups, cancer cures and even marijuana legalization - but didn't tell them that by doing so they were registering as Republican voters. (Does that mean you have to be high to vote Republican?) Hundreds of complaints have now arrived at California state elections offices from people claiming they were duped in this manner.

One canvasser, who submitted three registrations from people complaining they were lied to, dismissed them as morons: "I can tell you that half the people out there don't know the difference between a Republican and a Democrat." (And Tom Tancredo says we should bring back literacy tests since President Obama was supposedly elected by stupid voters. Perhaps he was looking at the wrong party.)

It's tempting to brush this off as an ACORN rerun, but it's not that simple. You see, back in 2006, the newspaper received the same sort of complaints, did some digging and found the same sort of GOP fraud that would be uncovered four years later. Back then, eleven canvassers were convicted of falsifying voter registrations, and eight of them went to jail. So they're trying the same thing again. Add in the fact that the "bounty" was paid directly by the Republican Party via the signature-gathering firm they hired and this is getting serious. The county Democrats are now demanding that the local US Attorney investigate the charges.

I don't care what your position or party is - if you have to con people to get them to register as a member of your organization, you have no business being in politics. The Orange County Republicans still have time to fix the mess, but only if they do some major housecleaning:

• Take all the crafty canvassers, and the party officials who gave them the green light, and throw them to the wolves.
• Contact all involved registrants and invalidate all registrations which were signed up fraudulently.
• Stop offering "bounties" to canvassers based on how many registrations they bring in and support state legislation to bar the practice.
• Promise never to pull such a scam again and submit to random checks to make sure they're being honest.
  

That should help clean things up. Because signing up marijuana proponents as Republicans makes the Harold and Kumar jokes just too easy.