Thousands of fraud cases just 'tip of iceberg'

New warning of 'total breakdown in cohesion of American society'

"It's mind-boggling to me that as a tiny non-profit corporation, we netted more than double the number of convictions in one year than the U.S. Department of Justice was able to find in five," said Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis in a statement on the results.

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By Bob Unruh

A group that monitors elections in Minnesota and roots out fraudulent votes is warning ballot fraud is on the rise across the nation, and if unchecked, the ultimate consequences would be an electorate that simply doesn't believe the system works and refuses to participate – "a total breakdown in the cohesion of American society."
That's from spokesman Dan McGrath of the Minnesota Majority, which advocates for traditional values in state and federal public policy through grassroots activism. The group also contributes to the work of ElectionIntegrityWatch.com to focus specifically on elections and voter fraud.
Minnesota Majority reported that its investigations of fraud allegations arising from the 2008 general election in the state so far have resulted in 113 convictions. Another 200 or so cases are being processed or are pending but might not be completed because the statute of limitations expires next month, three years after the election.
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And a stunning 2,800 or more cases cannot be prosecuted because of the wording in the state law that essentially requires voter fraud participants to admit they knew what they were doing was illegal in order for a conviction to be obtained, the organization said.
The organization's report on voter fraud said the convictions appear to be the highest number since a scheme in Jackson County, Mo., in 1936 resulted in 259 individuals convicted of voter fraud.
A more recent effort by the U.S. Department of Justice that encompassed five years resulted in just 53 convictions, the group said.
"It's mind-boggling to me that as a tiny non-profit corporation, we netted more than double the number of convictions in one year than the U.S. Department of Justice was able to find in five," said Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis in a statement on the results.
The group identified a wide range of illegal votes, including incapacitated patients at a mental health home who have guardians and are not eligible to vote to "upwards of 2,800 ineligible felons believed to have unlawfully voted in Minnesota's 2008 general election."
"These convictions are just the tip of the iceberg," said Davis. "The actual number of illegal votes cast was in the thousands. Most unlawful voters were never charged with a crime because they simply pled ignorance. We have evidence of these people casting illegal ballots, but in Minnesota, ignorance of election law is considered to be an acceptable defense."
It's not just in Minnesota.
The organization lists reports from dozens of locations around the nation where voter fraud cases have been brought, and convictions won, by prosecutors. Among them are a 10-year prison term for an NAACP leader for vote fraud, several cases in Houston, more in Wisconsin and some in Florida.
The issue of trouble in American elections was the sole focus of a Whistleblower Magazine issue two years ago, and a new book by Matthew Vadum, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers," explains how the ACORN organization, under new names in various states, continues its campaign to influence elections.
Minnesota Majority notes that in 2008, the Minnesota U.S. Senate race was decided by just 312 votes.
"Never in our state's history did the words 'every vote counts' ring so true. However, a cloud of doubt still hangs over the results. Post-election analysis showed that hundreds of ineligible felons voted in the election. Over 17,000 more ballots were counted than voters accounted for as having voted in our Statewide Voter Registration System. Over 23,000 addresses provided by Election Day registrants could not be verified. Voter rolls contained the names of non-citizens and deceased individuals," the organization reported.
What that means is that Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., may not have won, although he has been casting votes from his U.S. Senate seat ever since.
"Political analysts estimate that voter fraud may account for 3 percent of the vote in any given election. Applying this statistic to Minnesota's 2006 gubernatorial election, that would mean that we would have had over 66,000 fraudulent votes. Remember that Gov. Pawlenty won this election by just 21,000 votes," the organization reported.
Further, it reported in 2008, ACORN registered more than 40,000 people to vote in Minnesota.
"While numerous other states have launched investigations of voter fraud by ACORN, Minnesota government officials have done nothing. To this day, our top elections official, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, has failed to satisfactorily explain the irregularities uncovered after the 2008 election. Our top law enforcement official, Attorney General Lori Swanson, has refused to investigate allegations of election irregularities. Could this be because both Ritchie and Swanson were endorsed and supported by ACORN when they were elected to office?" the group asked.
McGrath told WND that while voter fraud was rampant decades back, it largely had declined.
Now, however, "it is being revived," he said. "There seem to be some new groups out there."
He said the potential ramifications are very serious for the nation, and "that's why we've been so dogged about this."
"The foundation of the country rests on the confidence of the people that they're being represented," he said. "That they have a voice in the process. If they feel they have become disenfranchised, they'll ask, 'What reason do I have to participate?'
"That's why it's so very alarming."
It was just this week that former Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan said a signature on a petition to put Barack Obama on the state's primary ballot in 2008 isn't his.
The Democrat, who had campaigned for Hillary Clinton, told the Associated Press the printing next to the signature doesn't even look like his.
He was among dozens of people contacted by the South Bend Tribune who declined to verify that their names on the petition were in their handwriting.
Officials called for a federal investigation.
McGrath said there are several developments that voters need to know about. One is that several states have become concerned about voter fraud and have cracked down on "provisional ballots" from those who don't appear on voter registration lists.
But a pushback is developing from organizations that want such limits and restrictions removed, he said.
Providing the "benefit of the doubt" for a ballot for anyone who walks in the door of a polling location is an "open door" for trouble, he suggested.
Another development is that organizations such as a coalition in Minnesota, under the banner of ElectionIntegrityWatch, are being assembled. Texas already has one, and the efforts in other places are in various stages.
He said, however, citizens will have to depend on themselves to know what to watch for and then document the evidence needed to charge voter fraud, because the federal government is unlikely to help.
He said his organization tried to get some assistance from the Department of Justice and presented information about evidence to the FBI.
The agent who reviewed the information suggested there was enough to open an investigation, but "when he got back to his supervisors, the case just disappeared," McGrath said.
WND also previously reported that a number of names among ACORN's "shock troops" have been linked to or convicted of perjury, forgery, identity theft and election fraud in recent years.
Vadum, a senior editor for the Capital Research Center, released before Obama took office a report titled "ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground's Little Brother?" documenting the troubled past and problems facing the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The organization for which Obama at one point trained activists and to which he directed grants while aboard the management of the Woods Fund established a reputation for doing pretty much as it pleases, the report said.
While the election 2008 controversies over electoral fraud efforts "have been indelibly imprinted in the public consciousness," Vadum said, that work is only a "smidgen of what ACORN actually does."
While ACORN officially went out of business earlier this year, Vadum has documented how most of the people involved simply reported many times to the same offices and same work desks, just under the name of a new organization.
The issue of misbehavior at the polls caught the attention of the public in 2008 when voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party was caught on video:
The Justice Department originally brought a case against the organization and several individuals who witnesses say derided voters with catcalls of "white devil" and "cracker" and told them they should prepare to be "ruled by the black man."
One poll watcher called police after he reportedly saw one of the men brandishing a nightstick to threaten voters.
"As I walked up, they closed ranks, next to each other," the witness told Fox News at the time. "So I walked directly in between them, went inside and found the poll watchers. They said they'd been here for about an hour. And they told us not to come outside because a black man is going to win this election no matter what."
He said the man with a nightstick told him, "'We're tired of white supremacy,' and he starts tapping the nightstick in his hand. At which point I said, 'OK, we're not going to get in a fistfight right here,' and I called the police."
Subsequently, former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that the Voting Section of Holder's organization is dominated by a "culture of hostility" toward bringing cases against blacks and other minorities who violate voting-rights laws.
Further, two other former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys later corroborated key elements of the explosive allegations by Adams.
One of Adams' DOJ colleagues, former Voting Section trial attorney Hans A. von Spakovsky, told WND he saw Adams was being attacked in the media for lack of corroboration. He said he knew Adams was telling the truth, so he decided on his own to step forward.
Adams had been ordered by his superiors to drop a case prosecutors already had won against the New Black Panthers. When they were ordered to stop prosecution, Adams and the team of DOJ lawyers had already won the case by default because the New Black Panthers declined to defend themselves in court. At that point in the proceedings, the DOJ team was simply waiting for the judge to assign penalties against the New Black Panthers.

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