PrintNovember 3, 2008
The Dems election day 'Aces in the hole'
Ohio’s Secretary of State Brunner efforts to help Barack Obama win her state have been well documented at American Thinker and elsewhere. What has escaped media attention until now is the important role that Secretaries of States play during elections. They are the gatekeepers that can expand or contract voter rolls by a variety of means: loosening requirements of registrants and voters to prove they are who they represent themselves to be, weakening enforcement, filing lawsuits or opposing lawsuits regarding voting practices and principles are just a few.
The Politico published an article analyzing the important role the DEMOCRATIC Secretary of States play in key battleground states. Since the issue of voter rolls has taken on such an important role, the Republican Party should focus greater attention on these races going forward.
The Politico published an article analyzing the important role the DEMOCRATIC Secretary of States play in key battleground states. Since the issue of voter rolls has taken on such an important role, the Republican Party should focus greater attention on these races going forward.
In anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election, Democrats have built an administrative firewall designed to protect their electoral interests in five of the most important battleground states.
The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio — where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them.
With a Democrat now in charge of the offices, which oversee and administer their state’s elections, the party is better positioned than in the previous elections to advance traditional Democratic interests —such as increasing voter registration and boosting turnout — rather than Republican priorities such as stamping out voter fraud.
Perhaps more important, in those five states Democrats are now in a more advantageous position when it comes to the interpretation and administration of election law — a development that could benefit Barack Obama if any of those states are closely contested on Election Day.
The effort began in 2006 when a group of liberal California activists created an independent 527 group designed to elect secretaries of state.
The Secretary of State Project ran independent ads of its own and ensured that donors — many of whom were affiliated with Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy fundraisers that channels money to liberal causes across the country — knew which candidates deserved donations.
The Democracy Alliance is a group of wealthy Democratic activists led by George Soros ( a key supporter of Barack Obama and the emperor of a wide range of so-called 527 groups). I have written about this group in the past in an article about the expanding roster of wealthy activists (including Peter Lewis and Herb and Marion Sandler) involved in these activities.
Soros, Lewis, and the Sandlers form a core group of billionaire activists and Democrat partisans who have formed a group called The Democracy Alliance. They realized that they could magnify their power by working in unison and tapping other wealthy donors to further their agenda (the superb Boston Globe article "Follow the money" is a good primer on how money and 527 groups have come together to have a huge impact on politics in America).The Democracy Alliance is a major avenue to help them achieve their goals. The roster of its growing membership consists of a list of billionaires and mere multi-millionaires who collectively hope to give upwards of 500 million dollars each year to further promote a left-wing agenda. A partial roster of the Democracy Alliance membership can be found here.
Half a billion dollars a year can purchase a great deal of influence.
Among the beneficiaries of their largesse: Air America, ACORN (a group that has very close and long lasting ties to Barack Obama and has a long history of engaging in voter fraud. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (basically a private detective group focused on the private faults and foibles of Republicans), Media Matters, a media watchdog group that engages in harsh partisan attacks against media figures and articles it considers supportive of Republicans). The list goes on and on.
They are not merely out to elect Democrats, but to also permanently realign U.S. politics and shift our society and culture in a far-left wing direction.
Their goal is to elect as many liberal Democrats as they can across America. Apparently this includes not just politicians on Capitol Hill but state politicians , as well. Key in helping these efforts is controlling the gatekeeper of votes: The Secretary of State office. Hence their efforts to focus attention on electing as a many Secretary of States that they can They call this project the Secretary of State Project.
In one notable case, the project helped elect Mary Herrera as New Mexico’s Secretary of State. How has she performed since her election in 2006?
Republicans have recently criticized Herrera first for hiring the son-in-law of Rep. Tom Udall, the Democratic Senate candidate, as director of the state Bureau of Elections, and then replacing him with a former Udall chief of staff.
She hires family members and former employees of the Democratic Senatorial candidate to help ensure the integrity of the voting process? Where is the outrage? Where is the New York Times coverage?
One more revelation in the article is about the aforementioned Jennifer Brunner? She won with the help of a group called the SOS Project (Secretary of State Project ?). A large percentage of the most generous donors hailed from outside of the state (12 of the top 18). Among the people who gave the maximum $10,000 is none other than Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry ( a close political ally of Barack Obama).
The Republican Party would be wise to focus more attention on neutralizing the advantage being gained by far-sighted Democratic activists by the control of the Secretary of State offices. These are the gatekeepers. They should be non-partisan. All too often, they appear not to be.
