David Horowitz brings us a very disturbing report on the extent to which the traditional harvesting of votes by parties has degenerated into massive, uncontrollable ballot manipulation by Democrats.

Traditional "vote harvesters" have as their mission the gathering of  "... unthinking collectives of potential voters -- nursing home residents, college students, skid-row dwellers, recent immigrants -- and get them to vote[.]"

Mr. Horowitz is a red-diaper baby and a former "Marxist intellectual"-turned-militant conservative who here recounts a conversation he had with his "... brother-in-law, Henry, who has lived most of his life in a home for the mentally disabled and although now in his 40s, has the intelligence level of a 6-year-old."

"Obama saved me," he said to me out of the blue.  "What do you mean?"  "I voted for him for president and now he's saving me."

I was taken aback by these words, since Henry had no idea who Obama was, or what a president might be, and would be unable to fill out a registration form let alone get to the polling place by himself.

So I asked him how he knew that and how he had registered and cast his vote. In halting, impeded speech he told me that the people who take care of him at the home filled out "the papers" to register him to vote, told him how Obama cared for him, even taught him the Obama chants, and then took him to the polling place to vote. They did the same for all of the mentally disabled patients in their care, approximately 60 in all.

Mr. Horowitz prefaced the recounting of that conversation with a little history:

Everybody by now knows - or should know - how readily Democrats conduct election fraud, and how determined they are to defend it[.] ... [They] have promoted Motor Voter laws and same day registration, and month-long election days to help them mobilize the votes of people who are so unconnected to the political process and so uninterested in the country's future, and perhaps so incompetent to understand what voting entails,  that they require keepers to see that they get to the polls and then vote the "right" way.

Mr. Horowitz, and most readers, may be "taken aback" by his brother-in-law's words, but sailors and anyone familiar with the operation of such facilities certainly are not.

The shockingly low level of supervision by "people who take care of" the residents of those facilities should be a concern for everyone, but now, given what the Democrats and their operatives are able to do, it should be of particular concern of conservatives.

Operators, case managers, social workers, counselors, and the like have relatively unfettered, private, and almost unlimited access to the residents of hundreds if not thousands these facilities across the county.

They may do or say what they wish about anything, and no one is the wiser unless a resident or someone else complains.  And you are billed for it at every step of the process (but that's a tale for another post).

But Mr. Horowitz is not alone in his concerns:

The House Elections Committee on Monday heard bills addressing absentee ballot fraud, measures aimed at reforming the mail-in ballot process in the state and making it tougher for individuals to alter election results.   "Assisted voter fraud is the largest growing fraud that we have," state Rep. Aaron Peña, R-Edinburg, told the committee. "It's an outgrowth of the old boss system, and it has never really stopped."

A similar story cuts to the nub (emphasis added):

Jimmy Green's stepdaughter had never voted before. The 57-year-old is mentally disabled, and Green said she doesn't understand the concept of casting a ballot.  But this week, she called her parents to say she had voted for President Obama. The care home in Fayetteville where she lives registered its residents to vote and drove them to the polls[.] ... "My concern is that somebody told her who to vote for," he said. "She didn't even know there's two different parties."

Complaints of uncomprehending voters being ferried to cast ballots surface every election. And in a presidential race as close as this year's, with huge levels of early voting, any perceived irregularity is falling under intense scrutiny.  But federal and state laws are very clear - there is no competency test for voting.

And there is more here:

... because prosecutors complain the cases are hard to prove. When they are prosecuted, the penalties are so small they don't deter the crime. So, with payment as "get out the vote" workers for candidates, the vote harvesters continue to hijack absentee ballots by sending applications on behalf of voters, arriving on their doorstep as the ballots arrive and coaching their votes.  It's almost like it's OK because it's always been done[.]"

For those readers who may wish to learn more, a very good legal discussion of the issue and the problems involved in correcting it can be found here:

Although many aspects of vote harvesting are clear violations of state law, lack of enforcement and minor penalties offer little deterrence.

Another piece gives a "representative sampling of techniques," including:

Registering patients without their knowledge or against their will.

Registrations resulting in the person being registered multiple times with the state, or possibly two different states.

Registering patients who have been judged incompetent.

Applying for an absentee ballot either without the person's knowledge or against the person's will and inserting their organization as a "voting assistant."

Submitting a prepared ballot to a patient for signature, forging the person's signature or signing for recently deceased patients.

Mr. Horowitz reminds us:

In the election that put Al Franken in the Senate by a few hundred votes, more than a thousand felons voted illegally because of the loose laws that govern the polling booth - laws the Democrats want to make more loose.

So, if you might think the issue minor, please do recall: no Al Franken, no ObamaCare!

And Mr. Horowitz voices his hopes that:

... poll-watching groups like "True the Vote" will comb the rolls of residents at other homes for the mentally disabled, and attempt to stop this particular abuse[.] ... [And] that people who care about our country will make electoral fraud a focus of their political efforts, and work to protect the integrity of the voting process.

We surely must agree with those hopes, and we, too, must act.

Forrest Stump is the pen name of the author, who has firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of residential and care institutions and knows how manipulable their residents can be.