Democracy is woven of tougher stuff than that

In the debate last night McCain said:

We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

That's over-the-top fear-mongering, and nothing else. (See here for a rundown on ACORN and here for the real target: disenfranchisement.)

Every couple of years, without fail, the GOP starts screaming about ACORN - and other voter-registration efforts. Election Day registration, DMV registration, community-organized registration, standing-around-at-the-mall registration: you name it, if it makes it easier for people to register then the GOP is against it. Registration fraud surely exists. But its connection to voter fraud is tenuous, and there has never, in fact, any kind of outbreak of voter fraud.

Let's remember that it was just this hysteria that cost Alberto Gonzales his job. Those unethically-fired US Attorneys? They were fired for not being able to find widespread, or narrow-spread for that matter, voter fraud, and for not being willing to waste time and resources to look for something they had no evidence - none, zip, silch, nada, none - even exists.

All this ACORN angst accomplishes - and all it's meant to accomplish - is to make it easier to stop people from voting. Because Republicans do better the fewer Americans vote, especially if the ones not voting are the poor, the young, or those who otherwise have trouble getting registered.

What ACORN is doing is getting registration forms turned into the people who file the good ones and trash the bad ones. Most states require ACORN to turn in even obviously fraudulent forms - but ACORN notifies election officials of suspect registrations. And, ACORN has fired numerous workers who filled in forms with names from the phone book or the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup rather than trekking from door to door. Finally, as county registrars have pointed out, even when a fake form slips through them and results in a registration, they "seriously doubt" any fake voters will ever show up. After all, the names aren't the only fake things on the form.

And let's not forget that legitimate voters who registered through ACORN may fear harassment at the polls, or just assume that their registration isn't valid, and not show up.

Bottom line: despite Republican grandstanding, ACORN has never been found guilty of anything worse than sloppy management. It is not connected to the extremely few cases of voter fraud that have actually occurred in US history.

Now the FBI is in on the act, prodded by the Justice Department (in a last gasp of voter suppression, or an attack of nostalgia?). Look here for letter from House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI director Robert Mueller, in which he begins by saying "it is simply unacceptable that such information would be leaked during the very peak of the election season" and continues on to question the motive for the investigation in the first place, pointing out that "it has become a right-wing cottage industry to cry wolf over alleged "voter fraud" during an election season (only to have such claims evaporate after the election has concluded). "

Yes, indeed: John McCain and the GOP are making the usual last-minute desperation ploy to suppress votes. That "maybe" doesn't save you, Senator McCain. That accusation is a lie.