More Voter Registration Fraud Charges for ACORN

Once again, however, voter registration fraud has been confused with voter fraud.

Five Wisconsin residents, including two who worked for community organizing group ACORN, were charged Monday with election fraud relating to the 2008 presidential election.

State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced felony charges against Maria Miles, Kevin Clancy, Michael Henderson, Herbert Gunka and Suzanne Gunka.

Miles and Clancy worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and are accused of submitting multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, including each other, to meet voter registration quotas imposed by the community organizing group.

Henderson is charged with one count of voting by a disqualified person and providing false information to election officials. The allegation claims he was on a felony probation and prohibited from voting at the time.

While the crimes described here are crimes of voter registration fraud, the headline was ACORN Registration Workers Charged With Felony Voter Fraud. There's a huge difference. In this case, voter registration forms were submitted fraudulently. People that didn't exist were registered to vote. Of course, since they didn't exist, they weren't going to vote. The most famous case is of course of Mickey Mouse but Mickey Mouse didn't vote either.

In these cases, no one voted fraudulently either. That doesn't mean, however, there wasn't fraud. These folks defrauded whoever paid them to register people to vote and that's the crime.

Are Townhalls the New Political and Cultural Phenomeno

You want to take a politician and strip them of all their power, turn them weak, and powerless. Then, you put them in the middle of a town hall meeting with their constituents. We saw a heavy dose of this during the summer break. That was preceded by the media making allusions that politicians would get an earful when they got back home. So, citizens, almost on cue, took that to heart.

it appears clear that what we saw over the summer was not some anomaly. In fact, town halls may no longer be simply for the true political junkie. It may now be a standard for the average citizen to confront their representative and turn the tables on them. Many citizens often feel powerless over their politician. Yes, of course, it is we the people that elect our representative. We each only have one vote and we often feel they represent interests closer to D.C. than to our own homes.

Yet, when a politician schedules a town hall, they have nowhere to hide. It's them on their own feeling the fury of hundreds if not thousands. The images, sights, and sounds from the town halls over the summer are seared in our minds. Angry voters screaming at their representatives while the politicians stand (or sit) helplessly. Most of the time, even when they try and speak, they're immediately cut off by the screams and excitement.

There's a sort of poetic justice to the town hall format. These politicians hold the fate of millions in their hands and they arrogantly proclaim to speak for the people. At a town hall, there's nowhere to hide. They're entirely powerless. All the misdeeds that each commits for months and years in D.C. are then on display and the politician has nowhere to hide. For political drama, there's little that's more dramatic.

The latest reincarnation of this was a town hall that Russ Feingold held. Feingold, to his credit, not only went to an area of Wisconsin that is heavily Republican but remained cool and professional throughout each encounter. Even so, the drama was at a maximum.



At the beginning of the movie Wall Street, then struggling Bud Fox, after being stiffed on a trade, says "my dream is to be on the other end of that call".

In this world, power is centered in the few. The rest dream of just one chance to reverse that and have the power in their hands. Town halls are exactly that opportunity. That's what makes them a phenomenon. It is the people's chance to take the power away from the politicians and for once leave the politician vulnerable and exposed.