Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Brad Blog reports on a guilty plea by Mark Jacoby, the head of an organization hired by the California Republican Party to head their voter registration efforts. First he quotes the LA Times on the story:
The owner of a voter-registration company pleaded guilty Tuesday to voter-registration fraud, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.Laguna Beach resident Mark Jacoby, who collects signatures for petition drives, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to three years' probation and 30 days of service with the California Department of Transportation.
Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, registered to vote at Los Angeles addresses that were not his own. State law requires petition circulators to be qualified voters. Jacoby will also be required to show proof he is registered at his correct address.
Then he fills in the unmentioned details:
And what they didn't bother to mention in that story?...Amongst other things, the fact that Jacoby and Young Political Majors were hired by the California Republican Party to head up their voter registration efforts in the state.
He also notes that this goes much deeper than merely lying to register himself as a canvasser:
I hadn't noted it originally (though it's available in a number of the links in the story above), but though Jacoby pleaded guilty to the most benign offense, in fact, his company is alleged to have changed thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican, assuring that those voters would not be able to vote, as expected, in the Democratic primary. When they didn't outright fake voter signatures on change of registration forms, they used tricks to get voters to give their signature, fooling them into thinking they were signing a petition against child molesters or for cancer hospital funding.And since it's not clear to so many of the wingnuts linking into this post, allow me to underscore again that this was the head of the firm, which is also under investigation in three other states for similar activity. That all, of course, is a very different situation from ACORN where it was a handful of workers who were accused of registration fraud, and defrauding ACORN themselves, before being turned into officials by ACORN themselves!
That's a distinction the right has always failed to grasp, quite deliberately, about ACORN.
Politics
Comments
I expect a comment from Michele Bachmann momentarily, right? Right...?
chirp, chirp
Posted by: chris | June 24, 2009 10:22 AM
On a side note, I do have a minor quibble with ACORN. I had a friend who at one time worked at a lobbying firm for the financial industry (natural enemies of ACORN, I will grant). When the housing bubble started to burst badly, ACORN stormed the lobbying firm's office building -- to demand they do something about people being forced to default on their mortgages.
Um.
That has nothing to do with what the firm in question does. At all. Whatsoever. It was just a useless gesture, with no press coverage, that basically just meant some office drones like my friend had a rotten day. Good job, dickwads!
That's more of a "facepalm" than any kind of deep corruption or conspiracy, though. We'll leave the latter to the Republicans :)
Posted by: James Sweet | June 24, 2009 11:03 AM
More typical psychological projection from the Republicans. Any time they accuse Democrats of doing something wrong, you can assume that they are doing the same thing ten times worse. Sort of like those old sayings "It takes one to know one" and "Whoever smelt it, dealt it".
Posted by: catgirl | June 24, 2009 11:23 AM
...and 30 days of service with the California Department of Transportation.
Digging ditches or pushing paper?
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 24, 2009 12:07 PM
I love how this actually surfaced prior to the election, but 9 months later they have only the initial charge (with a plea bargain) haven't really done anything with the other charges, and quietly handle all of it (media).
Ahh, that "liberal media bias" again... /end sarcastic snark
Posted by: dogmeatIB | June 24, 2009 1:03 PM
Speed hump.
Posted by: blf | June 24, 2009 3:03 PM
Wearing an orange vest and picking up trash on the side of the road. Which, given the injury rates to CalTrans workers, is only slightly better than being a speed bump.
Posted by: ArtK | June 24, 2009 3:47 PM