By Robert Knight
The Washington Times
(June 5, 2017)
That huge, sucking sound you’re not hearing is a left-wing behemoth slipping down the sewer.
At the risk of Schadenfreude, the cautionary Germanic expression for taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, Project Vote (PV), where Barack Obama cut his teeth working as a community organizing lawyer in Chicago in 1992, closed its doors on May 31. This is good for America.
The self-styled voting rights group was the spawn of ACORN, the corrupt outfit that was shut down seven years ago after its staffers were caught on camera giving tax evasion advice to two undercover Project Veritas folks posing as a prostitute and pimp.
A pet project of billionaire George Soros, Project Vote was hemorrhaging money to the tune of $750,000 in 2015. Apparently, even the Soros wallet is not infinitely expansive, especially when surveys show vast numbers of Americans directly oppose PV’s goal of making vote fraud easier. Working under various names, Project Vote has worked over the years to undermine election integrity safeguards, especially photo voter ID laws and registration requirements such as proof of citizenship.
The progressive pedigree of Project Vote is described in detail at DiscovertheNetworks (A Guide to the Political Left): “All of PV’s policy prescriptions are designed to maximize voter turnout among demographics that traditionally support Democrats in overwhelming numbers. Moreover, several of the group’s preferred policies — such as loosened standards for voter-registration and -identification — invariably make it easier for election-related fraud to take place.
“Pursuing the so-called ‘crisis strategy’ or Cloward-Piven Strategy pioneered during the 1960s by political scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven … PV’s objective is to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the American voting system through an abundance of fraudulent registrations, fraud at the ballot box, protests, propaganda, and vexatious litigation.”
Ms. Piven was still listed as a member on the group’s website on the day of the organization’s closing. Since its founding in 1982, Project Vote has marched in lockstep with other leftist organizations in the Soros-funded universe.
Another PV leadership luminary, Director of Advocacy Estelle Rogers, honed her skills as an attorney for ACORN before that group was forced to disband under charges of corruption and fraud in November 2010. And let’s not forget Field Director Amy Busefink, who pled guilty to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy over paying people to register voters in Nevada when she was working for ACORN.
PV staff worked hand in glove with President Obama’s Justice Department to attack voter ID laws in courts across the country and sign up millions of voters at welfare and other government agencies under Bill Clinton’s Motor Voter law. Of 1.3 million registrations Project Vote/ACORN submitted in the 2008 election cycle, more than one-third were reportedly invalid. Shocking? Not really.
In Broward County, Florida, scene of the attempted theft of the 2000 presidential election, the (ACRU) is suing the county for having more than 100 percent of its eligible voting age population registered to vote. Many Project Vote attorneys have joined forces with the S.E.I.U. and Democrats to fight the legal battle for the county. There should be fireworks at the county courthouse in Fort Lauderdale in late July when the case goes to trial.
To give you just a taste of how bad Broward’s voter rolls are, this county of nearly two million people, with a non-citizen population of over 250,000, removed only 19 people from its voting rolls over the last five years for lacking U.S. citizenship.
“The battle over who controls America’s political voice boils down to whether the citizens can drown out the fraudsters,” said ACRU Chairman and CEO Susan A. Carleson.
“And there’s no doubt about whose side Project Vote was on.”
Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the .
