Florida state Rep. Dennis Baxley (Photo via myfloridahouse.gov/Mark Foley)

Wednesday on MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Rev. Al Sharpton, state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, revived his defense of the controversial voting law he sponsored last session by saying that the new law was a way of ensuring that Floridians do not register fictitious characters such as “Mickey Mouse” to vote, among other sorts of electoral “mischief.”

Reports have surfaced from several nonpartisan groups suggesting that Florida actively suppressed the voting rights of minorities, young people, the disabled and low-income voters by passing a restrictive elections law last session. These demographics typically vote for Democrats.

Federal policymakers have also criticized the Florida law — as well as other states that have similarly passed restrictive voting laws before the upcoming 2012 election. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., even pressed for congressional field hearing into laws he says were possibly passed for partisan gain.

However, Baxley argues these claims are untrue. He says the law was written to have a “secure election process that works,” he told Sharpton.

Sharpton repeatedly pointed out to Baxley that there were only 31 cases of alleged election fraud reported to state officials in the past three years, which he says is evidence of politically motivation for the new restrictions.

Baxley said the law was meant to prevent electoral “mischief,” not to necessarily respond to a problem in the state’s voting laws.

Baxley did say, however, that in the last election there were instances of people registering the name “Mickey Mouse” to vote in Florida. Baxley said it was that type of  ”mishap and mischief” that he was aiming to prevent in the 2012 election.

However, Sharpton quickly dismissed the argument.

“If you’ve got to get Mickey Mouse to make your case … then believe me you’re trying to take all of us to Disney World for a ride,” he told Baxley.

Baxley’s argument is not new. In fact, while the bill was being debated in the Legislature, Baxley tied the need for new voting laws to allegations that a group called ACORN was registering fictitious characters such as “Mickey Mouse” and “Mary Poppins” in exchange for cash.

As The Florida Independent reported in Aptril, though, legislators never successfully explained how these fictitious characters would ever make it to the polls, cast a ballot and affect the outcome of an election.

Sharpton also interviewed the president of the nonpartison League of Women Voters. For decades, before the new restrictions were placed on third-party voter registration, the group registered people to vote in the state. During his interview, Baxley said the group should “get over their angst” concerning the voting law.

Baxley has also said publicly that the law is not “going to limit anybody’s participation.”

The state is still awaiting a court’s approval of some of the more controversial aspects of the law, which includes new restrictions on third-party voter registration drives, a shorter “shelf life” for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, a restriction that makes it more difficult for voters to change their registered addresses on election day and a reduction of the number of early voting days.

You can watch Baxley’s interview, as well as Sharpton’s interview with the League of Women Voters here:

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Late last week, national Democrats announced they would be launching a campaign responding to laws across the country that may decrease access to the polls for many for the 2012 election.

U.S. News reports:

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused Republicans of launching a “full-scale attack on the public’s right to vote.” She said that GOP efforts in states to curb instant voter registration and early voting and require photo identification at the polls to fight alleged fraud could push minorities, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, away from voting. She claimed that repeated investigations into voter fraud have found very little evidence that it occurs.

…

The Republican National Committee rejected the charges, however. Officials said there is evidence of voter fraud. In just one popularized case, for example, they note that ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—in 2008 was accused of handling 400,000 fraudulent registrations.

The website, protectingthevote.com, states that “in 2011, a new movement to change the way we vote is under way. Unlike past reforms that sought to expand access to voting, this effort aims to restrict voting purely for partisan gain.”

The website runs through some of the most restrictive new laws in states across the country. The DNC points to laws that “target voter registration drives, cut early voting, repeal election day registration, and create citizen challenges” as the biggest culprits of voter suppression.

The website also has a link to a 73-page report written by the Voting Rights Institute, with help from the DNC. The report singled out Florida as passing some of the most restrictive voting laws, including one law that targets voter-registration drives and another that cuts early voting.

According to the report:

The GOP enacted restrictions on voter registration drives in Florida and Texas, and proposed similar measures in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The new legislation in Florida was by far the GOP’s most extensive effort. In 2010, Republican Governor Rick Scott rode a wave of Tea Party support to victory in the state’s gubernatorial race, joining Republican majorities in the Florida House and Senate. A pinnacle of their collaboration in this year’s legislative session was HB1355, a 158-page omnibus elections overhaul that—in addition to early voting cuts—enacted draconian restrictions on all nongovernmental entities that conduct voter registration.

Under HB1355, any group or individual that conducts voter registration must now (1) register their organization with the Florida Division of Elections prior to conducting registration activities and regularly file onerous reports on all their activities; (2) track and account for voter registration forms using a specially generated number for each document; (3) submit completed voter registration forms to the state within 48 hours (a significant decrease from the previous deadline of 10 days); (4) subject themselves to fines between $50 and $1,000 for registration forms returned to the state after 48 hours; and (5) submit to new enforcement authority from the Florida attorney general.

These restrictions encumber even large and experienced organizations; immediately after HB1355 was passed, the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its voter registration activities. But these restrictions fall heaviest on small organizations that conduct neighborhood voter registration, lack the capacity to abide by the state’s reporting requirements and tight deadlines, and could be virtually bankrupted under this penalty structure. Already, there are reports of public school teachers who may face huge fines under the new law—all for the supposed offense of helping students register to vote without following each minute requirement of the new law.

Fewer voter registration drives mean fewer voters. But cutting back on voter registration drives does not have the effect of limiting the political participation of all citizens equally. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that African American and Hispanic voters are more than twice as likely to register through voter registration drives as are white voters in Florida.

Democrats have also sought congressional investigations in order to address these laws. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,requested congressional field hearings into the new laws, asking Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to schedule them. Nelson also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Justice Department launch an investigation into whether the “new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on the most controversial aspects of H.B. 1355 from a court in the District of Columbia.

Photo: Flickr/hjl

The recent FoxNews.com article suggests ACORN is “playing a key role” in OWS by “organizing ‘guerrilla’ protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities.”

Former ACORN employees, now with New York Communities for Change (NYCC), are paying former ACORN-affiliated staff $100 an hour, and homeless people $10 an hour, to attend Occupy events in other cities, Fox reports. From the article:

Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.

NYCC representatives disputed the story, which relies on unnamed sources to back up its claims. In a response on its site, the group says Fox is trying to discredit Occupy Wall Street, and called the attack a “smear campaign.”

New York Communities for Change is a new organization that fights for low- and moderate-income families. We don’t pay protesters and any monies raised by NYCC’s canvass are used in support of our ongoing issue campaigns. Period. […] We call on Fox News to stop its unseemly attacks and to respect the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that our nation needs a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Despite the denial, KSP — a group that routinely targets ACORN at its meetings and on more than one occasion have invited ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief to speak to its members – seized the opportunity to use the questionable Fox News exposé as a means to generate donations to its poll watcher training program, True the Vote.

“ACORN has reared its ugly head again,” the email message reads. “Major news sources like Fox News have reported that ACORN operatives are intrinsically connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement, going door-to-door seeking donations for bogus organizations then funneling the proceeds to the Occupy effort.”

“Fraud is what ACORN does best, and I have no doubt their support of the Occupy Wall Street movement is a warm-up for the 2012 elections […] Will you take a stand for free and fair elections by making an immediate donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more to True the Vote?”

Media Matters for America, a research organization that closely monitors conservative news, http://mediamatters.org/research/201110270020″>found the Fox article’s allegations questionable, citing NYCC’s denial, and the headline’s suggestion that ACORN has played a behind-the-scenes role in the Occupy movement, despite the fact that it’s disbanded.

“The story is incredibly misleading from the get-go,” said Eric Boehlert, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters. “Fox clearly wanted to pretend ACORN officials are directly tied to Occupy Wall Street — but ACORN doesn’t exist anymore, so the entire claim is a problem.”

Boehlert said the story is driven by the desire to marry the two great “boogeymen” of Fox News, ACORN and Occupy Wall Street.

“No matter how quickly a story is debunked,” Boehlert added, “it will get passed around as thought it’s legitimate in conservative circles.”

Here’s True The Vote’s full fundraising pitch:

Fellow Patriot,

They say if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. The same holds true for ACORN, the disgraced community organizing group responsible for registering untold numbers of Disney characters to vote in the 2008 election.

Thought to be dismantled after the 2010 elections when even many Democrats were disgusted by the organization’s lengthy resume of scandals, ACORN has reared its ugly head again. Major news sources like Fox News have reported that ACORN operatives are intrinsically connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement, going door-to-door seeking donations for bogus organizations then funneling the proceeds to the Occupy effort.

If it’s organized by former ACORN staffers and it’s using the ACORN business model, then it’s ACORN.

Fraud is what ACORN does best, and I have no doubt their support of the Occupy Wall Street movement is a warm-up for the 2012 elections. So what are we going to do about it? Fight back, of course! That’s why I founded True the Vote, an organization dedicated to restoring integrity to our election processes by training thousands of citizens to volunteer as poll watchers in all 50 states.

Will you take a stand for free and fair elections by making an immediate donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more to True the Vote?

We both know that just a few months from now ACORN’s real focus will be what is always has been: subverting our electoral process, overwhelming county offices with fraudulent voter registration applications, and then mobilizing those illegitimate voters on election day. To them, the ends justify any means necessary to assure the continued reign of the Community Organizer in Chief, Barack Obama.

Make no mistake about it, ACORN is playing to win. But this time, True the Vote is too. We urgently need your help to cover the costs of our training programs before primary season begins. That’s why I’m asking you to follow this link right now to make the most generous contribution you can afford to True the Vote.

Don’t look back two years from now and wonder why ACORN got away with election fraud again. Stand with True the Vote today and support our efforts to restore the integrity of America’s election.

Sincerely,

Catherine Engelbrecht
President and Founder, True the Vote

P.S. ACORN is using the Occupy Wall Street movement to practice their fraudulent activities ahead of the 2012 elections. They’re determined to deliver a second term to the Community Organizer in Chief, but this time they’ll have to get past True the Vote first. Will you stand with True the Vote to restore the integrity of our elections by helping us train thousands of volunteer poll monitors in every state? Please follow this link right away to make a contribution of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more to True the Vote.

The board game’s creator, Bob Johnson, says in a statement that the game “was forced off the retail market in the 1980s by government officials working with the NAACP, NOW, and other welfare ‘rights’ groups.”

According to a press release announcing the rerelease of the game:

“Obozo’s America” is essentially the same as “Public Assistance” with these new features: the “Welfare Promenade” is now “Obozo’s Welfare Promenade;” each of the 50 Welfare Benefit cards and each of the 50 Working Person’s Burden cards begins with “Obozo Says;” and, an image of Obozo the Marxist Clown, juggling Hope and Change balls, appears in each of the corners.

Players begin on Obozo’s Welfare Promenade with an initial welfare grant of $1,000, then maneuver along the Promenade, getting cash for producing out-of-wedlock children, for drawing extensive welfare benefits, and for their success in four “Saturday Night” crimes (Prostitution, Armed Robbery, Gambling, and Drugs). Players can also get a job for their live-in on the “Government Cakewalk,” and if they are caught in crime, experience the “Jail Jaunt” – one roll of the dice and they’re back at the welfare office collecting all benefits. [Emphasis mine]

Players try to avoid landing on one of the dreaded “Get a Job” blocks which forces them off Obozo’s Welfare Promenade into the Working Person’s Rut. Hey, somebody has to pay for all the welfare, crime, and government!

Besides depicting welfare recipients as prostitutes, violent thieves, gamblers and drug addicts, the game’s website features an image of the president as “Obozo the Marxist Clown.”

In the right-wing publication American Thinker, Johnson writes:

First, ACORN is the NAACP, NOW, ACLU, and other “welfare rights advocates” all rolled into one, funded by you and me to facilitate the expansion of the welfare empire and its socialist/Marxist agenda. Obama was, and still is, an advocate for ACORN. That means he is an advocate for the suppression of free speech and free press. The only “civil right” Obama honors is the “right” of some to fare well at the involuntary expense of the productive members of society.

Second, the American Public Human Services Association, or APHSA (formerly the APWA) runs a half-a-trillion-dollar welfare empire. Had you ever heard of this fourth branch of government and its elitist parasites before? They, or an affiliated group, will run Obama “Care.”

Third, like the APHSA, the Obama administration is determined to maintain its power through propaganda, agitation, and projection. The false “racist” attack worked against us and our game in 1980, and it still works today.

Fourth, the welfare game board graphically portrays Obama’s destructive vision for American society. The hundred-dollar bill in the game pictures Karl Marx with the motto “Equality Taxation Poverty.” Is that not Obama’s unspoken goal?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida is currently fighting a new law in Florida that requires welfare recipients to take a drug test before receiving benefits. Howard Simon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida, has called the law a propagation of offensive stereotypes about welfare recipients. “The law is not just unconstitutional and illegal, it’s a public policy that rests on ugly stereotypes,” Simon said.

The ACLU’s client in the lawsuit is a welfare recipient — as well as a Navy veteran, a student at the University of Central Florida and a single father.

The commission would consist of nine members — three each appointed by the speaker, the Senate president and the governor — and would be led by the Secretary of State. The plan is intended to give the state flexibility in choosing its primary date.

Cannon announced the plan yesterday, and an amendment by House State Affairs Committee chairman Seth McKeel tacked it onto House Bill 1355, which Ben Wilcox of the Florida League of Women Voters described as an act of “good, old-fashioned voter suppression.”

Among other things, the bill would require people who change their addresses on election day to vote by provisional ballot and impose new regulations on groups that register voters. It would also dampen the prospects of citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives, shortening the time signatures are valid from four years to two.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said the bill is intended to prevent “fraud” and “mischief” in elections.

“We’re talking about elections that have been decided by hundreds of votes,” he said. “Don’t you want to make sure those have credibility?”

Opponents of the measure have questioned whether voter fraud is a problem in Florida, after statewide elections in 2008 and 2010 both went smoothly. Baxley responded with a soundbite.

“Can you spell ACORN?” he said.

Breitbart made waves in 2009 when he posted videos that purported to show an ACORN employee giving advice to a pimp and prostitute; the video was ruled by investigators in several states to have been highly edited and, in some cases, possibly in violation of state law. Despite the misleading videos, the flap contributed to ACORN’s demise and to Congress stripping its funding. Breitbart got the videos from colleague James O’Keefe, who months later was arrested by the U.S. Marshals and charged with entering the office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.

Breitbart rose to fame again in 2010 when he posted selectively edited footage of Shirley Sherrod, Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture, during a NAACP event in which she appeared to be making a racist statement. The full video, however, showed that Sherrod had not made a racist statement. Despite that, she lost her position at the USDA.

Sherrod filed a lawsuit against Breitbart in February alleging defamation. Breitbart told Newsweek that he regretted posting the video, but declined to publicly apologize to Sherrod.

The convention will be held at the Minneapolis Hilton on June 17 and 18.

Netroots Nation, which last year featured Sen. Al Franken as its keynote speaker, will be held June 16–19 in downtown Minneapolis and will be headlined by former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold.

Lila Rose, who at age 15 founded the anti-abortion group Live Action, has made secret videotapes of her visits to Planned Parenthood clinics. During a California series in 2007, she told clinic workers she was minor who had been sexually active with a 23-year-old man, presumably the father of the non-existent child she claimed to carry. The videos were wildly circulated in anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood circles because the California workers did not report the incident to law enforcement.

More recently Rose filmed a sting operation in which anti-abortion activists posed as sex traffickers seeking information about disease testing for underage Asian girls, mimicking a similar tactic utilized by James O’Keefe, another conservative videographer, when he posed as a pimp and approached ACORN staff members. O’Keefe was later arrested for tampering with office phones in U.S. Sen. Mary Landreiu‘s (D-Louisiana) office.

Although Rose’s undercover videos initially prompted Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to say he would launch an investigation, he later acknowledged that no investigation could take place since there were no actual victims of abuse. In addition, at least 11 Planned Parenthood clinics involved in Rose’s sting operation did report the incidents to law enforcement before Live Action released the videos.

For her efforts, Rose earned $50,000 in 2008 from the Gerard Health Foundation, which promotes abstinence-only education and anti-abortion actions.

In 2009, she was also named a “Young Leader” by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion nonprofit organization. Earlier this month, as a part of the Susan B. Anthony’s List “Women Speak Out: Defund Planned Parenthood” bus tour, Rose made stops in Des Moines and Davenport. The focus of the bus tour was to convince lawmakers to vote with U.S. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) to remove all taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that federal law already prohibits use of taxpayer funds for abortion services. (The trip through Iowa targeted Democratic U.S. Reps. Leonard Boswell and Bruce Braley, but, despite traveling through the 2nd District, skipped Dave Loebsack.)

According to event information being circulated by Iowa Right to Life, Rose “has brought to light Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept donations to exterminate minority populations; their willingness to leave statutory rape unreported; and most recently, Planned Parenthood’s willingness to aid pimps in sex trafficking.”

The organization’s “Spring Fling” is slated for April 28 at the Holiday Inn on Fleur Dr. in Des Moines.

“In November of 2009 we found 52 percent of Republicans thought ACORN had stolen the election for Barack Obama in 2008,” reports PPP. “Now only 25 percent think the organization will steal the election for him again next year… and 32 percent aren’t sure yet.”

Is it fair to extrapolate and say that 57 percent of Republican voters don’t know that ACORN is dissolved, including those who fear the organization was/is a threat to the democratic functioning of their country?

As Slate’s Dave Weigel reported last week when the PPP survey results were released:

On March 21, 2010 — one year ago — ACORN’s board decided to shut down. On November 2, they filed for Chapter 7. The organization has not existed in months. But this number is actually 2 points higher than the number who, last fall, thought the collapsing ACORN would steal some midterm elections for Democrats.

To be fair, although Fox News may confuse on purpose, it clearly doesn’t take much to confuse American voters. Last year PPP also found that 20 percent of Democrats, right before the coming historic GOP midterm victories, said they too thought ACORN would play a role in the election.

PPP’s Tom Jensen had no idea what to make of this finding and his ruminations are entertaining, or sad, or funny-sad, just like a Borowitz piece.

That 23% of Republicans who think ACORN will be influential this time is actually barely higher than the 20% of Democrats who say they think it will keep their party in charge. Perhaps Democratic voters have come to the conclusion that ACORN is their last best hope. Or more likely they gave a silly answer to a silly question. And we’re not going to apologize for asking the occasional silly question.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this is that only 40% of voters definitively say they think ACORN will not steal the election with another 40% saying they’re not sure. I guess a lot of folks are just waiting to see if ACORN’s really gone away or if it’s just hiding in the bushes waiting for people to get complacent before it makes its move.

Your theories would be much appreciated.

Here’s the meat from Borowitz satirical news piece, which mocks Fox but also the Fox favorite fact-challenged wing-nut Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann:

Tracy Klugian, 37, a systems analyst from Lansing, Michigan, said that he was flipping the channels to find “anything but news” and found himself watching Fox for the first time.

“They had this guy on – something Beck I think his name was – and he was just going on and on, making stuff up,” he said. “I was like, this is the kind of mindless junk I need right now.”

Mr. Klugian… said that watching Fox had also introduced him to “my favorite new comedian – this hysterical woman named Michele Bachmann.”

“She was doing this bit about how the American Revolution started in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts, and then she started mixing up where Lexington and Concord were,” he said. “Okay, I know it sounds really stupid, but I almost peed myself.”

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The rough edited video of an apparently criminally floundering New Jersey Planned Parenthood staffer posted today on Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment right-wing politics blogsite. The video is the work of Live Action Films led by pro-life activist Lila Rose. The video closely follows the pattern set by Breitbart and James O’Keefe in their debunked and illegal ACORN-sting videos, where the heavily edited footage appears to show a prostitute and pimp receiving advice on how to run their business from the low-income housing and voter-registration group staffers.

The video:

Live Action reportedly sent activists posing as sex traffickers into 12 Planned Parenthood clinics in six states this month– Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. When the pretend sex-traffickers began arriving at the clinics this month, Planned Parenthood filed a report with Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI, which launched an investigation. The FBI found no multi-state child prostitution ring. In its own dogging around, Planned Parenthood likewise found no sex ring but only links to Rose and Live Action.

As in the ACORN case, the video caught by Live Action would appear to be fairly damning and has already provided pro-life groups with plenty of ammunition against Planned Parenthood. Yet the country has learned much in the years since Breitbart pushed the hoax ACORN video into the mainstream mediasphere to such great effect.

After lawmakers and members of the media tried and convicted ACORN of grave wrongdoing according to the lightning-fast cable news schedule, evidence related to the ACORN videos was presented to judges working according to schedules and rules of evidence established by the law. Judges presented with the unedited footage came to a conclusion opposite the one rushed into by politicians and cable commentators. ACORN did nothing illegal. The tapes backed by Breitbart and edited by disgraced activist James O’Keefe, they said, were videotape patchworks sewed together into lies. Indeed, judges on the east coast and the west coast suggested that, if there were any criminal wrongdoing captured in the tapes, it was on the part of O’Keefe, who had likely at least violated wiretapping laws.

O’Keefe was subsequently arrested for breaking into Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans, where he was again attempting to produce a hoax video. Breitbart was condemned for pushing the phony ACORN story and also for pushing an egregiously edited and defamatory video of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, a black woman who Breitbart made to seem an anti-white racist and who was fired as a result. Sherrod was no racist, a fact the full footage of the video Breitbart cut up and patched together to condemn her proved beyond a doubt.

In the Sherrod case, Breitbart was targeting the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, making the argument that the NAACP is racist.

This latest video targeting Planned Parenthood, underlines a pattern: Breitbart-promoted undercover video “exposés” target organizations established to provide service to minority groups and the poor.

Live Action and Lila Rose have tried repeatedly to discredit Planned Parenthood, its videos thus far lauded by pro-life activists and dismissed by the larger public and media.

Planned Parenthood spokespeople told the AP that its management is investigating whether the New Jersey clinic employee in the latest video may have violated Planned Parenthood policies. The group will certainly have to ask for the full unedited video footage to make that decision.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

People wait in line for early voting Saturday afternoon in West Palm Beach, Fla. (The Palm Beach Post/ZUMApress.com)

With midterm races in many states coming down to the wire, David Norcross will likely do what a growing cadre of lawyers plans to do on election day: monitor voting trends and results on the ground and help campaigns prepare for the increasingly likely possibility of swift legal challenges.

[Law1] “I’m probably going to Pennsylvania on election day and night,” said Norcross, a member of the Republican National Committee’s executive committee who also serves as chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), an independent body of Republican lawyers. “My guess is it isn’t going to be close, but I’ve been wrong before. If I go it will be for the Republican Senatorial Committee and I’ll be focused on the possibility of voter fraud.”

Feverish preparation for the possibility of legal challenges on election day isn’t a new phenomenon by any means. “Really, it’s a function of the 2000 presidential campaign,” said Caleb Burns, who practices election law at Wiley Rein, LLP in Washington, D.C. “Bush v. Gore was a real eye opener, and now both sides have put resources and personnel into election day and the days that follow in a much more formalized way.”

But if both parties plan to have a team of lawyers on call, the Republican National Lawyers Association — which describes itself as “dedicated to educating lawyers on protecting each registered voter’s right to cast a ballot unencumbered by harassment or other obstruction, and preventing the influencing of election outcomes through unlawful activities” — has been taking things to the next level.

The group, which has tended to keep a low profile by supporting itself primarily off member dues since its establishment in 1985, received gifts totaling $200,000 from two wealthy GOP donors over the summer. This election cycle, it’s embarked on what its president, Charles Bell, Jr., has termed an “unprecedented” election education effort, hosting workshops for Republican lawyers in multiple swing states including Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Florida. The goal, according to Bell, was to “aid the recruitment of volunteer lawyers to assist the more than twenty governorships, ten U.S. Senate seats and seventy U.S. House seats that are up for grabs in November.”

The RNLA now boasts that it has trained over 1,000 lawyers in election law practices this year, but it has also come under fire for focusing predominantly on the issue of voter fraud. In recent weeks, it’s zeroed in on alleged voting irregularities in a number of swing states, issuing a steady stream of “Vote Fraud Alerts” and publicizing allegations in a coordinated effort which some voting rights groups have argued is actually undermining the first part of the group’s stated mission of protecting registered voters’ right to vote. The RNLA argues, however, that it’s merely trying to maintain the integrity of election laws. In either case, its complaints could likely become the basis for legal challenges in the aftermath of today’s contest.

“We train lawyers, make the trainings available to lawyers in every state,” said Norcross about the RNLA’s efforts. “[We provide] training on ballot integrity, recounts, the sort of things that come up on election day and evening and the next day so they know what to do, what the paperwork looks like, what the process looks like.”

Voting rights groups, on the other hand, depict the group’s training sessions (which count in many states for Continuing Legal Education credits for lawyers) as simply an extension of a broad right-wing effort to stir up fears over the idea of voter fraud for partisan advantage. They argue such efforts are designed to discourage voting and set the table for legal challenges in heavily Democratic districts and cities in states with close contests.

“Some of the old ACORN groups are back at it again,” Norcross recently told Newsmax TV. “It’s an epidemic. It’s laughable that the left calls voter fraud nonexistent. It’s very much existent.”

It’s broad allegations of voter fraud like these that are “going to have an impact on voters’ experience at the polls,” said Tova Wang, elections reform expert and Senior Democracy Fellow at Demos, a liberal public policy research and advocacy organization. “We’ve already seen a lot of incidents where allegations are getting tossed about and voter fraud is called an epidemic. Responding to that are groups, not necessarily affiliated with the GOP, that are running right over the line into activities that are certainly not helpful and possibly illegal.”

Such activities include Tea Party-organized poll-watching efforts in minority-heavy polling districts that have sometimes served to intimidate voters, critics charge. Harris County, Texas, for instance, became ground zero for recriminations over voter fraud and vote suppression after a local Tea Party group accused a voter registration organization in Houston of engaging in widespread voter fraud in late August and vowed to send 1,000 people to monitor the polls. Since then, the county has received 55 voter complaints, many alleging intimidation. In Minnesota, conservative groups are running ads and offering a $500 reward for turning in someone who is successfully prosecuted for voter fraud.

The RNLA’s efforts to talk up and root out voter fraud are closely aligned with a number of tight Senate races and pinpointed to cities and counties where Democrats typically enjoy strong majorities.

In Nevada, where Democratic Sen. Harry Reid is locked in a tight battle with Republican Sharron Angle, the RNLA has had a team on the ground for several weeks. In Illinois, the GOP Chairman Pat Brady confirmed that the party is working with the RNLA to train election-day volunteers as part of a “voter integrity” initiative in Chicago that has drawn criticism for targeting African-American neighborhoods. And in Pennsylvania, the group has been busy training lawyers and publicizing electoral irregularities that could give Republican candidates standing to sue.

“In Illinois they just flubbed their military ballot deadline and then, as far as I know, the election boards have still only added one day to the time in which the military has to get their ballots in,” said Norcross. “If there are military ballots uncounted, we’re likely to support a challenge.”

“In Bucks County, Pa.,” he added, “there’s a report of several hundred fraudulent absentee ballots issued in the name of people who say they did not apply for them.”

“Cities are notorious for voter fraud,” Norcross concluded. “There’s a big turnover in population. You’re able to use old addresses and the names of people who are either deceased or have moved to get ballots and either go to the polls or vote with them absentee.”

Norcross and the RNLA’s efforts have also been picked up and magnified by the RNC and National Republican Senatorial Committee, both of which have used them in fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts.

“The fight could last beyond Nov. 2, and we have to be prepared,” the NRSC committee said in an appeal to supporters last week. “We saw it happen in 2008 in Minnesota, and we cannot let the Democrats try to steal any of these seats.”

The RNC, for its part, launched a new website called nomorefrankens.com, in which it alleged that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) only won his close 2008 election as a result of “additional ballots … which should have been disqualified as they appear to have been cast by convicted felons.” (Norcross has also attributed the GOP’s loss in that race to being “outmaneuvered” in the court battles and recounts that followed the election.)

RNC spokesman Doug Heye denied that the website implies the election was stolen. “There are a lot of people on both sides who would say that Franken won in the courthouse after the election and in the weeks and days after,” he said. “We want to have every resource on the ground so that we’ll be able to get people there quickly to ensure that we hit the ground running this time.”

But referencing foul play in the context of the Minnesota court case could be dangerous, said Wang. “Post-election litigation is not necessarily a bad thing,” she said. “There can be legitimate issues, but you don’t want people going into an election with the expectation that things are going to play out badly. You want people to know that the system works and it’s only the aberration where there’s some questions about the voting process.”

The RNLA’s insistence that voter fraud is widespread isn’t helping, said Wang. “They create an environment in which people don’t trust the system and we’re already in a time where there’s a real serious lack of trust in government and its institutions and this makes it a whole lot worse,” she added. “If people don’t have faith in the outcomes of elections, that’s really damaging.”

Norcross disagrees. “I think we can safely say that not every fraudulent registration gets voted, but I think the vast majority do,” he said. “It’s patently ridiculous not to have voter ID. I can’t check into a hotel without an ID. Why should I be able to vote without one?”