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

Speaking at Legend’s Bar & Grill before a dozen students from Iowa State University, largely members of the College Republicans, told them he supported Democrat Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries. Karger said he would support a Democrat if they fell in line with his beliefs, and he supported Barack Obama when he became the eventual nominee. But he also said Obama has been a disappointment to him and the gay community, and that’s what pushed him into the race.

Karger has always been a Republican and worked on the campaigns of former presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Over the past 10 years, Karger — who is openly gay — spent most of his time as an activist for gay rights, especially fighting the Mormon church over Proposition 8.

He said part of the reason he’s running is to try to influence the debate among the Republican party, to get them away from an ideological divide over social issues and become a “big tent party” once again. That’s why he’s trying to visit with college students.

“Reince Priebus is making that a big part of his initiative is to bring in younger people into the Republican party,” Karger said of the new head of the Republican National Committee. “And I’ve heard him say that — and I’ve talked to him about that — and I’m clearly the only Republican running who is actively trying to bring new and younger members into the party.”

Karger won a straw poll at a college campus recently in New Hampshire, beating former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He attributed that to spending a week at a time in the Granite State repeatedly, meeting with voters. He said college students are typically more accepting of his sexuality and are able to get around it to talk about policy and other larger concerns.

Karger admits he’s taking a page out of Obama’s playbook by targeting youth voters, but believes Obama is “vulnerable” in 2012 despite a “bleak field” of GOP candidates emerging.

When students asked him about the size of government, Karger said some social programs will have to stay because some people just can’t take care of themselves. But he said the size of entitlements needs to be on the table.

Photo by Tyler Kingkade/The Iowa Independent

“I’m not making any finite recommendations but … I’m not running from it,” Karger later told The Iowa Independent. “Because of health care [improvements], people are living far longer than they were when Medicare was passed, when Social Security was passed.”

Along with him, Karger brought frisbees that read “Fred Who?” to pass out. He said the frisbees are intentional because it’s part of his initiative to get people healthy. “It may not be throwing frisbess,” he admitted, but he wants to encourage people to take small steps like walking up stairs, going for short runs and making an effort to live healthy. That’s part of why health care costs are so high, he claimed.

Karger said part of his campaign will be focused on listening to ideas from potential voters rather than simply throwing out his policy ideas right away. But he will focus on fiscal issues over social issues, such as gay rights or a woman’s right to choose.

“I want to bring back that entrepreneurial spirit and get people to stop relying on government,” Karger said.

He also declared he would not accept any matching dollars from the federal government for his campaign. He said there has been too much money being raised.

Raising nearly hundreds of millions of dollars just before entering the White House, as Obama did, makes health care reform packages and stimulus programs with price tags near $1 billion seem like no big deal, Karger asserted.

Despite the fact Harvey avoided a judgment by paying off the note in 2009, the documents are being dished to Denver media outlets in an attempt to hammer another nail in the Highlands Ranch mortgage broker’s reputation that might be marred by a $19,000 unpaid debt from his failed 6th Congressional District bid in 2008

“I have no judgments against me and I have a perfect credit score,” declared Harvey. “Make sure you print that or I’ll sue you.”

He said it’s incredible that anyone would bother to uncover and circulate the court documents because he’d paid the note and avoided the judgment.

According to the document shopper, who claimed to have investigated Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes last year for the RNC, the party bosses are concerned not only about the financial viability of the state GOP, but also the tone of the next party chairman – particularly as the 2012 presidential election looms.

The choice could unite or rip the party apart – creating divisions that could take years to heal.

“I am excited about uniting our party and I’m focused on beating the Democrats in 2012,” said Harvey of his campaign for state GOP chair.

Harvey admitted financial struggles in a tough climate for real estate agents, mortgage brokers and construction industry members since the financial meltdown in October 2008. He felt the chill winds blowing in 2005.

According to Douglas County District Court records, J. P. Morgan Chase Bank sought a judgment against the mortgage broker and his company, Metro Funding Corp. (also known as Metro Fund, LLC) for failing to pay a $50,000 Promissory Note dated Nov. 7, 2005, of which $49,000 was renewed on May 24, 2006. Chase filed legal action in March 2009, and it was satisfied within eight months.

“I personally paid it,” said Harvey, who was president of Metro Funding Corp., which went under in the economic downturn.

Harvey’s mortgage broker license expired in December – but the senator said that he doesn’t work during the legislative session because there is limited time to devote to clients. He’s also switching careers.

“I will no longer be a mortgage broker. I plan to work for a mortgage bank. Because of all the changes in regulations, it’s very hard to be a mortgage broker,” said Harvey, a broker for American Home Funding that is in the process of becoming a lender.

Mortgage brokers work with various lenders to arrange mortgage financing for clients. Lenders fund mortgages directly.

Harvey said there are too many regulations on the mortgage broker industry – and he personally does not want to pay for federal and state requirements of licensing, testing and taking courses each year.

Wadhams, among others, have questioned Harvey’s ability to raise money for the state GOP and mused that the state senator is motivated by the party chairman’s nearly $150,000 annual salary.

“I don’t think Ted Harvey has the foggiest idea of how to raise money,” said Wadhams, who vowed to expose “the little creep.”

Harvey laughed. He is not only undaunted by those slash-and-burn comments, the senator says he welcomes the fiery exchanges because he is running against the legacy of Wadhams, who declined to seek a third two-year term.

“I’ve picked up more supporters because of Dick’s tirade,” chuckled Harvey, who had dropped by the redistricting public meeting before appearing at a state party chair candidates’ forum in Pueblo last weekend.

“My goal is to raise money big time,” declared Harvey, echoing stump speeches that liberally criticize Wadhams for mishandling party finances and dribbling $500 or less to individual Republican candidates last year.

“We need a proven conservative to reach out to energized, passionate Tea Party folks,” said Harvey, who described himself as establishment and anti-establishment. “We need a targeted message – a passionate, conservative message – to raise money.”

“If Ted Harvey is an effective fund raiser, why doesn’t he pay off his $19,000 campaign debt from 2008?” sniped Wadhams. “He needs to sober up and realize the facts.”

Wadhams facts include correcting Harvey’s contention that the Republican National Committee bailed the state party out of a $600,000 debt. After winning the state GOP chair in 2007, Wadhams said he had the party books audited, discovered the awesome red ink and turned it black through his own fundraising efforts. The RNC money went strictly to the Victory (get out the vote) efforts in 2008 and 2010 that benefited all Republican candidates in the general elections.

Harvey raised $202,051 in his race for the 6th Congressional District seat and came in third behind Representative Mike Coffman and candidate Wil Armstrong, son of former Republican Senator Bill Armstrong.

According to Federal Election Commission reports, Harvey loaned his campaign $12,000, but left a $19,000 debt unpaid to his campaign manager Jon Hotaling, whose take-no-prisoners style had delivered Representative Doug Lamborn in the contentious 5th District primary in 2006. Lamborn, who was hobnobbing with Hotaling at the El Paso County GOP Central Committee meeting on Feb. 12, has endorsed Harvey for state party chair.

Harvey, who served three two-year terms in the State House, won election to the State Senate in 2006. In the first leg of his four-year term, Harvey initiated his bid for the 6th Congressional seat retired by Representative Tom Tancredo.

Harvey filed a statement of organization with the FEC on Nov. 30, 2007. Yet, questions also surfaced recently about why the candidate also registered a nonprofit corporation – “Ted Harvey for Congress” – with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office in February 2008.

The Ted Harvey for Congress nonprofit corporation didn’t declare its purpose and financial records are not required by Colorado.

Attached to the corporation filing was a dissolution decree that simply stated, “Upon dissolution all assets will go to W. Ted Harvey.”

Attorney Glenn Hagen, who was Harvey’s congressional campaign treasurer, said, “I have no idea why that account was opened … I have to say ‘no comment’ to all of your questions.”

“It was set up to process payroll taxes,” said Hotaling. The funds, he said, were reported on Harvey’s FEC reports as expenditures paid to CFO Today, an accounting firm in Highlands Ranch.

Hotaling said that CFO Today would not comment or verify how the funds were transferred through the Harvey for Congress nonprofit corporation to the accounting firm because that information is confidential. He also did not know if any money was still in the account when it was dissolved.

Colorado Springs accountant Eileen Warnock, treasurer for former 5th District Congressman Joel Hefley’s campaigns, said it was unnecessary to create a state-based nonprofit corporation for payroll taxes.

“We paid all payroll taxes – federal and state – through the account registered with the FEC,” said Warnock. “I can’t think of any reason for establishing a nonprofit organization at the state level for a federal campaign.”

Here is a letter Harvery wrote the FEC related to what he says are errors in FEC reports.

In the field of party chair contenders, Wadhams said he prefers state GOP Vice Chairman Leondray Gholston or state party legal counsel Ryan Call over Harvey, newcomer Bart Baron and Matt Arnold, director of the failed Clear the Bench campaign to purge liberal judges.

The winner of the March 26 race must receive 50 percent plus one of the votes cast by the state GOP Central Committee. Several Republican members have predicted that the runoff will pit Harvey against Call.

The site has no author, and it isn’t immediately clear who created it; however, a domain name lookup shows that the domain was registered Friday. The opposition research site — run-of-the-mill for general elections but somewhat odd for a closed election for party chairman — claims that Anuzis managed the ’06 and ’08 elections badly, is liberal on social issues and immigration, among other attacks.

Anuzis won the endorsement of Redstate blogger Erick Erickson, who — contrary to the claims of the site — praised his work “when the odds were against him” in Michigan. Yet Anuzis has his critics: Ben Smith of Politico reported on a letter that Debbie Joslin, an RNC member from Alaska, sent out to the other RNC members over Anuzis’ alleged support of a “National Popular Vote” system.

Though Wisconsin GOP Chairman Reince Priebus is considered the frontrunner, the opacity of the race and multiple rounds of voting make it effectively wide open. The 168 members of the RNC will vote Friday.

Instead, the debate hosted by Tucker Carlson and Grover Norquist at the National Press Club in Washington resembled a job interview. Candidates listed what “skills” they have for the position, how their past experiences would help them lead the RNC and how they would do the job (all interspersed with the occasional awkward joke). Their interlocutors repeatedly asked them to answer questions “specifically,” which they generally did not.

Though Norquist reminded the audience that there was “no job description,” being a party chair is really about one thing — raising money. The candidates all said how they could raise money to defeat President Obama in 2012. Priebus said he would spend “five or six” hours on the phone everyday with major donors, saying that the RNC needed to raise $400 million to defeat the president. “It’s all about fundraising,” said Anuzis in his opening.

“We don’t do policy, we do politics,” said Chairman Steele. “You don’t get to dictate the terms of policy to the (House) speaker, or the minority leader. If you get it wrong, You’ll be reminded, ‘you don’t do policy,’” he ended, drawing the loudest applause from the crowd for the chairman,

Steele, the center of debate, knows whereof he speaks. Soon after he was elected as RNC chairman, he said — in comments that were anathema to most Republicans — that abortion was an “individual choice” to be decided by the states in a May 2009 interview with GQ. In the debate, Steele — who is often animated on cable news shows — appeared subdued. According to a Politico report this morning, Steele does not have the votes from the 168-member RNC to stay on for a second term.

In the one exception to the lack of debate in the debate, Steele defended his record as RNC chairman when Wagner attacked his lack of funding for GOTV operations along the lines of a memo by former Steele aide — and former RNC candidate himself before dropping out — Gentry Collins. “We didn’t have 72-hour program — we had a 12-month program. We won 64 house seats, 21 state legislatures flipped.” He maintained that the program was done differently. “We won in all fifty states this year. And that’s the goal, winning. Find me a state that didn’t have a winning election.”

Despite the Republicans’ success in the midterm elections, the RNC is $15 million in debt; reports indicate that it has already spent lavishly for its 2012 convention in Tampa; and it has had to delay payment to convention vendors. Steele meekly suggested at the outset that the debt might be “refinanced” and the party would have to “hunker down, get the money right, get the dollars right.”

The race for RNC chair is of course, not an open election — 168 members choose the chairman in a race that often has multiple ballots — but Priebus appears to be the front-runner, according to vote counts. He also acted like it. He repeatedly spoke of the need to work with the conservative movement and the tea party. He also talked like a tea partier, sounding the alarm of American decline. “We are about to fall off a fiscal cliff,” he said in his opening. “We need to save our country, and in turn to save our party, and take back the White House,” he said, often repeating the need to “save our country” more than any other candidate.

Priebus also had huge success in normally-blue Wisconsin in 2010. Plastics magnate Ron Johnson won his first election, defeating Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold by painting him as a Washington insider. Longtime House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-Wisc.) retired and his seat was taken by Republican Sean Duffy, who was previously a cast member on MTV’s “The Real World.” Wisconsin’s Republicans took over the governorship, both legislatures and picked up an additional U.S. House seat.

Ultimately, the RNC chairmanship race is shaping up a lot like the Republican narrative of the 2010 elections — Priebus, talking the language of the tea party, looks poised to defeat the fiscally-irresponsible incumbent Michael Steele on January 14.

But before Anuzis is anointed as the tea party candidate of choice — Phillips has minimal influence in tea party circles. A Washington Post survey of 647 tea party groups showed only nine with connections to his organization. By contrast, 208 groups said they worked mainly with the Tea Party Patriots. The for-profit Tea Party Nation did hold a January 2010 convention — the first of its kind — in Nashville featuring Sarah Palin, but her $100,000 speaking fee and the ticket price of $550 were criticized by other tea party groups. An August convention in Las Vegas was called off. David Weigel called up several tea party leaders yesterday and they agreed that Phillips wasn’t a big player anymore in the movement.

Another reason to discount this endorsement as influential: Look at who hosted last week’s RNC debate — it was not Tea Party Nation but FreedomWorks. Though all of the RNC candidates at the debate were varyingly deferential to the tea party, and tea party questioners want ownership of the RNC, there just isn’t a candidate that the tea party has coalesced around. But that’s almost beside the point, as 168 members of the RNC decide the chairman, not activists in primaries.

Anuzis told The New York Times last week he was considering a challenge. Now, on his blog “That’s Saul Folks,” Anuzis lays out his reasoning for seeking to unseat one-term Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

[T]o be a force, the RNC must change and that requires new leadership at the top. I am offering you an alternative, a choice, a different approach to the leadership and stewardship of our party.

Chairman Steele’s record speaks for itself. He has his way of doing things. I have mine.

We will not win in 2012 if the RNC is not able to provide the financial resources we need to support the organizational efforts and ground games of our state parties. Without a fully funded Victory program we will be overwhelmed by the efforts of the unions, the Obama campaign and all their allies.

Even though we won an overall victory in 2010 we lost some heartbreaking statewide races in places like Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia, Washington and Nevada, and countless congressional and legislative districts because the other side had a better turnout effort.

Think about your own state. Did some terrific Republican candidate work their hearts out, yet fall short by a handful of votes on Election Day? Now ask yourself: if the RNC had properly funded the Victory program in your state, would that candidate have been a winner? Would that candidate have benefited from a robust 72-hour program with ground troops sweeping in for the final weekend?

Todd Heywood writes for The Michigan Messenger.

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?”

“I don’t think it says that,” he told me when reached for comment. “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. 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.”

The appeal on the website indicates that the funds will go to the RNC’s Get Out the Vote program, but this doesn’t appear entirely accurate either, according to Heye. “This is for preparing for potential recounts that might occur, and those are costly. You have to assemble a bunch of lawyers, get them on a plane at a moment’s notice to go to that particular district or state and before the board of elections.”

And is it in any way attached to efforts to drum up fears about or encourage the rooting out of potential voter fraud? “Absolutely not,” says Heye. “We’re obviously not involved in any anti-voter fraud efforts of any kind.”

The only way to prevent more Al Frankens is to win and win big. Your contribution will go toward the RNC’s proven 72-hour Get Out the Vote program and help us get the margins of victory we need to make sure the real winners are recognized on November 3rd. There is no margin for error. Will you help us?

Preventing “more Al Frankens” is not-so-subtle code language for the widely held belief on the right that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) stole the 2008 election from Republican Norm Coleman. Here are the RNC’s data points:

• In 2008, Norm Coleman was ahead on Election Night by over 700 votes.
• Soon, additional ballots were discovered, over 300 of which should have been disqualified as they appear to be have been cast by convicted felons.
• Yet, Franken was declared the winner by 225 votes out of nearly 2.5 million cast.
• Now…Reports are emerging in Las Vegas that Republican voters are finding electronic ballots defaulting to Harry Reid.
• And…Governments in New York and Illinois failed to mail absentee ballots to U.S. service members on time, potentially disenfranchising those who wear the uniform.

The RNC is realizing, correctly, that voter fraud fears are animating a sizable element of the Republican base like nothing else — and they’re trying to leverage that energy into fundraising for its underfunded GOTV program.