Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

By Michael McDunnah

The McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) spent the better part of the fall screaming about alleged "voter registration fraud," and to this day the GOP and the right-wing media machine continue to raise the specter of voter registration shenanigans that are somehow undermining the integrity of American  elections. Now, after months of reckless invective and fruitless investigations, incontrovertible facts have been admitted in court, and someone has finally been convicted of voter registration fraud.

Fraud did take place in the 2008 election--conducted for, and paid for by, the Republican Party.

There's more...

What do you do when voters are trending towards your opposition and you're even losing the registration race? If you're California's Republican Party you cheat, apparently. Ashley Powers and Susannah Rosenblatt have the story in today's Los Angeles Times.

Investigators for California's attorney general and secretary of state have launched an inquiry into allegations of voter registration fraud in Orange and Riverside counties, state officials said Friday.

The investigation comes a month after the California Republican Party suspended its paid voter registration program, following the discovery by elections officials in Orange and San Bernardino counties of thousands of flawed registration forms submitted by private firms the county parties had hired.

[...]

The state GOP voter registration program paid private contractors $3 for each new registration submitted. It was credited with adding 750,000 Republican registrations to state voter rolls in the last three years.

[...]

Election officials said [one GOP contractor] had turned in thousands of flawed voter registration forms to the San Bernardino County registrar's office, including 1,800 that lacked driver's license numbers or other forms of required identification. [emphasis added]

This seems just about par for the course for the Republican Party today. If they're too weak to win playing by the rules, they just cheat.

In this instance, Republicans see a Democratic Party that has solid control of the legislature and most statewide elective offices, and no Republican outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger has been able to connect with the voters in years. So what do they resort to? Funny voter registration activities that leave a bad taste in the mouths of most Californians.

What makes this case even more disturbing is the fact that a significant number of these allegedly fraudulent voter registration forms "lacked driver's license numbers or other forms of required identification." In light of the fact that the Republican Party has devoted significant time and resources across the country to disenfranchising voters through identification requirements for voting, these alleged actions out of California are simply unconscionable. Only the worst kind of cynic would push such laws and then so flagrantly break them.

There's more...