Image from www.stealbackyourvote.com

It’s become a familiar tradition for right wingers to claim that “illegal aliens are voting” committing “voter fraud” on whatever election cycle we happen to be in at the moment.  As any sane person knows, it is impossible for undocumented immigrants to vote because first they would have to register to do so, and an individual can only register to vote if the U.S. government validates to the local agency that processes a voter registration that that person is indeed a U.S. citizen.

Illustration from www.stealbackyourvote.com

Another deceiving tactic that right wingers use is to claim that Latino organizations register fraudulent voters, as was the case recently when the conservative propaganda cable channel Fox News used a false report to push another fake “voter fraud” story.  Via Media Matters:

One of Fox News’ purportedly objective news programs reported the false claim that Mi Familia Vota submitted 3,000 “shady” voter registrations at the “last minute” in Arizona to benefit the Democratic Party. The fake story originated from an Arizona blogger who has a history of making questionable statements, and was denounced as false by the Yuma County Recorder’s Office.

Keith Olbermann just did a segment on this very same topic:    

So don’t be fooled!  Making up stories about supposed “voter fraud” is a trick that right wingers have learnt to do quite well to draw attention away from actual election fraud tactics that their conservative allies are employing to suppress the vote of minorities, including Latinos. 

In fact, you have to look no further than at ex-President Clinton’s old stumping grounds in the district that includes the capital of Arkansas: Little Rock for evidence of election fraud tactics being used on this year’s midterm elections.  According to investigative reporter Greg Palast and voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “voter caging” (another election fraud tactic) scheme has been underway to benefit Republican candidate Tim Griffin in Congressional District 2 of Arkansas:

NBC TV airs vote “caging” exposè on Tim Griffin.

“What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail. ”

That’s hardly the kind of endorsement a candidate for Congress expects. But that is the conclusion of voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after digging into the evidence of Congressional candidate Tim Griffin’s role in directing the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) racially biased attack on voters known as “caging.”

A brutal mano-a-mano race in Arkansas’ Second District has become a showdown between Sarah Palin’s banner carrier Griffin (funded by SarahPAC) and Democrat Joyce Elliott, who has drawn homeboy Bill Clinton back to Little Rock.

This isn’t the first time the illegal tactic of “voter caging” has been used.  Greg Palast also reports:

In June 2007, our BBC “Newsnight” team disclosed that US federal prosecutor David Iglesias was fired because, he told us, the Griffin/Rove/Bush crew wanted him to arrest innocent people for voting fraud. He refused and he was fired. Seven other prosecutors, most of them Republicans, were also dismissed for failure to pursue a phony “voter fraud” investigations which would justify the RNC’s caging operation.

[…]

NBC duly broadcast Griffin’s claim that he didn’t even know what caging was. But here is a copy of the memo Griffin himself sent to the head of the Bush campaign in Florida to which he attached a file titled, “Caging.xls”

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get ahead of Dim Griffin.

The RNC’s caging lists targeted blacks, Hispanics, the poor of all shades and Florida’s Jewish voters (the Elderly of Zion!), not out of prejudice against this demographic’s skin color or religion, but a distaste for the color of their vote, Democratic blue.

Hispanics have been targeted in the past to suppress their votes through various means such as “voter caging” and investigations of fake “voter fraud.”  It would not be surprising if it turns out that on this election cycle, the same thing is happening again.

Update: Sheriff Arpaio to intimidate Latino voters with a “grassroots army!”  Sign the petition to Attorney General Holder to send election monitors to Arizona immediately.