The Fraud Factor

....is one thing to keep very much in mind should the new conventional wisdom of another photo-finish election pan out. For as the old saying goes, from a tiny ACORN can grow a mighy oak that can steal entire elections:

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”

In other breaking news, the sun came up this morning, big wet sloppy kisses are still highly diverting, and I still detest brussel sprouts.

Michigan just happens to be one of those celebrated, perennial "battleground" states, one in which Barack Obama is nursing a two-point lead in my polling composite (to be uploaded to my sidebar forthwith). It joins Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania as "tossup" states in which the current average margin is two points or less. An echo of the composite popular vote margin, which as of today John McCain leads by 1.4%.

Two points was the fraud threshold I used in handicapping the 2004 Bush-Kerry race. As that aforementioned composite also shows McCain ahead in the Electoral College by all of two, count 'em, two Electoral Votes, it suffices to say that the Dark Lord of the Sith has absolutely no margin for error, and no buffer against getting robbed. Particularly given The Chosen One's past "community organizing" with ACORN and his employing of them as "vote-getter-outters" in the present.

The Boston Balker related to such creatures as he would the people who cleaned his pools and mowed his lawns. Barry has BEEN one of them, and at heart still is. 'Tis a useful reminder, though. ACORN has been pulling this bleep for years, and law enforcement never seems to do anything about it. I heartily endorse Ensign Ed's call for ACORN to be RICO-ized, but if it hasn't happened over the past eight years, you can bet it never will under an Obama administration. And certainly not before the first Tuesday in November.

With the fraud adjustment figured in, McCain trails by half a point in the popular vote and 284-254 in the E.C. Which underscores the handicap he and Barracuda are working under, how much additional work they still have to do, and the small miracle that the GOP has won any elections at all over the past two decades.

The big miracle will be if the deck isn't stacked so thorougly by the Dems going forward that the GOP can never win again.