As politicians exploit the Newtown tragedy to promote new laws to restrict firearms and implement universal background checks that could lead to gun registration and confiscation, another parallel trend– namely, the increasing militarization of law enforcement, most visibly demonstrated by the growing use of massive, SWAT-type raids on businesses and individuals, sometimes with federal involvement or authorization – is heightening concerns that America is moving toward a police state.

Mountain Pure SWAT raid: The Movie

Mountain Pure Water, LLC is headquartered on Interstate 30 just outside the town of Little Rock, Arkansas. The company manufactures and distributes beverage containers, spring water, fruit drinks, and teas. In January 2012, about 50 federal agents, led by Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General Special Agent Cynthia Roberts and IRS Special Agent Bobbi Spradlin, swooped in, guns drawn. Without explanation they shut down plant operations, herded employees into the cafeteria, and confined them to the room for hours. They could not so much as use the bathroom without police escort. Cell phones were confiscated and all Internet and company phones were disabled.

Plant Manager Court Stacks was at his desk when police burst through his office door, guns drawn and pointed at him—a thoroughly unprofessional violation of basic firearms discipline in this circumstance, and the cause of numerous accidental SWAT killings.

According to Mountain Pure CEO John Stacks, the search warrant was related to questions about an SBA loan he secured through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to recover tornado losses to his home, warehouse and associated equipment. Stacks says the SBA apparently doesn’t believe that assets listed as damaged in the storm were actually damaged.

The search warrant was extremely vague and some agents’ actions may have been illegal, according to company attorney, Timothy Dudley. Comptroller Jerry Miller was taken to a private room and interrogated for over three hours by SBA Special Agent Cynthia Roberts, the raid leader. He requested an attorney and was told, “That ain’t gonna happen.” According to Miller, the SBA unilaterally changed the terms of Stacks’ loan. He says he asked Roberts what gave the SBA authority to do that, and that she responded, “We’re the federal government, we can do what we want, when we want, and there is nothing you can do about it.” Miller said during the raid Roberts “strutted around the place like she was Napoleon.”

Stacks said the company has had three IRS audits in the past three years, including one following the raid, with no problems. The SBA has still not filed any charges, continues to stonewall about the raid’s purpose, and refuses to release most of the property seized during the raid.

Quality Assurance Director Katy Depriest, who doubles as the company crisis manager, described agents’ “Gestapo tactics.” She added that they confiscated CDs of college course work and educational materials for a class she had been taking that resulted in her flunking the course. Those materials have not yet been returned.

Attempts were made to contact Roberts for this article, but she is no longer employed by the SBA. Questions were directed to the Little Rock, Arkansas U.S. Attorney’s office. The USA’s public affairs officer had no comment; however they have convened a grand jury to evaluate the case.

Because law enforcement refused repeated requests to respond for this article, only Mountain Pure’s side of the story is known, but its representatives make a compelling case:

• Many company employees were willing to discuss this raid on the record.
• Mountain Pure and several employees have sued special agents Roberts and Spradlin.
• Stacks commissioned a video about the raid, reproduced here.

The video includes testimony from Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of famed Gibson Guitar Corp., which suffered two such raids, and another raid target, Duncan Outdoors Inc. The video does not attempt to establish anyone’s guilt or innocence, but rather highlights law enforcement’s heavy-handed tactics in executing SWAT-style search warrants against legitimate businesses. Gibson has settled with the Justice Department in a case fraught with legal ambiguities, while Duncan has been indicted for violations of currency transaction reporting requirements.

Stacks claims he has gotten calls from many companies that have suffered similar raids, but they are afraid to speak out. Here are a few examples that have made national news:

• FDA officials, U.S. Marshals, and the Pennsylvania State Police raided an Amish farm in 2011 for selling raw milk.
• A Department of Education SWAT team raided a man’s home, “dragged him out in his boxer shorts, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him” in front of his three young children. They were looking for evidence of his estranged wife’s financial aid fraud.
• Sixty-six-year-old George Norris spent two years in jail following a USFWS raid that nailed him for filing incorrect forms on imported orchids.
• A Fairfax, Virginia optometrist being served a warrant for illegal gambling was killed by a SWAT team member whose firearm accidentally discharged. He answered the door in his bathrobe, unarmed and unaware that he was even under investigation.

War on small business?

In 2006, the IRS announced it would shift its focus to audit more small businesses. IRS data on tax audits seems to bear this out. Between the first and second half of the last decade, the audit coverage rate on businesses with assets between $10 and $50 million increased by 42 percent. Between 2001 and 2005, an annual average of 13,549 returns were audited for businesses with assets of less than $10 million. Between 2006 and 2011, the average was 19,289, an increase of over 42 percent.

The Sharpsburg Raid

This has paid off in increased enforcement revenues, but are massive SWAT raids an essential part of this new strategy? In addition to the potential dangers and the outrage of having company employees treated like drug dealers or terrorists, the cost of these raids is staggering. Agents told Mountain Pure employees they had flown in from all over the country.

Sharpsburg, Md., population 706, is a quiet little town bordering the Antietam National Battlefield in rural Washington County. On Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, at about 12:30 p.m., the quiet was shattered by an invasion of over 150 Maryland State Police (MSP), FBI, State Fire Marshal’s bomb squad and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat “special response” vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.

A heavily armed MSP Special Tactical Assault Team Element (STATE) executed a no-knock search warrant, smashing through the reportedly unlocked door with a battering ram. They worked until after 7:30 p.m., ransacking a modest, 20 ft. by 60 ft. single-family home for weapons, and searching for its owner, one Terry Porter. For hours, neighbors were left worrying and wondering, while countless police blanketed the area.

Local resident Tim Franquist described the scene:

“The event, or siege as we are calling it, involved convoys of police speeding to the area, two helicopters, armored vehicles, command centers, countless police cruisers and officers. They blocked off the roads and commandeered a campground as their staging area.”

Terry Porter is married with three children, has lived in the town all of his life, and owns a modest welding business. He is also a prepper. His preparations include an underground bunker, buried food supplies and surveillance cameras. Porter really doesn’t like Obama and tells anyone who will listen.

Unfortunately, one listener was an undercover officer for the Maryland State Police. The police had become interested in Porter through an anonymous caller who claimed that Porter “had been getting crazier and crazier …” and that he had “10 to 15 machine gun-style weapons, six handguns and up to 10,000 rounds of ammunition …” The MSP performed a background check and discovered Porter had a 20-year-old charge for aiding marijuana distribution, a disqualification for firearms ownership.

MSP detailed an officer to visit Porter’s shop on Nov. 16posing as a customer. The officer said Porter “openly admitted to being a prepper.” Not a crime. Porter also allegedly claimed to have a Saiga shotgun, and was willing to use it “when people show up unannounced.” Based on the Russian AK-47 design, some Saiga variants are fully automatic. On Nov. 27 MSP obtained a search warrant.

Two days later the Maryland State Police appeared at Porter’s door but could not find him. Porter later disclosed he “left out the back door.” Where he went has not been disclosed. However, blogger Ann Corcoran, who lives nearby and followed the issue closely, claims he hid out in fear for his life. Given highly publicized, accidental shootings involving SWAT teams and the overwhelming force present, that’s a reasonable assumption.

The following day Porter turned himself in and took the police through his property. The raid produced a total of four shotguns, a 30-30-caliber hunting rifle and two .22-caliber rifles. He was charged with firearms possession violations and released on a $75,000 bond.

The raid was one of the largest in recent U.S. history, twice the size of the 1993 Branch Davidian raid in Waco, Texas, which initially involved 76 ATF agents. It almost rivaled the recent 200-strong statewide manhunt for California cop-killing cop, Christopher Dorner. Yet only a few local stories emerged and those presented a hysterical portrait of Porter while largely under-reporting the police presence.

Why the raid?

The Maryland State Police did not notify town officials or Washington County Sheriff Douglas Mullendore, who learned of the raid after it began, when it requested the use of his SWAT Team and Bearcat. The MSP also set up a command center at a campground within the national park without notifying the Park Police. Bills have since been introduced in the Maryland legislature by Washington County Delegate Neil Parrott (HB 0219) and State Senator Chris Shank (SB 0259) to require notification of local law enforcement before any outside agency serves a warrant.

A meeting following the raid attracted 60 concerned Sharpsburg citizens and leaders. Sharpsburg Vice Mayor Bryan Gabriel characterized the raid as “overwhelming” and said it “could have put a lot of people at risk.” Erin Moshier, a citizen who attended the meeting, added, “We all felt there was excessive force involved, and we felt that a member of our community was victimized and we wanted to get to the bottom of it and get some answers.” Both Gabriel and Sheriff Mullendore have issued statements of support for Porter, who they know personally. Citizens created a “Friends for Terry” website to help with his legal costs.

When asked why the police did not simply detain Porter in town or at a traffic stop, MSP Hagerstown Barracks Commander, Lt. Thomas Woodward, said the police only had a property search warrant and had no authority to arrest Porter. However, police do have authority to “detain the property owner for 24 hours” when executing a search warrant, so Porter could have been intercepted elsewhere, but police chose to execute that authority as part of the raid.

Lt. Woodward said the state police have a good working relationship with Sheriff Mullendore. If that is the case, why didn’t they consult the sheriff first? If Porter were really that dangerous, wouldn’t it be helpful to get more information from a trusted source better acquainted with him? Mullendore said they usually do give notice. Reportedly several state police who personally know Porter reside in Sharpsburg. Why were they not consulted?

Does the Maryland State Police detail SWAT automatically for gun search warrants? Some other police forces do. For example, in one fatal Florida SWAT shooting, a 21-man SWAT team was called in merely because the target had a concealed-carry permit. Are SWAT raids to become the order of the day for gun owners?

If Porter is indeed adjudicated a felon in possession of firearms, then he was in violation of the law. He didn’t help his case by bragging to the undercover officer about his doomsday preparations, especially the Saiga—which turned out to be nonexistent.

There is nothing wrong with being prepared, or even describing the actions you might take in a hypothetical “doomsday” situation, but in fairness to police, with all the lunatics coming out of the woodwork these days and the heightened atmosphere of mutual distrust between law enforcement and citizens, the MSP might be excused for presuming the worst. But 150 police?

Recent events such as the kidnapping/bunker standoff in Alabama, and cop-killer Dorner, provide apt examples. Police never know what to expect. Still, in this case at least, it seems a little more investigation and consultation with local authorities could have resolved this issue quietly and with much less risk and cost.

Cost of the operation

Neither the FBI nor the MSP have publicly disclosed how many of their officers were involved in the raid. However, Senator Shank and Delegate Parrott were told in a meeting with top MSP officials that the total, including federal, state, and local police, exceeded 150. From public information requests it is known that the Washington County Special Response Team (SRT) sent 17, including four snipers, two medics and their Bearcat driver. Only two of these actually participated, the driver and a sniper who accompanied him.

The FBI personnel were training nearby and when their assistance was requested, many, if not all, chose to participate. A witness on the scene guessed there were approximately 40 officers at the campground where the FBI staged. Assuming a total of 150, that would leave 93 MSP. The following table, based on police salaries gleaned from public sources, provides a rough estimate of the personnel cost for this operation.

The MSP argued that only variable costs—those directly related to the operation—are relevant. By this logic, the operation cost very little, as salaries and other fixed costs are incurred anyway. But the personnel and resources involved would otherwise have been engaged elsewhere: tracking down criminals, enforcing other laws, and assisting in emergencies. There are clearly other, potentially more beneficial activities they could not simultaneously perform. This is called opportunity cost and must be considered.

This raid cost approximately $11,000 per hour, which dramatically illustrates one reason government spending is so wildly out of control. If agency managers considered the true cost of their decisions, they might work harder to prioritize their activities and not waste valuable resources on errands of questionable value.

High visibility events like the Sharpsburg raid present a one-sided picture of police as out-of-control, wasting time on seeming trifles. But their daily efforts, which go largely unreported, paint a much more balanced picture. For example, the MSP Gang Enforcement Unit has aggressively investigated violent street gangs, one of the largest sources of gun violence.

Between 2010 and 2012 alone, the Gang Unit made 621 gang arrests and seized 94 firearms. This does not include their extensive work with multi-agency task forces. Here, they have participated in successful operations against such violent gangs as the Crips and Bloods, Wise Guyz, B-6, the Black Guerrilla Family, Juggalos, the Dead Man Incorporated crime syndicate and others, and have brought many of these offenders to justice.

Militarization of police

The SWAT concept was popularized by Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates in the late 1960s in response to large-scale incidents for which the police were ill-prepared. But the use of SWAT teams has since exploded. Massive SWAT raids using military-style equipment are becoming routine methods for executing search warrants. One study estimates 40,000 such raids per year nationwide:

“These increasingly frequent raids… are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.”

John W. Whitehead writes in the Huffington Post that “it appears to have less to do with increases in violent crime and more to do with law enforcement bureaucracy and a police state mentality.”

The ACLU recently announced its intention to investigate the militarization of law enforcement. Ironically, despite the perception of heightened gun violence due to incidents like Newtown, ACLU points out that both crime rates and law enforcement gun deaths have been declining for decades (see chart).

Yet police forces are becoming increasingly militarized due to huge subsidies provided by the federal government:

“Through its little-known “1033 program,” the Department of Defense gave away nearly $500 million worth of leftover military gear to law enforcement in fiscal year 2011 … The surplus equipment includes grenade launchers, helicopters, military robots, M-16 assault rifles and armored vehicles … Orders in fiscal year 2012 are up 400 percent over the same period in 2011 … .”

Congress created this provision in 1997 for drug and anti-terrorism efforts. It has since provided over 17,000 agencies $2.6 billion worth of equipment at no charge. One local agency now owns an amphibious tank, while another obtained a machine-gun-equipped APC.

Additionally, Department of Homeland Security grants have allowed state and local agencies nationwide to purchase Bearcats. These 16,000-pound vehicles are bulletproof and can be equipped with all kinds of extra features.

Ironically, while SWAT teams probably got their biggest boost initially from conservatives, many fear law enforcement is becoming a tool to enforce leftist ideology. University criminal justice programs turn out graduates indoctrinated in liberal ideology which carries into modern law enforcement bureaucratic culture.

Today this trend is reflected in reports coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, the military and various law enforcement “fusion” centers that identify gun-owners, patriots, ex-military, Christians, pro-life activists and tea party members as “potential domestic terrorists.”

The perpetrator of last summer’s attempted mass shooting at the Family Research Council headquarters now admits he was prompted by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Watch” list. The radical leftist SPLC is now “consulting” with the FBI and DHS regarding “rightwing hate groups.” The group labeled AIM’s Cliff Kincaid a member of a sinister group of “Patriots” for writing critically of the United Nations, President Obama and the homosexual activist lobby, among other things. Ironically, the SPLC “Teaching Tolerance” project ran an article praising unrepentant communist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers as a “civil rights organizer, radical anti-Vietnam War activist, teacher and author,” with an “editor’s note” going so far as to say that Ayers “has become a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.”

Ammo, military equipment and domestic drone use

The Internet is abuzz with news that the Department of Homeland Security is purchasing over 1.6 billion rounds of pistol and rifle ammunition, 2,700 Mine Resistant Armored Vehicles (MRAP), and 7,000 fully-automatic “personal defense weapons.” Some of this is worthy of concern, some maybe not so much. Meanwhile, the expanded use of aerial drones within the continental U.S. has created anxiety among the public and political leaders alike.

Ammo

Reportedly, the order for 1.6 billion rounds of pistol and rifle ammunition would fulfill DHS requirements for the next five years, or 320 million rounds per year. DHS has 55,471 employees authorized to carry firearms, which comes to about 5,800 rounds per year per employee. For perspective, during the first year of the war on terror, approximately 72 million rounds were expended in Iraq and another 21 million in Afghanistan by an estimated 45,000 combat troops. This amounts to about 2,000 rounds per war fighter.

Yet the requisition may not be unreasonable. The largest order, 750 million rounds, came from DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) for training. FLETC Public Affairs Director Peggy Dixon said that the purchase request was “a ceiling. It does not mean that we will buy, or require, the full amounts of either contract.” Another 650 million rounds are being purchased by Inspections and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to cover the next five years.

Since these are maximum figures, it is difficult to conclusively evaluate the purchase. Some have asserted that the practical effect—if not the deliberate intent—is to dry up the private market for ammunition. Congressmen are now demanding answers from DHS regarding these purchases. But most ammunition shortages are likely due to civilian demands. Obama and the Democrats’ palpable hostility to gun owners has caused ammunition and firearms purchases to skyrocket.

There are 80 million gun owners in the U.S. If each just purchased 100 rounds of ammo—enough for one afternoon at the range—that would equal 8-billion rounds. Many are purchasing significantly more.

Instead of asking why DHS needs 1.6 billion rounds of ammo, the real question is, “Why does DHS need 55,000 law enforcement officers?”

MRAPs and submachine guns

The original story regarding a purchase of 2,700 MRAPs s was in error. The confusion centers on a 2011 order from the U.S. Marines to retrofit 2,717 of its MRAPs with upgraded chassis.

DHS has been using MRAPs since 2008 and currently has a fleet of 16 received from the Army at no cost. They are used by DHS special response teams in executing “high-risk warrants.”

Similarly, the purchase of 7,000 “Personal Defense Weapons” is not extraordinary for an agency of this size.

Drones

DHS’s Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) has been operating Predator drones since 2005, with a current fleet of nine. Some in Congress seek to expand their use. In February 2012, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which includes a provision for commercial drone regulations. The FAA projects that up to 30,000 drones could be flying by 2020. A requisition memo describes these requirements for drones operated by CBP against border incursions by frequently armed drug traffickers and coyotes, but concern exists that this use will extend to U.S. citizens inside the border.

Sen. Rand Paul, R.-Ky., filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director in order to obtain answers about lethal drone use against American citizens within the U.S. Holder finally sent Paul a letter, which said:

“It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.”

Paul said they had been asking Holder for about six weeks. But Holder didn’t answer the question at all. Paul did not specify Americans “engaged in combat on American soil.” He asked about attacks against any Americans on U.S. soil. Holder had said in earlier testimony that the President did have the authority to kill Americans on American soil in certain circumstances.

Given the Obama administration’s contempt for the Constitution and its broad definition of “domestic terrorists” to include pretty much anyone they don’t like, there is cause for genuine concern.

Gun control 

The Sharpsburg raid occurred prior to the Newtown tragedy, but nonetheless reinforced the widespread impression that the Maryland State Police is an anti-gun organization. Did the MSP decide to make an example of Porter to send a message to Maryland gun owners, or were they genuinely afraid that Porter was about to go postal? That question is unclear, but a Maryland law enforcement source who has attended briefings on the subject said state police are “gearing up for confiscation.”

In 1989, Patrick O’Carroll of the Centers for Disease Control stated:

“We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.”

The CDC further revealed its strategy in 1994:

“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned.” Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention. (Washington Post, 1994)

Do these themes sound familiar? They represent a single component of a vast effort by media, politicians, Hollywood, educational institutions and professionals to vilify gun ownership. One left-wing organization, Third Way, created a “messaging strategy,” encouraging the term “gun safety” because “gun control has become a loaded term that leads voters to believe that the candidate supports the most restrictive laws.”

Since Newtown, however, gun-control proponents have pretty much dropped any pretense. Here is a small sampling of recent anti-gun actions:

• Florida Democratic state Senator Audrey Gibson has proposed a bill requiring anger management classes for would-be ammo purchasers.
• Colorado State Senator Evie Hudak told a rape victim testifying against gun control that having a gun was a waste of time as the rapist would have killed her with it.
• A Democrat activist says we should train rapists not to rape, rather than using guns to stop them.
• A Baltimore, Md., seven-year-old was suspended from school for two days for biting a pastry into a shape that looked like a gun.
• A five-year-old was suspended from school and branded a “terrorist threat” for telling a classmate she was going to shoot her with her Princess “bubble gun.”
• A Philadelphia 5th grader was called “murderer” by classmates and yelled at by her teacher for having a piece of paper cut into a shape that looked vaguely like a pistol.
• A New Jersey family was visited by police and the Department of Youth and Family Services because of a photo of their 11-year-old son posing with a rifle.

In an unguarded moment recently, U.S. Rep Jan Schakowsky, D.-Ill., revealed the intentions of some Democrats:

“We want everything on the table … This is a moment of opportunity. There’s no question about it … We’re on a roll now, and I think we’ve got to take the—you know, we’re gonna push as hard as we can and as far as we can.”

Conclusion

The increased militarization of police forces and the associated use of SWAT teams for routine law enforcement are a dangerous trend. Given President Obama’s seeming willingness to abuse the power of his office on so many fronts, it is reasonable to expect more, not less, of the kind of abusive police overreach described in this report, while police forces and capabilities will continue to grow.

With all of the swirling allegations, where does the truth lie? While there have been many proven cases of vote fraud in previous elections, and many credible allegations of fraud in this election cycle, was the cumulative total of all fraud sufficient to throw the election for Obama? After all, Obama’s team ran an intensely focused, highly organized get-out-the-vote effort. Republican efforts were, by comparison, disorganized and nowhere near as comprehensive or sophisticated.

Still, members of the president’s team did everything possible to rig the game in their favor. They took liberties with the law Republicans would never dare attempt and obstructed voter-integrity efforts at every turn, while the vast political-media-entertainment-education-union-nonprofit complex went all in to promote Obama’s narrative.

Democrats and their media allies also engaged in what has fairly been described as a dishonest and “vicious” campaign to discredit the Republican nominee while steadfastly  shielding the administration from its many scandals. Any of these could have sunk Obama’s reelection prospects had the media reported them with the enthusiasm they showed in attacking and spreading disinformation about Romney.

Sign WND’s petition urging Congress to investigate fraud and abuse in America’s election system!

When it comes to outright vote fraud, however, let’s examine first those allegations with the greatest potential for skewing election results.

100 percent vote for Obama

In some inner city precincts, Obama garnered between 98 and 100 percent of the vote. This was most frequently noted about Philadelphia, Pa., and Cleveland, Ohio. Incredulous observers stated, “Third world dictators don’t even get 99 percent of the vote.” Rush Limbaugh quipped, “I mean, the last guy that got this percentage of the vote was Saddam Hussein, and the people that didn’t vote for him got shot.”

But these statements confuse turnout with votes. In communist countries like Saddam’s Iraq, every voter is indeed required to vote for the one choice on the ballot, and participation is close to 100 percent all the time. However, in U.S. elections, turnout has run at about 60 percent for the past three presidential races.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, encompasses Cleveland and surrounding areas. Overall, President Obama received 69.32 percent of the county vote, while Romney received 29.55 percent. The county lists 927,996 registered voters and there were 650,387 votes cast. Over 40 percent of these were absentee ballots. Turnout was 70 percent.

There were more than 100 Cleveland inner city, largely African-American precincts where Obama received 98-100 percent of the vote. But this amounted to about 60,000 votes – less than 10 percent of the total cast. Now ask yourself how many Romney voters you would expect to see in those locations. In 2004, George W. Bush received 11 percent of the black vote nationwide and that was a recent high for Republicans.

If we make the heroic assumption that Mitt Romney would have received 11 percent against Obama at those 100 poll locations in the absence of vote fraud, it would amount to 6,600 votes, including both absentee and Election Day ballots. Obama won Ohio by 103,481 votes.

In 2008, John McCain received 4 percent of the black vote nationwide. In Cuyahoga County he fared about the same as Romney, obtaining 29.96 percent of the vote. Similarly, in those same inner city precincts, he got few, and in some cases, no votes. Voter turnout in 2008 was 60.52 percent. A 4 percent vote for Romney in those locations would have earned him about 2,400 votes.

But comparing the results to 2008 is not to suggest that 2008 was fraud-free. It definitely was not, as evidenced by the many criminal complaints and convictions against ACORN. Even then, however, enthusiasm for the first black candidate, coupled with a wholesale news blackout on his unsavory, radical heritage and another good organizing effort, ensured his victory. There is compelling evidence, however, that he stole the primary in 2008.

Despite all this, Romney even getting 4 percent would have been surprising. Prior to the election, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicated Romney’s support among blacks was zero.

A similar situation obtained in Philadelphia. While overall Romney received 14 percent of the vote to Obama’s 85 percent in Philadelphia County, a typical outcome for Republicans in big cities, in 59 Philadelphia precincts he received no votes at all. The total number of votes cast in those precincts was under 20,000. Applying the same methodology as above, an extremely optimistic 11 percent for Romney would only have garnered 2,200 votes while a 4 percent vote would have gained 800. Obama won the state by 287,866 votes.

Does this mean that vote fraud didn’t occur in these locations? No, but if it did, it was likely not enough to throw the election. One issue that warrants a closer look, however, is absentee ballots. In Ohio, 29.5 percent of the vote came through absentee ballots in 2008 (2012 results are not finalized yet). In Cuyahoga County in 2012, absentee ballots made up 40.5 percent of the total.

According to the New York Times, use of absentee ballots nationwide has tripled since 1980 and now stands at about 20 percent of total ballots cast. The Times notes, “While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.”

Absentee ballots are particularly vulnerable to vote fraud. In one notorious recent case in upstate Troy, N.Y., eight local Democrat politicians were indicted and four have pleaded guilty to falsifying absentee ballots. This was a local election and these politicians won their seats before getting caught. Anthony DeFiglio, a Democratic committeeman who pleaded guilty, said that absentee ballot fraud was a “normal political tactic”:

[It is] an ongoing scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle. The people who are targeted live in low-income housing and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions… What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic.

Bob Mirch, the former Republican legislator who first discovered this fraud, said, “It’s an insider game. It takes insiders to do it, and I think it takes insiders to catch those who try to steal the election. … It’s easy to do it and yes, it’s easy to not get caught …” Frank LaPosta, a former Troy, N.Y., city council president said he got run out of the Democratic Party for speaking out against the vote fraud.

Did fraudulent absentee ballots throw the election in Ohio this year? If there were significant absentee ballot fraud, one would expect to see a much greater ratio of absentee ballots submitted by Democrats. In Cuyahoga County, 43.3 percent of the vote for Obama was via absentee ballot, compared to 40.9 percent for Romney – a measurable difference, but not enough to raise red flags. The ballots would have to be individually examined to determine the extent of absentee ballot fraud. This could be a worthwhile investigation perhaps, but is beyond the scope of this report.

Just the same, it is clear that Democrats are up to something at inner city polls. Their eye-popping – and illegal – stonewalling of poll watchers strongly suggests nefarious activity. The left’s nationwide campaign to discredit voter integrity efforts as “voter suppression” and their obstinate battle against voter ID laws only serve to reinforce this impression. Following are a few examples of real voter suppression and threats to voter integrity that occurred in 2012:

• 75 GOP vote inspectors were ordered to leave Philadelphia poll locations by Democrat poll judges. One judge was caught on audio. A court order sent them back but who knows what went on while they were gone? These poll locations were all within the 59 precincts where Romney received no votes.
• In Philadelphia, the Community Voters Project, an ACORN clone that employs some former ACORN workers, shredded Republican voter registrations. This is not the first time they have been in trouble.
• The Florida AFL-CIO threatened True the Vote and Tampa Fair Vote with legal action for submitting voter registration challenges.
• Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings issued a highly publicized threat against True the Vote and Election Integrity Maryland just for checking voter rolls. EIM found 11,000 questionable registrations, including 1,566 dead voters. The Maryland Board of Elections took no action.
• Cummings also attacked the Ohio Voter Integrity Project with the same baseless claims.
• Think Progress falsely claimed True the Vote was “under investigation” by Rep. Cummings, when in fact he has no legal authority to do so.
• Despite overwhelming nonpartisan public support for voter ID laws, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department and liberal jurists have delayed, emasculated or defeated ID laws in Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
• Holder has vowed to fight voter ID laws as restricting voters’ rights.
• The Obama administration “spiked investigations” of eight states that had major voter roll problems.
• The Holder Justice Department conspired with Project Vote on National Voter Registration Act (aka Motor Voter) enforcement lawsuits, which force state and local agencies to become, essentially, low income voter registration drives.
• In 2009 DOJ announced to its attorneys that it would not enforce voter roll maintenance laws because it wouldn’t increase voter turnout.

Motor voter

Another important factor in modern American elections is the National Voter Registration Act. “Motor Voter” was passed in 1993 under the signature of President Bill Clinton. One of Barack Obama’s early legal cases was against Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican who refused to enforce the new law because he feared it would open the door to widespread voter fraud. Obama, in concert with the Clinton Justice Department, ACORN, Project Vote and the League of Women Voters, sued the state, which eventually gave up the fight.

Motor Voter requires state and local government offices – most notably motor vehicle and welfare agencies – to provide voter registration services. Successive lawsuits by ACORN, Project Vote and others have forced state agencies to become de facto registration drives. Because these agencies serve largely low-income voters, it is in essence a taxpayer-funded voter registration program for Democrats. This was the original intent and goal of this legislation, articulated bluntly in a book titled “Why Americans Don’t Vote,” by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

Most people are unaware that Motor Voter was conceived over the course of 10 years, planned and authored by Cloward and Piven, the notorious socialists who gave America the Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Using the now-familiar excuse that low-income people need government assistance for even the most menial tasks, the law facilitated mass low-income voter registration with virtually no documentation required. Motor Voter provided the opening for ACORN, Project Vote and other such groups to engage in the massive voter registration fraud that has become a fixture in modern American elections.

Section 8 of the law requires that voter rolls be maintained. However, the maintenance requirements actually prevent states from cleaning the rolls, because they are required to attempt to contact voters multiple times over multiple election cycles before finally removing names. As a result, nationwide the voter rolls are in shambles. This was almost certainly Cloward and Piven’s covert goal: Create a crisis to provide the solution you want.

ACORN’s Project Vote took up Cloward and Piven’s work once the law was passed. Obama cut his teeth community organizing for Project Vote in 1992. Today, Piven serves on the Board of Project Vote, and Obama named his 2012 GOTV campaign, Project Vote.

Democrats and vote fraud

If there is a “ground zero” for vote fraud in modern America, it would be the inner city.

Indeed, according to Paul Herrison of the Center for American Politics at the University of Maryland, “Most incidents of wider-scale vote fraud reportedly occur in inner cities, which are largely populated by minority groups.” Some liberals, he said, even feel they are justified in committing vote fraud, “because the poor and dispossessed have so little political clout, ‘extraordinary measures [for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules] are required to compensate.’”

If Democrats are in fact engaging in systemic vote fraud in inner city polls, what impact might that have? For the sake of argument, suppose that either through absentee ballot fraud or some other mechanism, Democrats in Cleveland were able to gain just 2,000 votes. In Cuyahoga County, that would have represented 0.44 percent of the total vote for Obama. Extrapolated to the entire state, it would provide an additional 12,000 votes. If done nationwide, it would mean 280,000 votes.

Obama won by 3.5 million votes, so while insufficient in itself to throw the presidential  election, in closer races, such efforts could decide the day. In 2000, Bush won with a margin of only 500 votes. Going into the election, both candidates knew it would be close. There is little reason to doubt that Democrats at least attempted to boost their chances through vote fraud, as that is the only logical explanation for their extreme efforts to thwart voter integrity measures in state after state.

The actual level of vote fraud that occurs is extremely difficult to measure. Worse, a consent decree stemming from a 1981 New Jersey case, which has been repeatedly reauthorized by a Democrat judge, prevents the Republican National Committee from even examining possible voter fraud. Incredibly, in a 1987 revision, the judge explicitly prohibited the RNC from engaging in any form of “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud.” RNC leader Reince Priebus even took the unprecedented step of stating publicly on CNN, “Democrats know they benefit from election fraud.”

Finally, whatever the actual level of voter fraud that occurred in the 2012 election, the potential for future fraud is truly staggering. Pew Research Center published a report revealing election rolls in a shambles nationwide. They found:

• 24 million invalid or inaccurate voter registrations
• 1.8 million deceased voters
• 2.75 million registered in multiple states.

As noted earlier, Cloward and Piven’s Motor Voter law is responsible for much of this mess.

A North Carolina group, the Voter Integrity Project, found close to 30,000 dead voters still on the rolls in North Carolina, a state Obama won by only 14,000 votes in 2008. Project Director Jay DeLancey said, “Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud]. Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.”

Allen West campaign

Vote fraud was almost certainly the culprit with Rep. Allen West’s Florida loss this November, as was Norm Coleman’s loss to comedian Al Franken in his 2008 U.S. Senate race. Franken ultimately won by 312 votes, but election officials, led by ACORN-connected Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, rejected 12,000 absentee ballots.

Likewise, the West campaign lost its congressional race under highly questionable circumstances.

Initial confusion surrounded counting a two-page ballot as two separate votes, leading to the erroneous conclusion that 141 percent of registered voters cast votes. The actual total votes cast were 123,750 against a total registration of 175,554. Election Supervisor Gertrude Walker engaged in activities many analysts say were blatantly illegal:

• West maintained a 2,000-vote lead in the county until Walker made a recount of early voting ballots. Following the recount, West was suddenly behind by 2,400 votes – a net change of 4,400 votes. Early voting totals were 37,123, so that recount represented a 12% swing.
• Polls were illegally locked following the election, preventing public witness of tabulation procedures.
• Many early voting ballots were tabulated twice by Walker staff members.
• Forced by court order to a recount, St. Lucie elections officials failed to meet the 12 noon, Nov. 18 deadline, and were thus able to certify the original partial recount, which showed Murphy ahead of West by 2,146 votes.
• West’s team sought a court order to impound voting machines and ballots in Palm Beach County District 18 to maintain integrity of ballots prior to an anticipated recount, but were denied by Circuit Judge David F. Crow.

Illegal alien voting

Glenn Cook of the Las Vegas Review Journal reported in early November that illegal aliens were being pressured, even threatened, by Culinary Union Local 226, to register and vote. Cook related the story of two illegals who told him about it. In Florida, an NBC investigative report found that illegals were registered to vote and indeed have been voting.

This year, immigration officials uncovered a massive document fraud ring operating in Baltimore that has provided thousands of fraudulent driver’s licenses, green cards and Social Security cards to illegals for years. Such documents are apparently easy and inexpensive to obtain.

DHS believes about one-third of illegals in the U.S. are people who have simply overstayed their visas. Many of these people could have obtained driver’s licenses while still legal. Since licenses typically expire after a much longer period, it is reasonable to assume many of these people could be registered to vote.

Because of the National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter), anyone who obtains a new driver’s license is automatically registered to vote. Furthermore, the NVRA does not require voting officials to verify proof of citizenship when people register. In states where illegals can obtain driver’s licenses, including California, Washington, New Mexico and Utah, they are likely already registered to vote. How many illegals actually vote on a systematic basis is not known, but many do.

In fact, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler found that about 5,000 Colorado illegals voted in the 2010 midterm elections and 12,000 were registered to vote. In 2012, he sent letters to 3,900 people identified as potentially illegal voters. Gessler’s office intends to conduct a thorough statewide analysis once all results are official.

These illegal voters should obviously not be ignored. They could spell the difference between victory and defeat in many cases.

One aspect of Colorado’s voting history merits especially close scrutiny. Colorado has an approximately equal number of registered Republicans (1,157,373) and Democrats (1,151,198). Historically, unaffiliated voters in Colorado have numbered roughly the same. Between 2008 and 2012, however, their numbers grew by a whopping 23 percent, some 248,000 people. Unaffiliated voters, now numbering 1.3 million, are the largest single voting bloc in Colorado. Who are these people?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2000 and 2010 Colorado’s population grew by 728,000. Fully 42 percent of these were Hispanic and almost all, 303,000, were of Mexican descent. A Gallup poll shows that Hispanics in general (52 percent), but immigrants especially (60 percent), tend to identify as independent. Yet most affiliate with Democrats (52 percent) versus Republicans (23 percent).

How many of these were illegal, and how many of them voted? A study on illegal immigrant demographics by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates Colorado’s illegal population at 167,000, so to pin Obama’s Colorado win on illegals alone would require almost all of these to have registered and voted.

According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, Coloradan voters must show a state-issued ID if they have one; if not, a utility bill or Social Security number will suffice. It is likely that some illegals voted and could have contributed to Obama’s victory, but it is unreasonable to assume a large scale illegal vote would have gone unnoticed. Gessler’s observation of a few thousand illegal voters is much more realistic.

Obama’s Colorado win was, however, secured with the unaffiliated vote, and many of these were Hispanic. According to Latino Decisions, an election eve poll claimed that 87 percent of Latinos in Colorado supported Obama over Romney. Nationwide, they found that the GOP was supported by only 25 percent of Hispanics. An October 2012 Pew Hispanic Center poll showed only 21 percent of Hispanics supporting Romney to 69 percent for Obama.

Despite Republican post-election hand-wringing, this is not likely to change much with any kind of concessions to the Hispanic community.

The reasons are straightforward and not dependent upon immigration reform. According to the CIS study, 57 percent of illegals in the U.S. live at or near poverty. Granted amnesty, would this group suddenly embrace the entitlement-reform-minded Republican Party en masse? Who would get credit for amnesty in their minds, Democrats, or the Republicans they dragged to the table? The very act of Republicans “conceding” to Democrats on amnesty and immigration “reform” declares Democrats the victors.

More relevant are the sentiments among legal immigrants and Hispanic U.S. citizens. According to CIS, well over 60 percent of legal immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries – i.e. the vast majority of Hispanic immigrants – live near or in poverty. Among U.S. born Hispanics, 50 percent of households with children are led by single mothers, 55 percent of households with children utilize welfare, and 45 percent of all Hispanic households pay no income tax.

They will probably not be voting Republican anytime soon.

Hispanic views on political ideology are also revealing. According to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent have a poor opinion of capitalism, while only 32 percent have a positive opinion. Many more, 44 percent, have a positive opinion of socialism! For all these reasons it is highly unlikely to see any major Hispanic movement toward Republicans no matter what Republicans do.

Finally, a large proportion of the approximately 1 million legal immigrants arriving in the U.S. annually are low-skilled individuals from impoverished nations around the world. Many of these immediately become welfare recipients. Throughout the nation, 47.4 percent of all immigrants live at or near poverty. America is essentially importing poverty. Who benefits politically from that? The open borders crowd, of course – not Republicans.

Electronic voting machines

There were a number of complaints about electronic voting machines that tallied votes for Democrats despite a Republican vote and a few instances of the opposite case.

• Voters in Pueblo County, Colo., complained that their votes were being changed to Obama, reported local NBC affiliate, KOAA.
• Maryland congressional candidate and veteran investigative journalist Ken Timmerman reported many voters claiming this happened to them, lodging complaints with vote judges. Timmerman has requested to see voting machine records.
• Maryland Delegate Kathy Afzali and Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild have requested the FBI impound two electronic voting machines suspected of switching votes based on complaints from other voters, including a state official.
• Robert Ashcroft, a Republican poll watcher in Allentown, Pa., reported that about 5-10 percent of electronic votes would “change the selection back to default – to Obama.”
• EVM problems were also reported to have occurred in Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas.
• A 2008 Fox News report showed how electronic voting machines can be infected with a computer virus to change votes. A Princeton University study in 2006 found the same thing.

Confirmed voter fraud and other abuses

Countless cases of confirmed vote fraud were reported in this cycle and the Obama team repeatedly rode the razor’s edge of legality in pushing voters to the polls. Let’s look at a few examples:

• Patrick Moran, son of longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, was caught on video by James O’Keefe’s Veritas Project, telling an undercover journalist how to commit vote fraud.

• Other Veritas videos showed Obama campaign officials in Texas, New Jersey and New York providing multiple forms to journalists posing as voters so that they could vote in two or more states.
• On Election Day, Veritas reporters recorded poll officials on camera telling voters not to vote for Romney.
• The Obama campaign continues to accept illegal donations from other countries. WND’s Aaron Klein proved this by donating to the Obama campaign twice under the name “Osama bin Laden” using a Pakistani web address.
• WND has filed a complaint with the FEC demanding an investigation of overseas donations to the Obama campaign.
• In 2008, the Obama campaign accepted almost $30,000 from Palestinian donors.
• A Korean interpreter in Flushing, N.Y., directed Korean voters to vote Democrat. He was expelled from the poll.
• Two cases of forged votes were reported in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., by Republicans who discovered their votes had already been made.
• Non-citizens were charged with voting illegally in Austin, Minn.
• Cases of double voting in Ohio are being investigated.
• Non-citizen allegedly voted in Iowa
• Double voting is being investigated in North Carolina
• NBC reported dead voters voting in California
• Mentally disabled were coaxed to vote for Obama in North Carolina
• Widespread absentee vote fraud is being investigated in South Texas
• A non-English-speaking, under-18 youth reported he was “told he can vote.”
• Many other cases

At an Ohio State University rally during early voting, President Obama urged students to vote early. Democrat-chartered buses lined up to carry students directly from the rally to an early voting site where pizza was served and rap star will.i.am performed. Students were offered “Golden Tickets” wherein they pledged to vote for Obama and provided contact information. Was this a case of vote buying? That’s against the law. Similar rallies were held on different campuses throughout Ohio and in other states.

Conservative author and activist David Horowitz described how his mentally disabled brother-in-law, Henry, and 60 others from his facility, were taught to vote for Obama. Over Thanksgiving dinner, Henry told him, “Obama saved me… I voted for him for president and now he’s saving me.”

Vote fraud in northern Virginia

The report that raised the most red flags came from Prince William County, Virginia. Virginia is a swing state with a Republican governor and legislature. It would be solid red except that populous Northern Virginia sits aside Washington, D.C., and is home to many federal government employees.

It also has a burgeoning immigrant population of Hispanics, many of whom are illegal. Prince William County, for example had a population of 9,662 Hispanics in 1990. Over the last 20 years, that population has grown by 743 percent to 81,460 in 2010, accounting for almost 40 percent of Prince William County’s population growth according to the Census Bureau. Census does not distinguish between legal and illegal, but a large proportion of these are undoubtedly illegal. Indeed, Virginia is one of 12 states with the highest illegal alien populations in the country and most reside in Northern Virginia.

Of the many complaints about the election in Prince William, one report really stood out. Dara Fox, a Republican poll watcher certified by the Virginia Board of Elections, and trained in the use of Romney’s ORCA application, reported at least 100 instances of voting irregularities, where the voter should have either been challenged or provided with a provisional vote. These included:

• Many people unable to state their name or address on their ID without assistance
• Many unable to speak English and could not follow simple directions
• Many times upon recording a vote, it was discovered that a vote in that person’s name had already been checked off
• Many times the voter’s age did not match the age of the registered voter, e.g. he/she appeared much younger/older than the person listed on the registration
• Several times, Fox observed what appeared to be the same person voting twice, or the same name was called twice, when the [ORCA] app stated that only one voter in the precinct had the stated name
• Many times a person who looked Hispanic answered to a name that he/she could barely pronounce – that was obviously some other ethnicity, such as Asian or Middle Eastern.
• Every one of these people save one, voted, and none with a provisional ballot.
• One person was denied the vote who admitted through an interpreter he was underage, but said he was told he could vote anyway. He was denied the vote only after repeated protests.

In circumstances like this, voters are usually given a provisional ballot. Fox said there should have been hundreds, but at the end of the day, the provisional vote tally was zero out of 2,753 votes at that poll. County statistics bear this out. According to the Prince William County Board of Elections, there were a total of 177,789 votes countywide, but only 196 provisional ballots.

Fox was interviewed on WMAL Radio about her experiences, and the interview prompted many other Virginia poll watchers to call in or comment about similar experiences they had witnessed. Prince William County voting officials conducted a hearing on the issues she raised, and politely listened to her, but reportedly gave much more weight to a Democrat official who complained of “voter suppression.” Fox’s interview on WMAL can be heard here.

Virginia has minimal ID requirements to vote; a utility bill will suffice. Furthermore, no proof of citizenship is required. If, when filling out a voter registration, one checks the “U.S. Citizen” box, he/she is presumed to be telling the truth. Voting officials said it is nearly impossible to verify citizenship because the federal government will not share its data.

How many people voted at this location that shouldn’t have? If the “at least 100″ irregularities Dara Fox witnessed were actually fraudulent votes, and if there were no others that she did not witness, then the fraudulent vote rate at this location would have been 3.6 percent. It is likely that there were others, but it is equally likely that some of these were not actually fraudulent.

Hypothetically assume 3.6 percent was correct and reflects the statewide rate. Further assume all fraudulent votes went to Obama. The total vote count in Virginia was 1,971,820 Obama to 1,822,522 Romney, a difference of 149,298 votes. 3.6 percent would have given Obama 70,986 votes, not enough to account for his win; and this is likely an exaggeration of the actual fraudulent vote.

But this does not resolve the issue. As discussed earlier, citizenship on Virginia voter registrations is assumed, not confirmed. If significant numbers of illegals are registering, knowing that election officials cannot check their citizenship status, then many illegal votes are being counted as legitimate. The only way to confidently verify the results of this election would be to investigate the citizenship of every immigrant voter in Virginia.

This would all be resolved however, if Virginia passed stringent photo voter ID laws. To facilitate this in Virginia and other states, the federal government should make its data available so that voting officials in every state can check the naturalization status of immigrants registering to vote much like police agencies access the FBI’s NCIC. Citizens should be required to register with a government-issued photo ID and birth certificate.

This is the best system-wide answer to voter fraud, but would work only if poll workers actually checked voter credentials. Voting lines were up to three hours long in Prince William County and poll workers stopped checking credentials just to move people along. Increasing the number of poll locations and poll workers would relieve the pressure and give poll workers more time to properly check credentials. Questionable voters can always vote with a provisional ballot, which can be checked later when election officials are not under such heavy pressure.

But ultimately, the security of the vote in every state is dependent upon the integrity of people involved. In Democrat-controlled counties particularly, poll officials have been brazenly demonstrating contempt for both the law and the process, while the Democrat political infrastructure nationwide doubles down on efforts to thwart voter integrity measures. Increasingly, their actions call into question the integrity of the entire process.

The ground game

One of the Obama team’s secret weapons was “the Cave,” a high-tech data center that constantly evaluated voter and donor information. Time magazine described it as:

a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.

The Romney team had Project ORCA. It was designed to automate strike lists to assist in get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day. It was a colossal failure.

In Ohio, Republicans supposedly retained a significant component of the infrastructure built in 2004 and credited with George W. Bush’s win there. However, they somehow were unaware of, or were not concerned with, the Obama campaign’s 120-plus offices, many of which had been in operation since 2008. These focused on get-out-the-vote efforts in key Democrat enclaves. With data obtained via the “Cave,” they could efficiently target door-knocking efforts. The result was a heavily favorable Obama turnout, especially in early voting that Ohio Republicans didn’t even try to match.

But it goes much further and deeper than that. Growing out of the Colorado Democracy Alliance, which turned Colorado blue in 2006, a vast and deep collection of well-funded organizations have studied “best practices” for winning elections. From rootsHQ:

These organizations are non-profits, advocacy groups, labor unions, and for-profit businesses all with the common goal of bringing evidence-based best practices and technological innovation to elections. Led by researchers and behavioral scientists, these organizations are not only exploring technology in campaigns, but also how voters come to decisions about turning out to vote, and making a decision to support a specific candidate.

Certain organizations are solely focused on data while others are focused on field experiments in voter contact. Others are focused on training, while others are focused on media and content. Still others provide overall strategic direction, and another group is focused exclusively on cultivating and managing donors and funding.

Through distributed organizations working in close collaboration while supporting candidate campaigns, the progressive movement has created a highly-efficient model for political innovation, resulting in both success at the ballot box as well as long-term capacity development.

This organization has been developing independently and prior to the Obama campaign. The overall effort is dedicated to achieving leftist dominance in politics, and Obama has been able to capitalize on it. Conservatives have no corollary effort. This is what the vast resources of leftist billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis bring to the game. While such is not counted as “campaign contributions,” it nevertheless has provided a major advantage to Obama.

Conclusion

So is vote fraud real? Yes. Did it occur in this election? Yes. Was it enough to steal the election? In reality, although no single instance or aspect of vote fraud was likely enough to tip the election for Obama, the aggregate of their corrupt activities – including illegal campaign donations, taking advantage of states without voter ID requirements, military ballots delivered too late, as well as the laundry list of elements identified in this report, may well have been.

Election 2012 provides a powerful justification for, at a minimum, enacting strong voter ID laws throughout the nation and a repeal of the most anti-Democratic voting legislation ever written, the National Voter Registration Act.

Protecting the integrity of the vote will prevent election theft and give voters more confidence in clean elections, a confidence that is today justifiably lacking.

Moreover, even had there been no vote fraud at all, the Obama administration stole this election: By virtue of the media monopoly Obama and his team enjoy, they have been able to lie, deceive and suppress damaging information throughout Obama’s entire first term. They have taken countless billions in taxpayer dollars to enrich their friends and union allies under the pretext of “stimulating” the economy and conducted a campaign of unprecedented viciousness against the Republican candidate while protesting vociferously in those few instances when Obama received richly deserved criticism.

The media provided perhaps the greatest in-kind benefit to the, Obama re-election effort, providing Democrats an advantage of countless billions in biased reporting; suppressing news unflattering to Democrats while exposing or even contriving stories damaging to Republicans and mischaracterizing their positions, while uncritically promoting the Democrat narrative:

• The networks suppressed facts surrounding Benghazi-gate, leading moderate Democrat commentator Pat Caddell to label the media “the enemy of America.”
• The mass media have been, with a few notable exceptions, largely silent on the “Fast and Furious” DOJ gunrunning scandal responsible for the deaths of two Americans and countless Mexicans. Eric Holder has been able to successfully deflect calls for an independent investigation of Fast and Furious because the media offers no pressure.
• CBS withheld its knowledge of the Petraeus affair until after the election to save the administration embarrassment
• The administration withheld a damning food stamp report showing the biggest monthly increase in a year, until well after the election

Unions provide armies of on-the-ground volunteers to assist with get-out-the-vote, while countless foundations legitimize the leftist narrative. The top 115 leftist foundations control more than $100 billion in assets, vastly more than the ad hoc collection of philanthropists that support conservative issues, and focus their dollars in a collective effort to win. The left has become a virtual industry that promotes the Democrat narrative, feeds off the government at the taxpayers’ expense, ridicules vote fraud and seeks to expand voting opportunities that capitalize on the Democrats’ better organizing capability and their huge pool of bought-and-paid-for voters.

As Lyndon Johnson said following enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “I’ll have those n*&^%*s voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

It is the Curley Effect writ large, i.e. destroying wealth to create dependency, and has grown the dependent class to almost 50 percent of America’s population. With the coming amnesty, that voter base will exceed 50 percent, guaranteeing the “permanent progressive majority” they seek.

Did Obama win with any kind of mandate? No. Despite all the vote fraud, despite a mass media that buried scandal after scandal while vilifying Obama’s opponents, despite a massive and growing welfare state buying off voters by the millions with endless giveaways, despite a political narrative unrelenting in its viciousness and dishonesty, and despite a weak, poorly articulated message from a Republican candidate with few discernible bedrock positions, Obama won with only a 3 percent margin.

Sign WND’s petition urging Congress to investigate fraud and abuse in America’s election system!

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