Corzine Tries to Win Ugly* in New Jersey

by B. Daniel Blatt | November 3, 2009 3:03 am

In a Democratic state, running against a lackluster Republican opponent and with a war chest filled with twice as much lucre as both his opponents combined, with multiple visits by the charismatic President of the United States, Democrat incumbent Jon Corzine has resorted to playing dirty chests while corrupt organizations try to manufacture a few votes to help him retain his lease on Drumthwacket[1]–and give Democrats something to crow about on Wednesday.

In order to divide the vote of those opposed to the unpopular Democrat, his fellow partisans have all but made independent candidate Chris Daggett into a stalking horse for the incumbent. They’re making robocalls to voters, trashing Chris Christie, the only candidate with a chance of unseating the Democrat, urging them to vote instead for Daggett[2].

And now, we’ve got “ACORN on the scene.[3]”

GOP officials recently received a phone tip from a hospital in Newark, reporting that people in ACORN t-shirts were in the facility signing up and collecting absentee ballots. New Jersey law allows anyone to take up to 10 absentee ballots at a time. The tipster reported seeing individuals in the ACORN shirts entering the hospital with blank absentee ballots and leaving with completed ballots.

There are reports out of Camden, New Jersey that voters are discovering that absentee ballots have already been submitted under their name. They did not authorize these ballots. Early reports suggested that the number of absentee ballots ‘requested’ in Camden city is higher than in any previous election. This will no doubt spark confusion on election day.

And not just a little bit higher[4]:

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden’s public works department, says he’s shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. : In the 2005, when the city’s voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing.

And when we see who else has been rounding up votes in the Garden State, we have a better understanding about why SEIU President Andy Stern was the most frequent visitor at the White House.[5] His minions have been doing double-time in the Garden State:

Acorn’s longtime allies, the Service Employee International Union and New York’s Working Families Party, have both moved into New Jersey. Peter Colavito, Acorn’s former political director in New York and a board member of the Working Families Party, is now the political director of SEIU Local 32BJ, which is heavily involved in New Jersey’s election.

My sense is that the Democrats internal polling shows undecided voters breaking heavily for Christie and are using whatever means possible to find additional votes for Corine the Chicago Way. With these types of shenanigans going on ’round election time, one wonders why the MSM is taking so little interest.

Oh yeah, that’s right, when Democrats commit electoral fraud, it’s for a noble cause. Sorry, I forgot about that.

It’s clear the Obama White House very badly wants a victory in one of the three big races tomorrow. They’re not going to get Virginia, their odds of winning in New York seem to be diminishing with each passing day and Jersey seems their best shot. But, if news of underhanded tactics keeps dripping out during the day tomorrow and after the ballot are counted, that election is going to look pretty tarnished. And the era of hope and change will turn out to be one of the failed, er, corrupt machine politics of the past, you know the politics on which Obama waged rhetorical war in his campaign last fall.

*Some would call this stealing.

Crossposted at GayPatriot[6].