The GOP Fearmongers About Voter Fraud In New Jersey.

When I posted earlier on John Fund, I hadn't realized that his typical voter-fraud fearmongering had reached four-alarm-fire status in the rest of the right-wing blogosphere, where folks like Jim Geraghty are freaking out about relaxed standards for handing out provisional ballots, which they believe may allow Democrats to steal the election in New Jersey. Over at The Next Right, David Kralik writes:

Its been said that Democrats have two growing electoral bases: trial lawyers and voter fraud.

Republican candidates who get screwed in elections by Democrat / Leftist / ACORN voter fraud is so common that its deserving of its own Wylie Coyote routine.

At any rate, what Geraghty, Kralik, and Fund don't tell you about "provisional ballots" in New Jersey is that while getting one is easy, committing fraud with it would be very hard. I spoke with Robert Giles, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections this morning, who explained that each county in New Jersey has a review board, composed of four individuals, two Republicans and two Democrats, who review each provisional ballot before validating it. In fact, it's fair to say that provisional ballots in general are scrutinized more closely than regular ballots.

"[Provisional ballots] aren’t subject to less scrutiny, they’re more scrutinized in fact," explained Gerry Hebert, a voting-rights expert with the Campaign Legal Center who formerly worked in the voting-rights section of the Justice Department. "Each one of them are generally reviewed by a verification board to make sure that the person who cast the ballot is in fact a registered voter or eligible to cast that ballot.” Just generally speaking, provisional ballots are far more likely than regular ballots not to be counted. So relying on provisional ballots to steal an election--really stupid. But it doesn't sound that stupid if you don't know that they aren't carefully scrutinized.

But hey look, we know what's going on here. The conservative media rings the ACORN bell and the base salivates. Dave Weigel, reporting from NY-23, can explain it to you:

The Hoffman backers outside of the Biden event all said they’d attended Tea Parties. Some were affiliated with Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project. All worried that ACORN was going to show up in the district, or even at the Biden event–a paranoia that led to some minor awkwardness when an African-American Hoffman worker walked by.

“This guy’s with ACORN,” said Dewitt.

“Definitely, not from around here,” said businessman Erik Dunk.

Right. Look, Chris Christie might win in New Jersey tonight, or he might lose. But he's not going to lose because ACORN got all the scary minorities to cast fraudulent provisional ballots.

UPDATE: ACORN isn't even working in New Jersey.

-- A. Serwer