The Youth Movement: Election 2008

The Sheer Idiocy of Following Youth Movements


Greg Campbell is an obscure writer for the Fort Collins, Colo. But on Oct. 26, he penned what serves as the perfect window into the mind of many Barack Obama supporters. Campbell attended an Obama rally with his 11-year-old son, Turner. Turner was excited by Obamas typical American Dream stump speech. Campbell himself was excited not by Obama, but by his sons reaction: For me, (Obamas message) sunk in because I could see it through the eyes of an 11-year-old.

We have reached a dangerous point in American politics when parents take their voting cues from 11-year-old children. But Campbell isnt alone. Americans left and right have paid homage to Obama for getting the youth involved. In fact, young voters barely surpassed their 2004 turnout percentage -- voters aged 18-29 comprised just 18 percent of the electorate, as opposed to 17 percent in 2004.

Nonetheless, there is a feeling that youth led the way in this election.

A new generation looks ready to engage in American democracy -- and not just on Election Day, gushed the Christian Science Monitor on Nov. 10. Encouragingly, this generation actually wants to interact with government, politics, and public service.

And Obama is looking to capitalize on that youth support. Obamas sophisticated online network is geared toward mobilizing teenage minions. Obamas proposed civilian national security force is directed toward calcifying support for him into support for his political program. And Obamas national service requirement is an attempt to turn young people into government employees.

There is no question that the Barack Obama Movement was led not by elder statesman, but by college students and twentysomethings. This election cycle provided Generation Y a chance to assume unearned moral superiority over their elders by promoting a black president. It also provided Generation Y a chance to live out the precepts of their public school educations, which focused on changing the world, as well as diversity and tolerance.

Heres the big question:
Why in the world should we be excited about young Americans defining our politics?

No political mass movement led by young people has ever resulted in good. In fact, the most murderous mass movements in history have been led by young people. Nazism became popular among the youth before it became the German national theology; Hitler, of course, cultivated young people by targeting them for service in his SA, or Sturm Abteilung, and later, his Hitler Youth. The movement for Soviet Communism was led by young devotees of Lenin, who swallowed his sadistic ideology wholesale; later, the Soviet system would ask children to spy on their parents in service of the state. Similarly, the Chinese Maoists were largely composed of young people; so were the Vietnamese Viet Cong. It is no coincidence that the current Islamofascist movement is dominated by militant young Muslims.

In America, the story is the same. The disastrous 1960s were a result of the Greatest Generation giving full leeway to the baby boomers. Students led the movement for surrender in Vietnam, the anarchist movement, the so-called gay rights movement, and the free love movement. America has been plagued with the results of those movements ever since.

Young people have the enthusiasm for politics, but not practical experience or breadth of learning. They spend little or no time studying history. Instead, they are told from birth that they are the future, and that the future is in their hands. They rely on high-flown idealism rather than historical knowledge.

Young people largely agree with the following precept: True idealism is nothing but the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge. Such idealism is the most basic building block for dangerous movements. But young people are not trained to see the danger in such idealism. It is only when young people grow up that they see Hitler in those lines rather than Barack Obama.

Celebrating the leadership of the youth in 2008 election, then, is a foolish exercise.

Young people should be involved in politics -- they should protect their interests. But they, like all other voters, should be expected to get informed, not just motivated; they, like all other voters, should be expected to learn about policy, not merely follow a leader. And the rest of America should be expected to take the voting preferences of those who have never studied history, held a job, paid a bill, or built a family, with a large grain of salt. What inspires 11-year-olds or 21-year-olds -- should not be what inspires 40-year-olds.


Ben Shapiro, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School. He is the author of the new book "Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House," as well as the national bestseller "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth."

The Obama College Try
Vote Switching 101.


Are you a college student seeking to register to vote?

Barack Obama’s website makes it easy.

But does the site follow the law? Let’s take a look.

First the site asks, “Where will you be living on Election Day, November 4th?”
Next it asks, “Is there another state where you might be registered?”

Presumably, many college students who attend school in one state but live with their parents in another will answer this question in the affirmative. The answers to these two questions prompt curious suggestions from the Obama website.

If the respondent states that she is registered to vote at her parents’ home in Pennsylvania (a “battleground” state) but will be in her dorm in New York (a safe Obama state) on Election Day, the website recommends that the student vote by absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. No problem there — that is the legal solution in most cases.

But if the respondent says she is registered in New York but studying in battleground Pennsylvania, Obama recommends that she register to vote in Pennsylvania.

Clearly,*Obama is trying to switch voter registration of Democrats (who are, of course, more likely to go to his website than are Republicans) to battleground states such as Virginia. This campaign tactic raises legal and ethical questions.

Is Sen. Obama’s campaign encouraging voter fraud?

Is it encouraging college students to take actions that may be harmful without informing them of relevant risks?

If so, what does this say about the integrity of the campaign?

First, the law. A September 8 New York Times article headlined “Voter Registration by Students Raises Cloud of Consequences” states that a Supreme Court case has held that “students have the right to register at their college address.”

That’s at best an incomplete, and at worst a misleading, statement of the law.

The article refers to Symm v. United States, a 1979 case affirming (without discussion) a decision by a special three-judge district-court panel.

That panel had held that LeRoy Symm, a county commissioner, had erred when determining whether a young college student could vote in his district. The case reiterates not that college students have an automatic right to vote where they are studying, but merely that they must be treated like anyone else who applies to register to vote in the county. In other words, states and counties may ask reasonable questions about legal residency and the eligibility to vote of college students, and they may require documentary support for the student’s claims, but only if they apply the same rules to all would-be voters.

Relying perhaps on the same inaccurate interpretation of Symm, the ACLU of Virginia faxed a letter to Virginia voting registrars on September 4, insisting that students have the right to register where they go to school. According to the ACLU, Virginia registrars must register students if they “have a local residential address,” without “any special inquiries or burdens.”

Again, this is misleading; students may register where they attend college only if they meet the same standards of residency applicable to all others applying to vote.

These standards may include signing affidavits or showing residence-based identification (such as a driver’s license), even if the ACLU considers that to be a “special” inquiry.

By a curious coincidence, five days after the ACLU letter was faxed, the Virginia State Board of Elections published guidelines that allow students to claim residence in Virginia unchallenged. Courageously, the City of Norfolk Office of Elections (which consists of two Democrats and one Republican) has declared that though it will abide by this executive-branch directive, it firmly believes the directive violates Virginia election laws.

All this is enough to make one wonder whether a move is afoot in battleground states governed by Democratic administrations to allow vote-shifting from other states. But that is not all — in addition to legal problems, the Obama campaign’s enticement of student re-registration is ethically suspect. Changing one’s legal residence requires a student’s honest belief that she intends to reside indefinitely at her new residence, the college town. Sometimes this is doubtful (do Washington and Lee students really intend to reside indefinitely in tiny Lexington, Va.?).

A less-than-truthful declaration could catch up with the declarant in future years, if he or she contemplates a career requiring vetting or close press scrutiny.

But even if an honest student has suddenly acquired the intention of residing indefinitely in his college town, does he understand the legal implications of a residence change?

Where is the student filing her income-tax return (will she be liable for another state’s tax)?

Is the student claimed as a dependent on her parents’ return (if so, it is hard to have a separate legal residence)?

Does the student have a residence-dependent scholarship (some require that recipients reside in a particular town or state) that might be imperiled by a change of residence?

Would the student’s automobile or health-insurance coverage be affected by a change in residence, especially if the student is covered by her parents’ policy?

Apparently the Obama campaign feels no compunction against warning students that disingenuous declarations of residency may have consequences in the future.

Registering to vote is a fundamental rite of citizenship. It is not to be undertaken frivolously and dishonestly. Shame on anyone who manipulates this process in order to tamper with our electoral-college system of state-based presidential elections.

*Michael Krauss is a professor of law at George Mason University, where he teaches legal ethics.

Student Voter Fraud in Virginia


Students openly boast about fraudulently registering to vote in Virginia, a swing state, even though they actually live, and are registered to vote, in other states.*

The Norfolk, Virginia election board tried to do something about that, by*making sure that people registering to vote in Virginia actually do live in the state.**One way it did that was to*send questionnaires to students who came from out-of-state to attend Virginia colleges, and then registered in Virginia, to see if those students*really qualify as Virginia residents.**

It had every right to do*that under*federal court rulings, which hold that it is perfectly*OK to require such proof of domicile (permanent residence) from everyone, students included.

However, the Obama campaign protested this, even though the Norfolk, Virginia election board is comprised primarily of Democrats, and*represent a liberal stronghold.** In response,*state officials appointed by Virginia’s liberal governor, Tim Kaine, ordered the Norfolk election board not to send any more questionnaires to confirm students’ domicile, even though state election law requires domicile as a condition for voting and registration.* The Norfolk board has followed this order under protest, even though it believes it violates state election law.

Now, the ACLU is*bombarding local election officials*(such as voting registrars) with letters*falsely claiming that the Supreme Court has ruled that students*can*register*to vote, no questions asked, based on their temporary student residence — even if they are from out-of-state,*have out-of-state license plates, pay taxes out-of-state, and recently registered to vote in another state.

Similarly, the Obama campaign is telling students that if they attend school in one state, but have a*permanent residence in another, they can register in either state of their choosing — a virtual*invitation to commit vote fraud.

The ACLU’s claim about the Supreme Court’s rulings is just wrong.**It’s certainly contrary to my understanding of the law, and*as a lawyer, I’ve handled Supreme Court cases, including*successful voting rights cases.* It’s also contrary to the understanding of George Mason University law professor Michael Krauss, who explains how the ACLU and others are misleading*the public*about*what the courts held in*Symm v. United States.

If out-of-state students can register in Virginia, despite not really living in the state, they may be able to parlay that into claiming lower in-state tuition rates — thus costing Virginia colleges and state taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Voter fraud alert:
Houseful of out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters, received absentee ballots


Something smells at 2885 Brownlee Avenue in Columbus, Ohio.

Here’s the stench: An entire houseful of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances — all while mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee and early voting.

The activists are leaders of a group called “Vote From Home ‘08.” The group is self-identified as having “extensive experience with political organizing, election administration, and Democratic politics.”

They were hailed as the “Justice League” by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page brags: “Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing state?

Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House. Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide.”

My friends at Palestra.net, a network of young reporters who have been doing the voter and registration fraud reporting that the Main Stream Media has been slow to do, have a breaking investigative report on how several members of the Democrat Vote From Home team — all Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars studying abroad — are turning up on Franklin County voter rolls despite having no bona fide residence in Ohio and admittedly having little to no knowledge about the state before descending on it in August to sign up other new voters in a rush to put 10,000 Obama supporters on the rolls.



Amid new allegations of voter fraud, the Ohio Secretary of State conceded today that the eligibility of nearly one third of newly registered voters is in question.


Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said a preliminary review showed that 200,000 of the 666,000 voters who registered since Jan. 1 must have their eligibility verified to comply with a federal court order.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien confirmed that he is investigating alleged voter and registration fraud involving 13 newly registered voters who came to Columbus for a get-out-the-vote campaign and used the same address, a small East Side home.

The Ohio Republican Party requested information about newly registered voters from elections boards in all 88 counties to look into reports of fraudulent voter registration.

Elections officials across the state said they fear chaos if they must verify the validity of thousands of newly registered voters in the busy days leading up to the election.

O’Brien told The Dispatch that he is investigating allegations that 13 out-of-state residents recently registered to vote, all claiming to live at 2885 Brownlee Rd.
The individuals apparently were in Columbus working for Vote From Home, a group working to increase young-voter turnout in Ohio and using the house as their base of operation, O’Brien said.

“None of the people who registered had prior contacts with Columbus and Franklin County,” O’Brien said. “You must be a resident of the state of Ohio in order to register and cast a ballot, and that’s the issue being examined - whether they were proper residents of Ohio.”

Two of the individuals voted in person at Veteran’s Memorial while a third returned a completed absentee ballot by mail, said Matt Damshroder, deputy director of the Franklin County Board of Elections.

Another seven using the address requested absentee ballots by mail, but it is not yet clear if they have submitted them. Three others registered but did not request an absentee ballot or participate in early voting.

Election fraud is a fifth-degree felony with a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

Swing State Voter Fraud Crosses Country

Obama campaign staffers are voting in swing states across the county – and it appears they are bypassing state residency requirements.

Palestra.net’s voter fraud investigation started in Ohio where the law entitles only permanent residents, who intend to remain in the state, the right to vote in Ohio. In the past two weeks, 14 temporary Obama staffers who registered to vote have withdrawn their ballots. The individuals did not meet the legal requirements to cast a ballot in Ohio. When this was brought to their attention, they pulled their ballots. The Prosecuting attorney believes this was a misunderstanding by some “very excited and loyal volunteers.”

On Thursday October 30, Palestra.net turned our attention west to New Mexico. We found a former California delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Shayne Adamski, registered to vote in Albuquerque. New Mexico’s Secretary of State, Mary Herrera (D), said she would turn Adamski’s information over to the FBI to investigate.

Two swing states with similar stories sparked my curiosity. So I checked into the other prominent states in play: North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Virginia and Nevada. The trend continued. From swing state to swing state, some out-of-state campaigners are casting ballots without following election law.

Meet Farah Minwalla, an Obama field organizer in North Carolina. She registered to vote in Mecklenburg County, NC on October 4. According to county auditor reports, the address Minwalla used belongs to a Wanda Nabors. But oddly – Minwalla is also registered to vote in New York AND Nevada. All three registrations are listed as active. So, is she a resident of North Carolina, Nevada or New York? Technically, it appears she could vote in all three.

Minwalla's online bio for NextGenNow says she is currently pursuing a degree in English and Journalism in New York City. As recently as July, Minwalla wrote a review for a band in Brooklyn, but now she's registered to vote in swing state North Carolina. The latest RealClearPolitics poll shows Obama ahead by 0.3 percent, in New York Obama leads by 29.7 percent. As I’ve heard so often from campaigners, every vote counts.

I called Minwalla's cell phone on Sunday and she answered. When I asked when she arrived in North Carolina and why she registered, she handed the phone to an Obama spokesperson. The Obama spokesperson took my questions but gave me no answers. North Carolina election law says you must be a permanent resident to vote.

Let's travel a little further south to Florida. In September, Julietta Appleton took a leave of absence from work to support Obama. On a TravelObama.org posting Appleton writes, "I knew Florida was a swing state…and I am fluent in Spanish. So I left my job (unpaid) for 6 weeks." She moved to Miami to get out the vote. Now, she's out of money and requesting help to get back to New York. Appleton’s post continues, "The next four days I will be working 24/7, then celebrating victory, then resting for a day, and then flying home to NY." Appleton included a picture of herself voting for Obama in Miami. Florida election laws only allow permanent residents to vote.

Warren Throckmorton (see link above) discovered Appleton's story on TravelObama.org – a site devoted to matching swing state volunteers in need of money with donors willing to cover their expenses. Have other individuals used this site to mirror Appleton's own story?

Crossing the country to Missouri now, we meet William Jay Urquhart. Will is a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri. Along with getting out the vote, Urquhart decided to register to cast a vote of his own in Boone County. His current cell phone has a Washington, D.C. area code. I called the number, left a message and sent him an email. No response.

Missouri election laws are almost exactly the same as Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and New Mexico. All of these swing states have the same guidelines in determining residency – you must be a resident, a resident is defined by the intent to remain in the state permanently or to return to it when you leave. In other words, where you tell people you are from and where you tell people you voted, should be the same place. Further, in these states, election law states you cannot gain residency by temporarily working in the state. Did I mention voting records show Urquhart is also registered to vote in Massachusetts? I found voter registration records of a William Jay Urquhart registered to vote in Connecticut and Massachussets. Is this the same individual?

If not, William please contact me so we can straighten this out.

Virginia last elected a Democratic president in 1964. Obama's campaign is emphasizing the state known as "the Mother of Presidents" so much, that his final rally will take place in Manassas Park. When I tried to cross check names of out-of-state campaigners and volunteers with the state voter registration database, I hit a wall. The database required name, locality, date of birth and the last four numbers of an individual's social security number to access so checking or verifying information is near impossible.

While there may be a lack of access to information, there's no shortage of out-of-state volunteers trying to 'turn Virginia blue.' A July 24 Washington Post article entitled, "Obama Seeks Out-of-State Volunteers" states Obama's campaign is calling for out-of-state support, despite its claims that 10,000 volunteers are already active in Virginia. Obama Voter Protection Program, Counsel for Change is the mirror group to a Facebook group for lawyers in Ohio.

The founder for the Ohio Facebook group, James Cadogan, graduated from Princeton and Columbia then practiced law in New York City. This year, Cadogan registered to vote in Ohio. After Palestra.net's investigations, Cadogan withdrew his ballot. The Virginia Counsel for Change group has 213 members. Are any of them following in Cadogan's footsteps?

Nevada is a bit of an outlier. The swing state’s law only requires a 30-day residency to vote. I didn't find a clause that mentions intent to remain or the requirement of permanency. According to the campaign’s "Drive for Change" website, "Barack needs support not just from all Nevadans, but also from Nevada's neighbors – especially California. This is the chance for Californians to have a major impact on this historic race." So, technically the many Southern Californians helping to get out the vote in swing state Nevada could vote in Nevada – as long as they stay for 30 days.

Palestra.net doesn't have the time or resources to document every individual voting in every swing state. But something is going on and for every person I profiled, I have additional names in queue. Out-of-state temporary campaign workers are registering and voting in swing states around the country without meeting the letter of Election law.

Voter fraud is a travesty of justice.

Goes all the way back to the Democratic primary

Hillary Backers Decry Massive Obama Vote Fraud


With accusations of voter registration fraud swirling as early voting begins in many states, some Hillary Clinton supporters are saying: “I told you so.”

Already in Iowa, the Obama campaign was breaking the rules, busing in supporters from neighboring states to vote illegally in the first contest in the primaries and physically intimidating Hillary supporters, they say.

Obama’s surprisingly strong win in Iowa, which defied all the polls, propelled his upstart candidacy to front-runner status. But Lynette Long, a Hillary supporter from Bethesda, Md., who has a long and respected academic career, believes Obama’s victory in Iowa and in 12 other caucus states was no miracle. “It was fraud,” she told Newsmax.

Long has spent several months studying the caucus and primary results.

“After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and reviewing hundreds of personal stories, my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process,” she said.

In Hawaii, for example, the caucus organizers ran out of ballots, so Obama operatives created more from Post-its and scraps of paper and dumped them into ice cream buckets. “The caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants, a sure sign of voter fraud,” Long said.

In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary, flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets, and told union members they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.

In Texas, more than 2,000 Clinton and Edwards supporters filed complaints with the state Democratic Party because of the massive fraud. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign’s actions “amount to criminal violations” and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement, but nothing happened.

In caucus after caucus, Obama bused in supporters from out of state, intimidated elderly voters and women, and stole election packets so Hillary supporters couldn’t vote. Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.

Obama’s win in the caucuses, which were smaller events than the primaries and were run by the party, not the states, gave him the margin of victory he needed to win a razor-thin majority in the delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention.

Without these caucus wins, which Long and others claim were based on fraud, Clinton would be the Democrats’ nominee running against John McCain.

Citing a detailed report on the voting results and delegate accounts by accountant Piniel Cronin, “there were only four pledged delegates between Hillary and Obama once you discount caucus fraud,” Long said.

Long has compiled many of these eyewitness reports from the 14 caucus states in a 98-page, single-spaced report and in an interactive Web site: www.caucusanalysis.org.

ACORN involvement

The Obama campaign recently admitted that it paid an affiliate of ACORN, the controversial community organizer that Obama represented in Chicago, more than $832,000 for “voter turnout” work during the primaries. The campaign initially claimed the money had been spent on “staging, sound and light” and “advance work.”

State and federal law enforcement in 11 states are investigating allegations of voter registration fraud against the Obama campaign. ACORN workers repeatedly registered voters in the name of “Mickey Mouse,” and registered the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys twice: once in Nevada, and again in Minnesota.

A group that has worked with ACORN in the past registered a dead goldfish under the name “Princess Nudelman” in Illinois. When reporters informed Beth Nudelman, a Democrat, that her former pet was a registered voter, she said, “This person is a dead fish."

ACORN was known for its “intimidation tactics,” said independent scholar Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., who has researched Obama’s long-standing ties to the group.

Fully 30 percent of 1.3 million new voters ACORN claims to have registered this year are believed to be illegitimate.

Long shared with Newsmax some of the emails and sworn affidavits she received from Hillary supporters who witnessed first-hand the thuggish tactics employed by Obama campaign operatives in Iowa and elsewhere.

Jeff, a precinct captain for Clinton from Davenport, Iowa, thought his caucus was in the bag for his candidate, until just minutes before the voting actually began.

“From 6-6:30 p.m., it appeared as I had expected. Young, old males, females, Hispanics, whites, gay and lesbian friends arriving. Very heavily for Ms. Clinton, a fair amount for Edwards and some stragglers for Obama,” he said.

That makeup corresponded to what he had witnessed from many precinct walks he had made through local neighborhoods.

“My mind began to feel victory for my lady,’ he said. “THEN: at 6:50 p.m., over 75 people of African-American descent came walking in, passed the tables and sat in the Obama section. I knew one of them from my canvassing. I knew another one who did not live in this precinct. And aside from four or five families that live on Hillandale Road, there are no other black people in this unusually white precinct. And one of those black couples were in my Hillary section,” he said.

Thanks to the last-minute influx of unknown Obama supporters, Obama won twice the number of delegates from the precinct as Hillary Clinton.

After it was over, “a very large bus was seen in the parking lot afterwards carrying these folks back” to Illinois, Jeff said.

Obama’s flagrant busing of out-of-state caucus participants from Illinois was so obvious that even Joe Biden — today his running mate, then his rival — pointed it out at the time.

At a campaign stop before the Jan. 3 caucus at the JJ Diner in Des Moines, Biden “said what we were all thinking when he got on stage and said, ‘Hello Iowa!’ and then turned to Barack’s crowd and shouted, ‘and Hello Chicago!’” another precinct captain for Hillary told Long.

Thanks to Illinois campaign workers bused across the border into Iowa, all the precincts in eastern Iowa went for Obama, guaranteeing his win in the caucuses, Long said.

Obama supporters were also bused into northeast Iowa from Omaha, Nebraska, where Obama campaign workers were seen handing out “i-pods and free stuff: T-shirts, clothes, shoes, and free meals” to students and people in homeless shelters,” according to eyewitness reports Long collected.

In Iowa City, red and white chartered buses with Illinois license plates arrived from Illinois packed with boisterous African-American high school students, who came to caucus for Obama in Iowa after being recruited by Obama campaign workers.

2,000 complaints in Texas

In a change in the Democratic National Committee rules for this year’s election season, four states had caucuses and primaries: Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, and Texas. “But Texas is the only one that counted both the caucus result and the primary result,” Long told Newsmax. “The others didn’t count the primary at all, calling it a ‘beauty contest.’”

Because caucuses are more informal, and can last hours, they tend to favor candidates with a strong ground operation or whose supporters use strong-arm tactics to intimidate their rivals.

“There is inherent voter disenfranchisement in the caucuses,” Long said. “Women are less likely to go to caucuses than men, because they don’t like the public nature of the caucus. The elderly are less likely to go to a caucus. People who work shifts can’t go if they work the night shift. And parents with young children can’t go out for four hours on a week night. All these people are traditionally Clinton supporters,” she said.

But Obama’s victories in the caucuses weren’t the result of better organization, Long insists. “It was fraud.”

In state after state, Hillary was leading Obama in the polls right up until the last minute, when Obama won a landslide victory in the caucuses.

The discrepancies between the polls and the caucus results were stunning, Long told Newsmax. The most flagrant example was Minnesota. A Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute poll just one week before the Feb. 5 caucus gave Hillary a 7-point lead over Obama, 40-33.

But when the Minnesota caucus results were counted, Obama won by a landslide, with 66.39 percent to just 32.23 percent for Hillary, giving him 48 delegates, compared with 24 for Clinton.

“No poll is that far off,” Long told Newsmax.



Similar disparities occurred in 13 of 14 caucus states.

In Colorado and Idaho, Obama had a 2-point edge over Hillary Clinton in the polls, but won by more than 2-1 in the caucuses, sweeping most delegates.

In Kansas, Hillary had a slight edge over Obama in the polls, but Obama won 74 percent of the votes in the caucus and most of the delegates. In nearly every state, he bested the pre-caucus polls by anywhere from 12 percent to more than 30 percent.

This year’s primary rules for the Democrats favored the caucus states over the primary states.

“Caucus states made up only 1.1 million (3 percent) of all Democratic votes, but selected 626 (15 percent) of the delegates,” says Gigi Gaston, a filmmaker who has made a documentary on the caucus fraud.

In Texas alone, she says, there were more than 2,000 complaints from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards supporters of Obama’s strong-arm tactics.

One Hillary supporter, who appears in Gaston’s new film, “We Will Not Be Silenced,” says she received death threats from Obama supporters after they saw her address in an online video she made to document fraud during the Texas caucus. “People called me a whore and a skank,” she said.

John Siegel, El Paso Area Captain for Hillary, said, “Some people saw outright cheating. Other people just saw strong-arm tactics. I saw fraud.”

Another woman, who was not identified in the film, described the sign-in process. “You’re supposed to sign your names on these sheets. The sheets are supposed to be controlled, and passed out — this is kind of how you maintain order. None of that was done. The sheets were just flying all over the place. You could put in your own names. You could add your own sheets or anything. It was just filled with fraud.”

Other witnesses described how Obama supporters went through the crowds at the caucus telling Hillary supporters they could go home because their votes had been counted, when in fact no vote count had yet taken place.

“I couldn’t believe this was happening,” one woman said in the film. “I thought this only happened in Third World countries.”

On election day in Texas, Clinton campaign lawyer Lyn Utrecht issued a news release that the national media widely ignored.

“The campaign legal hot line has been flooded with calls containing specific accusations of irregularities and voter intimidation against the Obama campaign,” she wrote. “This activity is undemocratic, probably illegal, and reflects a wanton disregard for the caucus process.”

She identified 18 separate precincts where Obama operatives had removed voting packets before the Clinton voters could arrive, despite a written warning from the state party not to remove them.

The hot line also received numerous calls during the day that “the Obama campaign has taken over caucus sites and locked the doors, excluding Clinton campaign supporters from participating in the caucus,” she wrote.

“There are numerous instances of Obama supporters filing out precinct convention sign-in sheets during the day and submitting them as completed vote totals at caucus. This is expressly against the rules,” she added.

But no one seemed to care.

Despite Clinton’s three-and-a-half point win in the Texas primary — 50.87 percent to 47.39 percent —Obama beat her in the caucus the same day by 56 to 43.7 percent, giving him a 38-to-29 advantage in delegates.

Linda Hayes investigated the results at the precinct level in three state Senate districts. Under the rules of the Texas Democratic Party, participants in the caucuses had to reside in the precinct where they were caucusing, and had to have voted in the Democratic primary that same day.

When she began to see the results coming in from the precincts that were wildly at variance with the primary results, “I could see that something was wrong,” Hayes said.

Hayes says she found numerous anomalies as she went through the precinct sign-in sheets.

“Many, many, many Obama people either came to the wrong precinct, they did not sign in properly, they did not show ID, or they did not vote that day.” And yet, their votes were counted.

In a letter to Rep. Lois Capps, a Clinton supporter calling himself “Pacific John,” described the fraud he had witnessed during the caucuses.

“On election night in El Paso, it became obvious that the Obama field campaign was designed to steal caucuses. Prior to that, it was impossible for me to imagine the level of attempted fraud and disruption we would see,” he wrote.

“We saw stolen precincts where Obama organizers fabricated counts, made false entries on sign-in sheets, suppressed delegate counts, and suppressed caucus voters. We saw patterns such as missing electronic access code sheets and precinct packets taken before the legal time, like elsewhere in the state. Obama volunteers illegally took convention materials state-wide, with attempts as early as 6:30 am.”

The story of how Obama stole the Democratic Party caucuses — and consequently, the Democratic Party nomination — is important not just because it prefigures potential voter fraud in the Nov. 4 presidential election.

It’s important because it fits a pattern that Chicago journalists and a few national and international commentators have noticed in all of the elections Obama has won in his career.

NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher described Obama’s first election victory, for the Illinois state Senate, in a recent commentary that appeared in the London Telegraph.

“Mr. Obama won a seat in the state Senate in 1996 by the unorthodox means of having surrogates successfully challenge the hundreds of nomination signatures that candidates submit. His Democratic rivals, including Alice Palmer, the incumbent, were all disqualified,” Fletcher wrote.

Obama’s election to the U.S. Senate “was even more curious,” conservative columnist Tony Blankley wrote in The Washington Times.

Citing an account that appeared in The Times of London, Blankley described how Obama managed to squeeze out his main Democratic rival, Blair Hull, after divorce papers revealed allegations that Hull had allegedly made a death threat to his former wife.

Then in the general election, “lightning struck again,” Blankley wrote, when his Republican opponent, wealthy businessman Jack Ryan, was forced to withdraw in extremis after his divorce papers revealed details of his sexual life with his former wife.

Just weeks before the election, the Illinois Republican party called on Alan Keyes of Maryland to challenge Obama in the general election. Obama won a landslide victory.

“Mr. Obama’s elections are pregnant with the implications that he has so far gamed every office he has sought by underhanded and sordid means,” Blankley wrote, while “the American media has let these extraordinary events simply pass without significant comment.”

Hillary Clinton supporters, belatedly, now agree.