Soros Funded Group Forces States To Fund Special Voter Registration Drives For Welfare Recipients

The Takers vs. The Makers indeed. It's what this election is all about.

The left is pulling out all the stops to win this one. Their latest gambit is using lawfare to force states to make special and sustained efforts to register welfare recipients...at taxpayer expense.

The key group involved is the ACORN affiliated Demos foundation funded by George Soros. It still lists President Barack Obama on its masthead as part of its founding board of directors.

What they've done is to find a poster child on welfare in various states who claims they were not offered a voter registration form, per Bill Clinton's 'motor-voter' legislation from the 1990's. Then they've sued, and forced state governments to spend taxpayer dollars to go to extraordinary lengths to register welfare recipients.

As Bill Jacobsen relates, what's happened in Massachusetts is particularly egregious,because the Massachusetts state government is not only actively complying but enthusiastically behind these efforts:

The news broke today that Massachusetts has taken extraordinary efforts in response to a lawsuit by a former ACORN affiliated, Soros-funded group to register 500,000 welfare recipients to vote (who would have thought there were that many people on welfare considering Mass has only 6.5 million residents).

Republicans cried foul, as this was a transparent attempt to register Warren’s base, while no similar efforts were made to register voters who might be more favorably inclined towards Brown.

Rob Eno of Red Mass Group, however, took the story to an entirely new level by discovering that the group in question is run by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter:

Elizabeth Warren’s daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi is leaving nothing to chance in the 2012 election for her mother. Warren Tyagi, the chair of the George Soros funded Demos Foundation, has bankrolled, through Demos, former members of ACORN in their pursuit to have the Commonwealth’s welfare agency perform a voter registration drive. The Boston Herald has the story, although they missed the Warren familial connection….

The article goes on to show that NEU4J ( New England For Justice United) was aided financially in this effort by Warren Tyagi, who runs...wait for it..Demos.

The name demos, by the way is a cynical but entirely accurate inside joke. In Greek, it means 'the mob'.

NEU4J, along with the NAACP New England Area Conference, reached an agreement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on July 5 — just two months after the suit was filed, which means they essentially rolled over and gave NEU4J pretty much whatever they wanted..

The deal requires state officials to mail vote registration forms to the 477,944 welfare recipients who were on the books between June 1, 2011 and May 31, 2012. The mailings will cost the state $275,844.

Massachusetts also agreed to run public service announcements on TV and radio stations from mid-July through mid-October publicizing the registration push. And welfare office waiting rooms, which will soon be equipped with TVs, must make announcements explaining how to register to vote.

The office of Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, who was also named in the suit must take part in three voter outreach activities in communities with a high concentration of welfare recipients.

Let's chew this over for a minute..in a state with a close senate race at hand, the daughter and son-in-law of one of the candidates are in charge of spending tax payer dollars to register her base!

GOP incumbent Scott Brown had it exactly right:

“I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another,” Brown said in a statement this morning. “This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.”

Not only that, but the money and manpower the state of Massachusetts is spending could and should be considered campaign contributions.

Also, as Professor Jacobsen reveals: the claim was not that people were not offered registration forms, but that Mass officials should have take more steps after over 90% of welfare recipients said they already were registered to vote (far above the actual number). The Sec. of State attached to the Answer the steps which already had been taken to assure adherence with the so-called Motor-Voter law. Rather than defend the case, Mass just decided to agree to a mass mailing.

I'll just bet they did.

And it isn't just Massachusetts. So far Demos has sued 9 states, including the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

The cases are still pending in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Louisiana but settlements have been reached in Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Indiana and Georgia. Meanwhile, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Mississippi have all agreed to comply without being sued.

This, of course isn't the Democrat's normal tactic of voter fraud. This is just a way of attempting to maximize their base..at taxpayer expense.

It remains to be seen how successful this will end up being on election day.