Celebrating Voter Fraud

By Matthew Vadum

Cincinnati-area Democrats made headlines last week when they embraced one of their own, serial vote fraud offender Melowese Richardson, after getting her released early from prison.

At a “voting rights” rally, National Action Network (NAN) president Al Sharpton and Bobby Hilton, president of NAN’s Cincinnati chapter, celebrated criminal overachiever Richardson who was sentenced to five years behind bars last July for multiple counts of fraudulently casting ballots. 

Richardson had bragged that she voted twice in the 2012 presidential election. She also voted illegally in three elections by using the names of others, including her sister who has been comatose for a decade.

Richardson may as well have been embraced by President Obama himself because Sharpton is virtually a roving ambassador for the Obama administration.

While the Trayvon Martin case was unfolding, at the April 2012 annual convention of Sharpton’s sleazy, race-baiting protest outfit, National Action Network, in the nation’s capital, members of Obama’s cabinet praised Sharpton effusively. The leftist group hug came as Sharpton’s group was engaged in a campaign of vilification and public relations vigilantism against George Zimmerman, who was ultimately acquitted in the fatal shooting of Martin.

Attorney General Eric Holder thanked Sharpton “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.”

Some Americans believe they are entitled to vote more than once in order to exact revenge against a society they feel did them or their ancestors wrong. Some left-wingers say that election fraud is justifiable because in a sense it compensates the poor for having little political power. This attitude dominated the leadership of the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Democrats, in particular, have long considered it their right to commit voter fraud and they do it every election, so it’s hardly surprising that they honor people like Richardson.

Voter fraud, also known as vote fraud, election fraud, and electoral fraud, refers to the specific offenses of fraudulent voting, impersonation, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery, destroying already cast ballots, and a multitude of crimes related to the electoral process.

The activists of the Left only care about observing laws and technicalities when they advance their cause. Left-wing activists and think tanks such as the Brennan Center for Justice constantly churn out studies and reports financed by radical left-wing hedge fund manager George Soros, purporting to prove that voter fraud is as phony as the Loch Ness Monster. They claim that those on the Right want to crack down on voter fraud solely as a means of preventing the poor and minorities from voting.

At the rally Hilton called Richardson to the stage to welcome her home after NAN campaigned to free her. The group argued that she received an inappropriately harsh sentence because she was black.

At the event Sharpton accused Republicans of trying to suppress the vote, saying it “is all a scheme to disempower and disenfranchise the vote in Ohio.” The MSNBC bloviator and racial arsonist said, “Nobody gave us the right to vote and nobody is going to give it to us now. We fought for it and we’re going to fight for our right to keep it.”

Sharpton received standing ovations from the crowd of close to 500.

Richardson is without remorse. When her excess voting came to light after she publicly boasted that she voted twice for President Obama in 2012, she claimed she did nothing wrong.

“There’s absolutely no intent on my part to commit voter fraud,” said Richardson, whose unlawfully cast ballots canceled out lawful ballots and thereby deprived other citizens of their right to vote.

Richardson’s voter fraud conviction wasn’t her first brush with the law. The recidivist was previously convicted of beating someone in a bar fight; of drunk driving; of stealing; and of threatening to kill a witness in a criminal law proceeding.

At her voter fraud sentencing last summer, Hamilton County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert P. Ruehlman, told Richardson she had betrayed the public’s trust.

“You were the lifeguard, to make sure the system was conducted fairly, the greatest system on earth, the free election system,” he said. “Your job was to make sure it was conducted fairly, but what did you do? You used this position of lifeguard, this position of trust to vote illegally.”

Soros also helped to underwrite Richardson’s legal defense and contributed to an advocacy group in which she was involved. The public interest law firm known as the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, which took on Richardson’s case, received funding through one of Soros’s philanthropies, the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which has given the group $125,000 since 2009. Another extreme-left philanthropy, the Ford Foundation, has given the Ohio Justice and Policy Center $1,150,000 since 2006.

Richardson is active in an ACORN-like Cincinnati-based activist group called Communities United for Action.

The Obama administration has funneled taxpayer money to its friends at Communities United for Action. In 2010 the Environmental Protection Agency gave the group $25,000 to indoctrinate local children about “environmental justice.”

Communities United for Action is part of a larger Saul Alinsky-inspired organizing network called National People’s Action (NPA). NPA makes no bones about its desire to overthrow what remains of America’s free enterprise system.

Activists from the NPA network tried to silence presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan in the past election cycle, aggressively heckling the two during speeches.

Left-wing activists call this “accountability,” an Orwellian euphemism. Accountability, as they use the term, is not about transparency or good government. Following the lead of the so-called father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse, who favored silencing non-leftists, accountability actions focus on harassing and intimidating political enemies, disrupting them and forcing them to waste their resources dealing with activists’ provocations.

Soros underwrites NPA’s agitation through the Foundation to Promote Open Society, giving the group $1 million since 2010. So does the Woods Fund of Chicago ($90,000 since 2009) on whose board Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers served.

At least one Soros ally also funds NPA. Patricia Bauman, a member of Soros’s shady donors’ collaborative for radical billionaires that is called the Democracy Alliance, has given NPA ($15,000 since 2012) through the Bauman Family Foundation. Other institutional funders of NPA include the Arca Foundation ($686,420 since 2010), W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($300,000 since 2011), Public Welfare Foundation ($200,000 since 2010), New World Foundation ($182,500 since 2010), Marguerite Casey Foundation ($100,000 since 2011), and Barbra Streisand Foundation ($10,000 since 2010).

Former Justice Department official J. Christian Adams said the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute Richardson “is the latest example of [Attorney General Eric] Holder’s department excusing lawlessness in federal elections and abandoning law abiding Americans.”

Federal law, Adams notes, makes it a felony to vote more than once for president in a given election. Under federal law Richardson could receive a prison term of 25 years for voting six times for Obama.

“The lack of DOJ action against an unrepentant federal vote fraudster combined with Richardson’s lionization by Sharpton and the organization that sponsored [last week’s] rally demonstrates how the Justice Department is facilitating a culture of brazen criminality on the eve of the 2014 midterm elections.”

And so people like Melowese Richardson will continue breaking the law by committing voter fraud, canceling out, or effectively stealing the votes of law-abiding citizens.

Perhaps the Obama White House will give Richardson a medal.