ACORN accused of voter fraud read last night's CNN headline. Then anchor Campbell Brown gravely presented the results of the cable channel's "special investigative unit."

It's not exactly a tribute to CNN's investigative team that it was able to come up with a set of allegations against ACORN.

As I reported two days ago, the Republican attorney general in Nevada conducted a high-profile raid on the community organizing group's headquarters in Las Vegas. Twenty boxes of documents and eight computer drives were seized.

Months before that, Republicans were regularly claiming that ACORN, which aims to register mostly low-income and minority voters, is trying to steal the presidential election for Sen. Barack Obama.

Now, the GOP is widely distributing the YouTube clip of last night's CNN show, under the Banner headline, "CNN Exposes How ACORN Steals Votes & Ties to Obama."

Once again,  CNN and the Republican operatives neglect to mention this: Even if thousands of ACORN workers register thousands of non-existent voters simply to make a quick buck ”and the evidence points to that as the workers' motive” those non-existent people are NOT showing up to vote on election day.

The fraud, then, is on ACORN, who pays these workers, not on the electoral process or on the American people, as the Republicans want you to believe.

The Republicans have two goals in going after ACORN.

One, they want to tar Obama because his campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN to support its massive voter-registration drive. Given ACORN's reach around the country with potential Democratic voters, that's not surprising. (The Obama campaign now says it's no longer supporting ACORN's efforts.)

And, with the help of CNN, they want to play the guilt-by-association card. Years ago, Obama was on a team of lawyers that represented ACORN, among others, in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois for refusing to implement the federal motor-voter law.  Obama and ACORN won the case.

The Bush administration's Justice Department sided with ACORN (and Obama) in that case, so I guess it is guilty of trying to steal the election for the Democrats too?

It's not surprising that the Republican Party would try to smear Obama by attacking a community organizing group that specializes in registering low-income voters.

But CNN's "investigative team" ought to do a little of its own investigating before it buys into the Republican's claims of "voter fraud" and suggests that community groups are trying to steal the election for the Democrats."

More on this from BradBlog:  "Remember yesterday when we told you about the transcript of the Fox & Friends show yesterday morning, discussing the bogus raid of an ACORN office in Las Vegas, and then implying "more" ACORN "voter fraud" occurring in Missouri? The RNC actually issued that transcript verbatim as an official RNC press release. Remember when we told you that, given the hints within the RNC/FNC report that swing state MO was likely next on the RNC/FNC/FBI hit-list?

Well, late last night, AP delivered right on schedule, open their story with "Officials in Missouri...are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states."

The report quotes GOP tool & Jackson County (Kansas City), MO election director, Charlene Davis complaining they are "bogged down" with registrations right now, and insinuating that it's ACORN causing the problem for them.

That, even as ACORN hasn't done any registrations in Kansas City since August. (Not to mention the fact that, as we've pointed out now several days in a row, ACORN verifies every single registration form, and when they can't, they flag them as potentially fraudulent before turning them into officials, as they are required by law!)

"ACORN's Midwest director Ordower is not surprised by this wholly stated October "Surprise", and neither are we. We've been reporting on its rollout for about 4 years. It was only a matter of time before it showed up again in our old home state of MO --- not coincidentally, the home state of the GOP's "voter fraud" cappo, Thor Hearne."

It looks like the Republican raids have gone national and the McSame campaign is juming on the bandwagon.

Speaking of voter fraud; right wing Republican screech owl Ann Coulter committed voter fraud and was never held accountable.

As Scott Horton at Harper's writes: "So, what happens when a prominent Republican figure is caught red-handed engaging in voter fraud? Ãœber-Republican Ann Coulter was discovered to have falsified a voter registration in Palm Beach County, Florida, and to have voted.

However, in the Coulter case, the U.S. attorney's office showed no interest in the case. State law enforcement officials did, however. And today we learn that the criminal investigation was closed”as a result of a direct intervention by federal officials supporting Coulter.

So there you have the Gonzales/Rove Justice Department at work. Voting fraud involving someone suspected of voting as a Democrat ”throw the book at them and best do it right in the midst of an election campaign for maximum benefit to the Party. Voting fraud involving a Republican activist ”support efforts to stonewall local law enforcement and then intervene to shut things down. Welcome to Bushworld."

And from AlterNet more about the questionable ACORN raids and Republican Pinocchio pundit, Ann Coulter, and her proven case of third degree felony voter fraud.