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From this Friday's The Young Turks -- It’s no accident that Republicans hired firm being investigated for voter fraud :

Cenk has been covering the issue of voter fraud all year, and we’ve shown one example after another about how rare it actually is. Except, it turns out, for a company hired by the Republican National Committee to work in seven swing states.

“It’s not like this is a one-time accident, like, oops, golly gee, we just happened to hire a guy who happened to do something wrong,” Cenk says. “No, they hire him to do something wrong.”

Karoli already broke down a good deal of this story for C&L here, much of which Cenk touched on in the segment above -- Stupid GOP Voter Registration Tricks Continue in Swing States.

Thankfully this story is making its way into the national news, as we saw with some of Michael Isikoff's reporting, which he discussed with Chuck Todd this Friday -- RNC Cuts Off Firm in Wake of Voter Registration Fraud Allegations.

And for anyone trying to follow this story, the most comprehensive reporting has been from Brad Friedman, who you can follow on Twitter here. And you can read all of his reporting at his blog here -- The Brad Blog.

Here are his latest on this scandal:

VIDEO: My Appearance Breaking the News About the Nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal on Thom Hartmann TV Thursday Night

NC GOP Joins FL in Firing RNC's Romney-Tied Voter Registration Firm Accused of Fraud

KPFK 'BradCast': Palm Beach Election Supervisor Says FL Sec. of State Yet to Return Call About GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal

FL GOP FIRES ROMNEY CONSULTANT'S VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM AFTER FRAUDULENT FORMS REPORTED IN PALM BEACH COUNTY

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Republicans love to complain about voter fraud, but it seems when there are real problems with rigged elections, actual voter fraud or voter suppression, it's almost always their side that's doing it -- RNC Cuts Off Firm Over Voter Registration Fraud Allegations:

The Republican National Committee has ended its relationship with Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm it paid at least $2.9 million to register voters in several states this year, after investigators launched a probe into potentially fraudulent registration forms submitted by the company.

NBC reported on Thursday that the RNC dropped the firm after a Florida elections official referred more than 100 questionable voter registration forms to investigators.

“We’ve made it clear we’re not doing business with these guys anymore,” RNC spokesman Sean Spicer told NBC’s Michael Isikoff. “We’ve come out pretty strong against this kind of stuff — and we have zero tolerance for this.”

The firm, NBC reports, is run by GOP consultant Nathan Sproul, who has not responded to TPM’s requests for comment. Sproul’s other firm, Lincoln Strategy Group, has been paid by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

And here's more from Isikoff's report at NBC -- RNC cuts ties with firm over voter fraud allegations:

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Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) on Friday accused the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of favoring his Democratic rival, Elizabeth Warren, because they complied with a 1993 bipartisan federal law that requires states to provide voter registrations to people seeking public assistance like welfare.

New York-based think tank Demos in May sued Massachusetts and eight other states for not complying with the National Voter Registration Act. The state responded by sending out more than 500,000 voter registrations to welfare recipients at taxpayers' expense.

On Friday, Brown sent out a statement demanding that Warren reimburse the state for $276,000 because her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, chaired the board at Demos.

"It’s been disturbing for a lot of people to learn that the state’s welfare department undertook an unprecedented voter registration drive at the behest of Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and the organization she represents," Brown said. "It is clear that this was done to aid Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign. Professor Warren has more than $13 million dollars in her campaign account, and if she wants to mail every welfare recipient a voter registration form, she should do so at her own expense, not taxpayers’."

"She should immediately reimburse the state for the cost of this mailing and stop playing politics with the taxpayers’ money."

But Warren told WFXT that Demos was working to enforce the law before her daughter joined the organization.

"No one like to see attacks on their family," the Democratic candidate said. "But this is about a law that's been in place for 20 years."

Warren campaign senior adviser Doug Rubin explained to NECN that Brown was outraged over the voter registrations because welfare recipients were more likely to register as Democrats.

"He believes that if a certain group of voters vote, that he's not going to have as good a chance to win this election - and I think that is part of what this is about," Rubin insisted.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Brown acknowledged that registering welfare recipients would only hurt his bid to stay in office.

"It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message," Brown said.

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Any time someone has to use James O'Keefe and one of his phoney sting videos to validate their argument, they don't have one, which is exactly what Heritage Foundation flack Brian Darling did this Monday to justify the GOP's voter suppression laws they've been passing across the country: Heritage Foundation ‘Expert’ Cannot Cite Any Examples Of Actual Voter Fraud:

In an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown this morning, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Brian Darling argued for the importance of Florida-style voter suppression laws in order to stop potential voter fraud. But when pressed by Todd to identify any actual examples of voter fraud, Darling appeared stumped:

DARLING: And there’ve been examples of voter fraud… in Florida. Look at ACORN.

TODD: Where is this voter fraud? I mean it is not this giant…

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So what does a Republican politician do when they can't give a good answer on why they think it's acceptable to disenfranchise millions of people with a voter ID law they just sponsored? Why blame it all on a Democratic sell out and Blue Dog, Artur Davis, who was rejected by the electorate in 2010, naturally.

Politics Nation's Al Sharpton did a good job of hitting Alabama State Rep. Kerry Rich for just that during an interview this Wednesday on MSNBC and with pushing back at the notion that invoking Davis justified the impact of the law and the fact that it is designed to do exactly one thing, and that's keep people from voting. As Sharpton noted during the interview, actual cases of voter fraud are virtually nonexistent, but that didn't keep Rich from insisting repeatedly that it was a problem. Of course there's voter fraud going on, because Artur Davis told me so. Pitiful. And these guys claim to be the party of "personal responsibility." Except of course they never want to take responsibility for anything they do. Either blame it on someone else, deny the facts and if that doesn't work, just make up your own alternate reality.

Sharpton wasn't buying it and Rep. Rich looked none too happy by the time the interview was over after Al's grilling.

Transcript below the fold.

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From TPM's Livewire... score another one tonight for the good guys -- AP: Maine Voters Say Yes To Same Day Registration:

Voters in Maine have approved a ballot measure on allowing same day voter registration. The state had previously moved to require voters register no later than two days before an election. The state Republican Party had run ads urging the issue’s defeat, by suggesting that pro-gay rights groups supported it.

From this Thursday's Thom Hartmann show, Hartmann debates Matthew Vandum who apparently thinks the only people who should be allowed to vote to promote their own interests are the rich. Here's more on Vandum from TPM:

Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals':

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

Most conservative criticism of voter registration drives aimed at poor and minority communities has been under the guise of worries about voter fraud. Vadum's column is notable because he isn't just pretending to be worried about the nearly non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud -- he just doesn't think poor people should be voting.

And for a little blast from the past, here's more from The Daily Show when John Oliver interviewed this same guy back in 2008 below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow breaks down who is behind the smears against ACORN and why, and how dishonest the reporting has been by the right wing media on the topic.

MADDOW: It may seem like the only thing happening in Congress these days is the never-ending fight over and of health reform. But if you happen to be watching the House floor at 3:00 this afternoon, this is what you would have seen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE KING ®, IOWA: Who has consistently called for the clean-

up of the corrupt ACORN, the criminal enterprise ACORN and all of their affiliates? It‘s been people on the Republican side of the aisle that have done that. This is the star of ACORN. He is—he is the lead chief organizer. He is the—he is the person who told the people at ACORN, “I will invite you into the—and we will be setting the agenda for America,” even before he is inaugurated as president of the United States. This is the man who worked for ACORN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: This is the star of ACORN!

That was paranoid Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa, today, railing against the community organizing group ACORN, and falsely accusing President Obama of being ACORN‘s lead chief organizer. This sort of animus toward ACORN is something that‘s been percolating on the right for a really long time, but it‘s broken open recently as even Democrats in Congress have decided to go along with efforts to defund and demonize ACORN, and some Republican governors have even enthusiastically defunded ACORN as well, despite the fact that those governors didn‘t fund them in the first place.

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From Democracy Now--ACORN Head Bertha Lewis Vows Action on Employee Misconduct, But Warns Group Targeted by “Modern-Day McCarthyism”. The Lou Dobbs, Glenn Becks and other right wing screechers of the world should be so proud. We need a few more Amy Goodmans and a few less of them to cut through the propoganda attacking one of the only groups out there advocating for poor people and minorities that don't have much of a voice in our society.

AMY GOODMAN: The anti-poverty group ACORN is coming under a firestorm of criticism after the group’s workers were caught on camera appearing to offer advice to a pimp and prostitute. The video was a major strike for conservatives, who for years have accused ACORN of voter registration fraud during presidential elections. Republicans are calling for a complete cutoff of all federal funding to the group, which helps poor people fight foreclosures, fix tax problems, and register to vote. We speak with ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis.

[....]

AMY GOODMAN: Yet the video came out, and you had some of your biggest supporters in Congress actually voting against ACORN, saying you shouldn’t get funding, because they were appalled by what they saw. How do you put—

BERTHA LEWIS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —these two together?

BERTHA LEWIS: Well, first of all, we are suffering from a modern-day type of McCarthyism. You know, have you now or have you ever been associated with ACORN? This has been repeated in the right-wing Republican echo chamber, that somehow or another we are to be discredited.

We are the largest membership-based community organization of low- and moderate-income people of color, black and brown folks, in this country. We have been around for forty years. We’ve saved thousands of homes. We’ve helped raise the wages of tens of thousands and now hundreds of thousands of people. And also, we have been able to make sure that millions of disenfranchised black and brown folks in this country actually vote and they are actually counted.

So, for us, we know that there is a race element to trying to stop us. I mean, look at what’s happened with Van Jones and Eric Holder and Judge Sotomayor. We know that we have been used as a surrogate to attack President Obama. The teabaggers have had signs with ACORN at teabag parties, and we never even were around or there.

And it’s not going to stop. We understand that. And our work is not going to stop. So, the relative ten percent of our entire funding that would come through the government, sure, we are going to fight back against this, because we know that this is an unfair attack. And it’s been going on from the Republican side and the right-wing side. However, our core work will never stop.

And we know that—being the largest organization of black and brown folks, people of color, in this country, we know that we are a target. But we meet that challenge. And if you were to hear the racist, sexist, just horrible vitriol that are visited on our offices and on the phone, in emails, threats left at our door, hate mail letters sent, you know, it is very clear that people on the right, and Republicans in particular, are very upset that ACORN is effective and that it’s been around for forty years and that we are a powerful organization.

Full transcript at Democracy Now.