Via Salon.

All the news outlets are running the same, prefab statement right now.  It isn’t surprising that this raid happened, after all in the Valley if you’re not part of Gaming an “investigation” usually is just a telegraph of nastiness to come.

Whether or not there is any credibility to the allegations remains to be seen, but according to one TV news station one of the people in ACORN’s employ has stated that someone had been registering the Dallas Cowboys and that some individuals were registered multiple times.

What concerns me is the timing of the raid.  The eve of the second Presidential Debate, a do or die situation for the Republican candidate by almost all accounts, and the recent tack his campaign has taken re: “the gloves coming off,” coupled with the end of open voter registration three days ago makes this action, on its face reek of manipulation and string pulling.

I may be wrong, and if I am, I’ll gladly eat crow,, but as it stands right now, I believe that this was a timed, well thought out stunt for political capital in a state that is very likely to be switching from red to blue in Nov.

UPDATE: UPI has more.

UPDATE #2: Wapo has picked it up.

From the Wapo article (emphasis mine):

In July, the two Nevada state agencies involved in the raid, along with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Nevada, formed a task force to target voter registration and election fraud and complaints over voter registration practices, potential voter fraud, and enforcement of laws regarding voter intimidation. The federal agents were not part of Tuesday’s search, Walsh said.

Remember that this is one of the offices that was in the U.S. Attorney Purge where people were replaced with those who were more willing to play ball.  That the federal agents were not present for today’s door kicking is rather irrelevant.  As stated before, if I’m wrong there’s a heaping helping of crow for me that I’ll gladly take, but until then: the fish rots from the head down.

UPDATE #3: ACORN Responds.

From the press release:

For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual.

Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them.

. . .Today’s raid by the Secretary of State’s Office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls.

Evidently ACORN had brought potential fraudulent applications to the authorities as they came in and were identified.  If the allegations in the press release are true: inaction, foot-dragging, etc. then the situation reeks more and more the deeper you dig.  Also it appears that the subpoena delivered in Mid-September was for info on 15 employees, all of whom were involved with the “46 ‘problem application packages’ .”

Stunt-tacular!