I have to interrupt our regularly scheduled fretting about the budget to follow up on a story from last year.  In September of 2008, the San Bernadino County Democratic Central Committee noticed something fishy going on in the registration of GOP voters.  The county was swimming against the Democratic tide. Why? Well, it turns out that a firm called Young Political Majors(YPM) was slamming voters, changing their registration without their consent in order to get $5 from the CA Rep. Party(CRP).

Basically, the firm got voters to sign an unrelated petition, and then asked them to sign on a line right below “for confirmation.” The “confirmation” line was, of course, actually a voter registration card. YPM would then fill out the card, switching them to GOP so they would pocket the $5. This scheme was repeated in at least Riverside County, perhaps in more locations as well. YPM had used the scheme throughout Florida before getting themselves kicked out.

Then California Democratic Party Chair Art Torres sent the registrar of voters (and various law enforcement agencies) a letter, outlining the case, and asking for a quick resolution to the case.

Progress was made swiftly, as in October, Jacoby was arrested for voter registration fraud. While Jacoby wasn’t charged for the slamming, he was charged for lying on his own registration card.

Keep in mind that all of this was occurring at the same time as the Republicans were screaming bloody murder about ACORN was “committing fraud” by turning in voter registration cards that they were suspicious of. Never mind that ACORN did what was legally required of them by turning them in and flagging them for the voter registrar.  Just because they followed the rules doesn’t mean that you can’t do a good ransacking of an ACORN office for kicks.  

Well, to loop this story back around to this week’s events, Marc Jacoby copped a guilty plea on a yesterday:

Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, registered to vote at Los Angeles addresses that were not his own. State law requires petition circulators to be qualified voters. Jacoby will also be required to show proof he is registered at his correct address.

The charge will get him a bit of probation time, but the bigger charge of slamming is yet to be prosecuted.  It’s not clear what the holdup on that case, and whether there will be such a prosecution.  However, the evidence is rather stark, as an LA Times random sample found that of 46 people they contacted, 37 were misled into the voter registration change.

Presumably, any charge related to the San Bernadino slamming would fall to SB County District Attorney Michael Ramos. If we hear anything else, we will be sure to follow up on the story.

Mark Jacoby, head of the firm Young Political Majors that has been implicated in the growing scandal over Republican fraud in voter registrations. The Secretary of State’s Election Fraud Investigation Unit led the inquiry that resulted in the arrest and had this to say in an emailed press release:

The owner of a signature-gathering firm that works across California was arrested in Ontario today on suspicion of committing voter registration fraud, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced.

Mark Anthony Jacoby, who owns the firm known as Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested after allegedly registering himself to vote, once in 2006 and again in 2007, at an address where did not live.  An investigation by the Secretary of State’s Election Fraud Investigation Unit revealed that Jacoby twice registered to vote at the address of a childhood home in Los Angeles although he no longer lived there….

“Voter registration fraud is a serious issue, which is why I vigorously investigate all allegations of elections fraud,” said Secretary Bowen, California’s chief elections officer.  “Where there’s a case to be made, I will forward it to law enforcement for criminal prosecution.”

This arrest comes on the heels of recent media coverage of YPM’s fraudulent tactics sometimes known as “slamming” – where voters are duped into changing their party registrations, or where their registration is simply changed by YPM without the voter’s knowledge:

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them — more than 80% — said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

Jacoby’s arrest does not stem from those specific charges, which are still under investigation, but the fact that Jacoby himself was fraudulently registered is damning.

It should also lead us to ask why Steve Poizner is funding YPM’s efforts.

But then that’s the modern Republican Party for you – making baseless charges against someone else (i.e. ACORN) to hide their own criminal behavior.