The RW has been starting preemptive claims of fraud for days

[Are_grits_groceries]

What's New? Lacking Evidence, Conservatives Again Stoke Voter Fraud Fears

Another election, another boatload of evidence-free Republican claims of voter fraud...

In part because it's the closest of the major races, the New Jersey governor's race has been the focus of the GOP's dire warnings. Here's how the campaign to stoke fears over voter fraud in the Garden State has ramped up in recent days:

• First, Jim Geraghty of National Review sounded the alarm last Thursday: State Democrats, he fretted, had asked that absentee voters whose signatures on their ballot request form didn't match that on their registration form -- 2300 people in all -- be given provisional ballots, rather than have their votes thrown out if they couldn't be contacted by local election officials . Geraghty warned: "Suspicious minds see the as an attempt to create a pool of emergency votes to be used if Christie holds a small lead on Election Night."

<snip>

• Then yesterday, Fox picked up the torch, with a lengthy segment on the threat of voter fraud not just in New Jersey but around the country, entitled: "How easy is it to steal an election with absentee ballots?" The only tangible new piece of evidence that Fox came up with was this: a former Denver Elections Commissioner, who now runs a website devoted to stoking fears about corrupt elections, told viewers that some people shoveling her driveway said they'd heard that "six or seven absentee ballots were sent to dead people."

• Then, the centerpiece: A Wall Street Journal column by John Fund, the GOP's perennial voter fraud watchdog, asserting that "plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests." For instance? "Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state." It goes on in that vein, with Fund echoing Geraghty in latching onto the Democrats' provisional ballot request as potential evidence of rampant fraud.

• Fund followed that up with an appearance on Glenn Beck, where, among other things, he laid out one specific voter fraud strategy:

People are going door to door in parts of Camden with Hispanics that don't have very much knowledge of English, and they're saying, "We have a new way for you to vote, la nueva forma de votar; just fill out these papers.

<snip>
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/whats_new_lacking_evidence_conservatives_again_sto.php

Now Hoffman is starting to talk about fraud right on cue.

[Vincardog]

1. We should get them to agree that we need open transparent elections now END BBV Paper ballots Hand

COUNTS

[HopeHoops]

2. Can't wait for Stewart, Colbert, and Olberman to play with that!

They can just juxtapose the pre-election "DEM FRAUD WARNING" shit against the "Major victory for GOP, FAILURE FOR OBAMA" shit. The comedy writes itself.