Remember October, 2008? Remember how McCain and Palin went all shrilly over ACORN allegedly fraudulently registering voters before they didn't? The only thing that stopped them (not that it stopped the shrilly teabaggers and Republicans later) was the arrest of Mark Jacoby on October 20, 2008. He was arrested for fraud and perjury, pled guilty on June 16, 2009 to voter-registration fraud and is now serving 3 years probation. Sort of. Actually, not so much.
Keith Olbermann's report in the video above and Nicole Belle's post on Mr. Jacoby and his connections to the John McCain campaign, Steve Poizner, and Nathan Sproul are worth reviewing for some background on how the Republicans turned up the noise on ACORN while actually engaging in voter fraud here in California. For all the heat Republicans put on ACORN, the only actual voter fraud conviction was Mark Jacoby's. He was sentenced to 30 days of Cal-Trans work and 3 years probation.
While detangling the finances of the California Republican Party I ran into Jacoby again, apparently doing business as Star Petition Services.
The following quote is from an anonymous posting. At first, I discounted its veracity but the narrative follows an established pattern -- one that was exposed in 2004, and again in 2005, and finally led to an arrest in 2008. The writer answered an ad on Craigslist for a job collecting petition signatures. What happens next could have been lifted right off the pages of a June, 2009 newspaper article about Jacoby's plea.
Written on January 10, 2010:
We arrived at the location and found a place to park. Our "experienced" trainer took us to the front of the Walmart where there were already 6 other people (from other companies/groups) gathering signatures. Because of the high failure rate of signatures gathered, the printed material we were given suggested that for each 10 signatures gathered, 7 of them should be for people who also registered to vote. That would mean that 70% of the people are not already registered. While in practice they limited (required?) 3 per 10, that's still a huge number of people who were willing to stop and sign your petition but prior to that never even registered to vote. During the training, we were told we would not receive anything for voter registration cards returned. However, our "trainer" let it be known he would in fact get $4.00 for every card that came back as "Republican," and spent quite some time showing us how to make people let you put down Republican even when they were not.
How did I find this post? I did a search for the status of Jacoby's corporation, YPM, LLC in Florida, and found that it was active, had been reinstated, the address changed, and the mailing address for Mark Jacoby changed to PO Box 42038, Los Angeles, CA 90042. (PDF image)
A Google search on that address led me straight to the post about Star Petition Services, establishing a direct link between Mark Jacoby and Star Petition Services.
The mention of the "trainers'" first names sealed it.
The two main people seemed to be a female named Denny (who provided the "training" below) and some guy named Mark who we were to meet later that evening.
Just to be sure, I did a search on Star Petition Group, LLC in the California database, and look what I found:
The address on the California registration ties to the address on the Florida registration for YPM, LLC. Not much doubt in my mind that we have Mark Jacoby, voter-registration fraudster and party-slammer back in business. It's also no surprise that his old buddy Steve Poizner is right in the thick of things, too. Old partnerships seem to die hard.
In my next post, I'll follow the money through California, Arizona, and back to California again to try and figure out who is funding this voter registration drive for fun and profit.
And who is Travis Germain? Stay tuned...
