UNDER THE RADAR – AT 6:23 P.M. ET:  We have, naturally, not seen anything about this in the mainstream media, but we've been aware of it from other sources.  Fox News reports on a George Soros-funded project that's already had an impact.

The obscure office of secretary of state within the several states can actually have substantial power over the way elections are conducted, votes are counted, voters registered, and winning candidates certified.  The Soros forces are targeting these offices, with success:

Since 2006 the Democracy Alliance, a left leaning influence group funded by George Soros among others, has had remarkable success in targeting and claiming Secretary of State's offices in 11 of 13 critical states they targeted, including Ohio, Minnesota and Iowa.

Called the Secretary of State Project (SOSP) its aim is to target and capture the obscure, often overlooked office and implement election rules changes that give democrats a better chance of winning a plurality. Among those changes that SOSP calls "election protection," are a loosening of voter registration requirements and a lessening of efforts to prevent fraudulent voting, according to Matthew Vadum, a political analyst with the Capitol Research Center.

And they have an ally in Eric Holder's Justice Department, which dropped a slam-dunk voter intimidation suit against the Black Panthers, in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt.

'The thing that is amazing is that they can get the office for as little $100,000 in campaign funding because no one pays attention to it, and they get to control election opportunities in a state. It is cheap," Vadum said.

He said SOSP is currently targeting three states in the 2010 election: California, Michigan and Minnesota. In total they count for 82 electoral votes.

More change we can believe in:

Perhaps nowhere is the impact of the new influence of the Secretary of State had a more profound than in Minnesota, where Mark Richie defeated incumbent Republican Secretary of Sate Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006.

Ritchie, a former community organizer, said at his inauguration that he owed his upset victory to the Secretary of State project.

According to Kiffmeyer, as soon as Ritchie took office he began dismantling much of the framework that had been assembled to ensure honest voting in the state. It was that loosening of election controls, she argues, that lead to the eight month standoff between incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken in what was one of the closest Senate race ever.

And...

In a telephone interview from Minneapolis, Dan McGrath and Jeff Davis, who have formed a small research-watchdog group called the Minnesota Majority, say that their computer assisted-examination of the voting records from the 2008 election show that Al Franken's 312 vote margin of victory can be attributed to Ritchie's dismantling election rules. Specifically they charge that Franken's victory can be attributed entirely to illegally cast votes by convicted felons.

COMMENT:  I'd hate to see America turned into a third-world democracy by massive voter fraud, but I'm afraid we're headed that way.  I hope this story gets circulated further, and is featured on Fox's TV news reports.

February 1, 2010