Fera Dayani, California Democratic Party

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Recently the Sacramento County Republican Party has come under fire for what appears to be a massive case of voter registration fraud.  Reports point to the strong likelihood the Republican Party’s vendor was signing up thousands of voters and then registering them as Republicans without the explicit knowledge of the registrants.

More than 3,000 Sacramento County registration cards have been deemed invalid as a result of this, tying up limited government resources and costing taxpayers thousands of dollars in lost time it takes for County workers to verify these voter registration cards and review them for fraud.

But Representative Dan Lungren isn’t about to condemn an apparently fraudulent Republican voter registration operation taking place in his district.

You see, Lungren is in a tough fight in the same Congressional district where many of these voters may have been unknowingly and unethically signed up as Republicans. He needs every vote he can get and if that means that new voters are being signed up as Republicans instead of Democrats, well, that’s not his problem.  

According to Lungren these thousands of registrants must have filled out the voter registration card inaccurately and it couldn’t have been the vendor’s fault – evidence to the contrary be damned.

More than anything, Lungren's defense of the potentially felonious operation illustrates his deep-seeded fear of losing his seat and his desperate need to increase Republican registration numbers – or to decrease Democratic registration – at any cost.  There is little denying that the Republican firm, working in large part to drive up numbers in Lungren’s district, submitted fraudulent voter registration cards. Lungren’s response is to pass the buck and blame the voters themselves.

Sounds like the ramblings of a man whose days in office are numbered.