A local Harris County activist group named The The King Street Patriots built the True The Vote Summit upon their experiences of attempting to “true” the 2010 election in Harris County, Texas.

Back before the recent election, the KSP got together to try and find out what sort of shape the voting rolls were in Harris County, Texas were. What they found was shocking. Due to its investigation, an ACORN organizer was exposed for having registered over 23,000 fake voters in the county. The story made national news.

With that success under their belts the KSPers and their chief Catherine Engelbrecht decided to step it up a notch. And so, during the 2010 midterm election, the group set out to organize citizen poll watchers to monitor every polling place in Harris County. The goal was to make sure that what went on in each polling place followed the letter of the law, was free of cheating and fraud, and was open and welcoming for every voter.

Naturally the floodgates of hate were opened upon them. Leftist agitators let loose a smear campaign against these patriotic folks calling them haters, racists, and worse. The Black Panthers even came out in force to intimidate both the KSP and the voters they were observing.

The attacks on the True The Vote Summit have also continued unabated by the left today. So we know how the left is worried about this movement. Vote fraud is almost exclusively practiced by Democrats and left-wing activists in this country, so an effort like this threatens their operations.

Despite all the attacks they underwent, the King Street Patriots were buoyed by their success in stopping vote fraud during the 2010 elections and with that experience to guide them they now want to offer their assistance and to relay the tools they’ve developed to stop vote fraud to any and every state in the union. The result is the True The Vote Summit to be held March 25 and 26 in Houston, Texas.

According to the event website:

Election fraud attacks the heart of our political system and threatens our rights as citizens.

When True the Vote began monitoring elections last fall in Houston, we were shocked at the fraud we discovered. Precinct judges often failed to check voters IDs, and some even filled out ballots to “help” people vote. These violations are just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.

If you are one of the millions of Americans outraged by corruption at the highest levels of our nation’s government, then you can help us stop fraud where it begins – at the polling place, in the precinct where you live, in the streets of your city.

If you care enough to help, contact us today to become part of our action plan. A commitment of just a few hours is all it takes to help restore truth and integrity to our elections.

Appearing to speak at the True The Vote National Summit will be New Media Mogul Andrew Breitbart, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, former Dept. of Justice attorney and Philadelphia Black Panthers whistleblower J. Christian Adams, ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCreif, former FEC commissioner Hans Von Spakovsky and others.

If you are ready to do your duty as an American to, as in Ben Franklin’s warning, “have our Republic and keep it” make haste to sign up to join the True The Vote Summit this month.

Real Estate Tycoon Bruce Ratner and ACORN's Bertha Lewis

To get his way, Ratner turned to his buddies in big government, specifically the Empire State Development Corporation, a controversial state agency with the power to bypass zoning laws and seize private property via eminent domain. In other words, this is a classic case of eminent domain abuse. Ratner isn’t building a bridge or a tunnel or any other legitimate public project that might justify the forceful taking of private property by the state. He wants to build a basketball arena, sell tickets to the games (not to mention broadcast rights, concessions, and luxury boxes), and collect a big fat profit.

So what in the world is ACORN, a self-described champion of “social and economic justice” and “low- and moderate-income people” doing in bed with a shady corporate powerbroker like Bruce Ratner? Let’s follow the money.

In May 2005, ACORN entered into a contract with Ratner “to publicly support the [Atlantic Yards] Project by, among other things, appearing with the Developer before the Public Parties, community organizations and the media as part of a coordinated effort to realize and advance the Project.” As ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis admitted to an interviewer from Regional Labor Review, ACORN provides Ratner with “political cover–let’s face it.”

In exchange for this “political cover,” which has included large numbers of noisy ACORN members present at every Atlantic Yards public hearing, press conference, and media event–including an August 2006 event trumpeting “community support” for the project where Bertha Lewis acted as MC–Ratner pledged to include 2,250 units of “affordable housing” in the project. ACORN in turn plans to market these units, screen applicants, and oversee a housing lottery to fill the vacancies. And as the New York Post has learned, ACORN expects to make a fortune doing so. According to the Post, “Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN official-turned-whistleblower, estimates the anticipated deal could bring the group $5 million to $10 million annually over multiple years.” Not too shabby for providing Ratner with a little “political cover” while his allies in the government seize private property on his behalf.

And the cash doesn’t stop there. In May 2008, the news broke that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million from the organization back in 2000. And as the New York Times reported, this crime had been “concealed by senior executives until a whistle-blower told a foundation leader about it in May.” That’s eight years of concealment by senior ACORN executives, a deeply disturbing scandal that scared away donors, dried up support, and, combined with ACORN’s notorious tax troubles, threatened to ruin the organization financially.

Thankfully for ACORN, Bruce Ratner was right there to bail them out. In September 2008, Ratner rescued his “political cover” with a $1 million loan and a $500,000 grant. This desperately-needed cash has allowed ACORN to continue providing bogus “community” support for Ratner’s corporate welfare agenda.

With New York’s highest court set to rule any day now on this shameless act of eminent domain abuse, the folks at ACORN must be getting a little nervous about all those millions they stand to lose. As Bertha Lewis recently told Crain’s New York Business, “I’ll fight to the death to get this project done.” Let’s hope the court spares her the trouble by striking down the Atlantic Yards–and severing ACORN’s lifeline to Bruce Ratner along with it.