The Guardian: Mitt Romney's tax returns: the 'voter fraud' theory
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/17/mitt-romney-tax-returns-voter-fraud-theoryFriday's exchange of letters between the election campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, in which Romney rejected Obama's offer to drop the tax return issue if Romney will produce just three more years' records, has moved the long-simmering brouhaha over Romney's tax returns back to the front media burner. Romney has only produced two tax returns so far. That's many fewer than any presidential candidate has disclosed in decades, setting up the hearsay accusation disseminated joyfully by Harry Reid (who may or may not actually believe it) that Romney is afraid to tell voters that he sometimes pays no taxes at all. (Romney has answered that, saying he has never paid less than 13% in taxes on his income.)
Meanwhile, Romney appears to have escaped relatively unsinged from the apparently unrelated revelation that he may have committed voter fraud in January 2010, when – despite not owning a house in Massachusetts and having given every appearance of having moved to California – he registered and voted in the Massachusetts special election to replace the deceased Senator Ted Kennedy. Given the GOP's ongoing use of the "voter fraud" fable to justify modern Jim Crow laws and its highly-publicized persecution of the voter registration group Acorn, an actual case of felony voter fraud committed by the Republican nominee could have been a big story – but Romney was able to tamp down the flames by claiming, not very credibly but also not disprovably, that he and Ann actually were living in their son Tagg's Belmont, Massachusetts basement in 2010. Without proof that Romney lied about where he lived, there's no felony – and no big national story.
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If Romney's 2008 return (filed in 2009, shortly before the January 2010 special election) didn't give Tagg's basement as his address, then Romney clearly didn't consider Massachusetts his home in that year. If Romney's 2009 return (filed in 2010) gives a non-Massachusetts address, despite the fact that he claimed to be a Massachusetts resident earlier that year and had bought a house in Massachusetts in July, then Romney clearly didn't consider Massachusetts his home in that year either. If Democrats hit the daily double – in other words, if Romney declared La Jolla, California to be his home in both years – then Massachusetts prosecutors likely will have no choice but to take a hard second look at their ex-governor. (The Obama campaign's new focus on obtaining only three more years' returns – 2007, 2008 and 2009 – may suggest they're focusing in on this possibility as well.)
A felony voter fraud charge could expose Romney to fines and/or imprisonment, jeopardize Romney's standing with the Michigan State Bar, and – worst of all, in the political sense – would be a mortal embarrassment on the campaign trail, both to himself and to downticket Republicans (especially Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who won the special election in question but is locked in a tight, highly-publicized race against the popular Elizabeth Warren to retain his seat).
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I can dream, can't I!?
When they will drop the bomb on Romney. We know there are some tax records somewhere that might contain the smoking gun. There is the Amnesty issue and whether Mitt took advantage of it. Then there is the voter fraud issue in 2010. Harry Reid knows something but does he have proof? There are even IRS people who have information and who might be inclined to "leak" what they know. And while we're at it.....there are even rag mags out there (National Inquirer and the like) that would pay HUGE bucks and are probably scrounging around at this very moment looking for clues to what Mitt did and when he did it.
Releasing embarrassing or incriminating information before the Conventions could influence the outcome of the nominating process in Tampa. If they wait until after the ticket is a done deal, they could cause havoc by releasing that information between the Repub. Convention and Nov. 6th. I would love to be a fly on the wall of anyone who has the goods on Mitt and is trying to make up their minds when the best time would be to let it loose.
Mitt, we're still waiting on the Tax Returns and we are NOT going away. Pout if you must, but thems the facts. Deal with it. 
