Reports include duplicate registrations and fictitious names. In Nevada the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys showed up on a series of forms, while an ACORN outreach worker attempted to register Mickey Mouse in Florida.
ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - dates to 1970 and advocates for affordable housing, a living wage and environmental protection. Its voter registration division targets poor and minority citizens who traditionally do not vote in large numbers. It claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters.
While the reports of improper registrations are troubling, leaders in the Republican Party are guilty of hyperbole when they suggest a grand conspiracy to swing the election to the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama. In a recent e-mail to supporters seeking campaign donations, Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin suggested ACORN was trying “to steal this election.”
The fact that the voters targeted by ACORN are more likely to vote for Democrats has much to do with the GOP angst.
There is no evidence that ACORN workers are filing false names with the intent of later casting false votes. What is at work here is a small group of hired workers set on making more money by filing more registrations, even if they are phony. In response ACORN has turned to an hourly wage, rather than paying workers for the number of registration forms turned in, and upgraded its internal review process.
In Connecticut, Bridgeport and Norwalk registrars have reported problems with some ACORN registrations, but Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, herself a Democrat, said she is confident sufficient safeguards exist to weed out any bogus registrations.
By failing to police its outreach workers, ACORN is causing needless extra work for registrars at a time when they are busy processing valid voter applications. The controversy could place a cloud over election results in close contests. Republican officials, with their outcries of fraud, appear to be laying the groundwork for court challenges.
Registering voters is good for democracy, but doing a poor job of it can undermine the credibility of the election process.
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Comments: 22 ( 1 removed by Jack E. )
It's more than sloppiness or poor internal policing. It's foundational. Not irt to many good people who get sucked into the organization ... but at it's roots in how it does business and what it's actual goals seem to be (after 30 years give or take the goals come a bit clearer) --
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977714543
Its a good program and the only reason republicans do not like it is because the majority of people that sign up vote democrat.
For that matter its the independents that always put republicans in office, the republican party has a very small voting base and could not elect a mayor let alone a president.
Its a good program to register voters and isn't that what elections are about.
Why isn't the fraud pulled by Blackwell for Bush in Ohio brought up by his followers? Why do you people still deny that Bush was placed into office by the Supreme Court?
You are trying to distort the truth of what happened to a good and meaningful organization and I will say it again the only reason the republican party does not like ACORN is because most of the people they sign up as legal voters register as democrat.
The election is about voting not following party lines whenever they are wrong.
What happened to a good meaningful organization? It became a group of thugs who push people around who won't do what they want them to do. It becamse, rather quickly, something other than good and meaningful. Sadly.
This isn't the fault of ACORN. ACORN cannot FORCE registrants to behave themselves while filling these forms out. All they can do is what the law requires of them, which is to hand over ALL forms to state election officials, whether fraudulent or not. They have done an excellent job of screening and identifying those that they feel ARE fraudulent, and have flagged all questionable forms for state election officials to investigate.
Additionally, in the isolated instances in which their employees have violated ACORN's policies, and have INTENTIONALLY gathered fraudulent registration forms, ACORN has fired the employees and fully cooperated with state election officials, to prosecute.
Therein lies the REAL crux of this biscuit. This isn't about ACORN fraud. It's about republicans HOWLING ALLEGATIONS, in order to have hundreds of thousands of voters purged from eligible lists. Period.
The 200,000 forms in Ohio that are noted here have such "egregious frauds" as a missing digit in a driver's license number or zip code. The GOP wants all 200,000 thrown out and disqualified from the act of exercising their right to vote. The secretary of state is arguing to allow the registrants to make the necessary corrections, in order to validate their registration.
Since the republican party cannot possibly win on their own, they MUST have as many people as they can possibly line up, removed from the voting process. This isn't a secret. Republicans have been painfully aware for many years that high turnout equals bad news for them.
"A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws. "
I would be willing to bet that this is one of the employees that ACORN itself fired, and assisted state officials in gathering evidence to prosecute. Btw, how was this person going to pull off voting 72 times, and how did he feel that this would benefit himself?
"Canvassers are paid on an hourly basis and not, as some critics have charged, per registration submitted, Project Vote's Executive Director Michael Slater said Friday. He also said there are no incentives for meeting or exceeding any quota, and that each application is reviewed and if potentially fraudulent or otherwise problematic registration cards are identified, they are flagged and turned into election officials. "In many states we are obligated to turn in all applications by law, regardless of whether we believe that there are problems are not," Slater added. "
Bingo! ACORN has done precisely what they were SUPPOSED to do!
"From CNN: CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) – More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday."
Gee...I wonder how the state knew this? Could it be that ACORN itself identified those forms that appeared fraudulent, and flagged them for state officials, just exactly as they've been SAYING that they do? Yep.
"The original FEC finance reports listed the ACORN underling activities as polling, advance work and staging major events. "
It's not illegal for a candidate to hire a company to get people motivated to vote.
"This is not sloppy, it is criminal. "
Based on WHAT? What laws were broken here, pray tell?
Once in a while, you rabid, irrational rightwingnuts should TRY to use your heads a bit, rather than simply following the marching orders of your propagandists.
From what I've read, they've always paid hourly, and that's got absolutely nothing to do with registrants improperly filling the forms out. ACORN cannot force these people to fill them out correctly, nor can they do anything with the improperly filled forms than exactly what they've done, which is to turn them in along with all other forms.
When ballot boxes were used many of them went floating down the river to be replaced with phony votes.
Voting fraud is something everyone has to watch out for at all election times.
What we need more than anything is to allow the UN to monitor our presidential vote.
Attack dogs -- yeah, ain't it great.
I agree... the part I don't agree with is Texas produces more crooked politicians than Chicago (Illinois). Specifically, I am not saying no crooked politicians have come out of Texas -- I'm just saying recently more have come from Illinois (specifically Chicago). :)