Making Sense of ACORN

It seems that ACORN is the GOP scapegoat this year. They tipped their hands when they labeled Obama a dastardly "community organizer" repeatedly at their convention. That was before this hullabaloo hit the media. ACORN stands for "Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now." The GOP claims that thousands of fraudulent voter registrations have been submitted. They may be right, but their solution is flatly un-American.

Currently early voting facilities are closed in Indiana -- in districts that lean Dem of course. The evidence of fraud, anecdotal mostly, is primarily that people paid to turn in registrations were making them up, the most recent fake being Mickey Mouse. There are other stories about addicts and criminals hired to register voters: nothing that speaks to a conspiracy but rather opportunistic criminals looking to make a few quick bucks. In Nevada college Democrats fought to kick ACORN off campus. Out of the 1.3 million voters registered there are 10,000 registrations in question. Not all are patently fraudulent. They also could have incorrect or incomplete information. In Colorado where there are no stories of impropriety, there are still charges of fraud.

So what do you do? If you're the GOP, you want to close the polls and challenge the registration with the explicit goal of eliminating as many votes from these districts as possible. One of the most reprehensible planks in the GOP is their voter disenfranchisement efforts and this fits right in.

Why is that a bad idea? In a nutshell (pun intended) voter registration fraud is a crime but prohibiting someone's right to vote is a bigger crime. When Mickey Mouse comes to the poll that's when you challenge. The worst thing is to disallow 1.3 million votes on the basis of a fraudulent 10,000 registrants who aren't very likely to even vote. That's another example of the tried and true GOP tactic of voter caging.

Comments

[Speakupper]

I saw the interim executive director interviewed on C-span. Some of the point she made seem not to make it into most of the pieces on ACORN. 1) Workers are paid by the hour, not by the registration. 2) The majority of bad forms were tagged and set aside BY ACORN for the attention of registrars. Why? They are prohibited from not turning in any form they receive, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. Their own quality control process sets them aside FOR REGISTRARS.
3) One of the complaints I saw was of someone who says he personally registered 73 times because he felt he was helping out the workers who kept asking him. Duplicate registrations of the same person could not result in multiple votes of that same person registered at the same address. Voter registration irregularity does not automatically or easily translate into VOTER FRAUD. 4) The relative numbers are quite low nationwide. In many industries, a less than 1% spoil rate is actually quite good.

The GOP is attempting to blur the facts to smear the vast majority of ACORN workers and the low income voters they have registered. The other 1,290,000 newly registered voters' right to vote must be protected and fought for by all of those who care about democracy.

[wdw101]

no i disagree......if your information is not able to be verified you can not vote. if you don't live at the address anymore and you have not updated the info you can't vote.

[1will]

ACORN has a long history of voter fraud. If anyone has not seen story after story about ACORN hiring criminals and making up names for registration then they probaly only watch CNN or read the Huffpost.
This will no doubt be another close race.. 10,000 questionable registrations may not bother the author but as Florida (2000) was decided by a few hundred votes these registrations should bother anyone that fears a stolen election.
Liberals have always made excuses and worked toward schemes favoring voter fraud. Eliot Sptizers illegal alien Drivers License scheme is just one example. Fearing that voters might have to show ID at the polls is another.

[Josh Brusin - Huffpost Blogger]

I thought I mentioned the criminal thing? Did you read it? As for Florida in 2000 I can tell the lens that you use when you examine that disaster. There is no excuse for fraud. I tried to make that clear. However caging voters is NOT the solution. It is strictly dirty politics. You don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

[Cassandra2]

Right. Do it like the Repubs - hide behind the conservati­ve-stacked Supreme Court. Now, that's voter fraud!

[blastit]

Thats not voter fraud thats registration fraud, if someone registers a fake name an address that person is not going to show up at the polls to vote, and besides they do check the registrations if they don't match they get tossed.

[wdw101]

ohio just passed ID's at the polls...........it is great finally

[wdw101]

registration fraud is engineered to slow the process to cause the problems that disenfranchise voters........to create the arguments of abuse

[TAIsabel]

I have to admit that I am concerned about the GOP and their desperate moves. Can they disenfranchise these 1.3MM voters? Will we be stuck again in a legal hell over this election? I swear, I feel like I have been holding my breath for two years now. Why can't they identify the origin of the false ballots and prosecute those individuals that submitted them? I imagine that many unemployed people looking to make some fast money showed up to work but stayed home and filled them out while watching TV instead.

By the way, I called my local Board of Elections to make sure that my daughter receives her absentee voter card on time and they said that they are swamped with over 65,000 requests. They will process them all but to quote the nice lady: "honey, we are working 12 hours a day since there is no money for more employees".

[Frenchy9]

Write to all media outlets on this question, to your representarives.

[Libbydoe]

My feeling is that the Republicans know they are going to lose. Because the Repbublicans never will admit fault, they need to have something to explain their defeat . So, voter fraud becomes the reason they lost the election as opposed to a poorly run campaign by a old man and a right wing radical woman who knows so little she doesn't know what she doesn't know, and of course the incompetence of the people in charge for the last eight years.

I've heard one of their spokespeople say that Carter is the reason for this current financial mess. They will say anything to shift blame to anyone or anything.

[MNfreeze]

My thought is this campaign to discredit ACORN to try to de-legitimize the future President Obama. My prediction is the week before the election, the RNC will file a claim in a federal court claiming ALL 1.3 million voters registering through ACORN should be considered invalid and thrown off the voter rolls.

This action will put the whole process into chaos and into the courts and cause total confusion on election day, particularly in minority districts. Many people will not know if they have been purged from the voter rolls until they show up Nov 4th. Best case scenario for McCain is it gets all the way to the conservative Supreme Court and they pull another Gore v. Bush. Worst case scenario for the Republicans is they de-legitimize the future Obama presidency by saying the election was “tainted” with fraud. Either way, they “win”.

Hopefully I’m just being paranoid. Hopefully the Obama campaign is working to neutralize some of the Republican strategy. I’m sure they still have some dirty tricks up their sleeves, but my sense is this ACORN strategy seems to be their “piece de resistance”!

[4real]

ACORN held a news conference today. The video is on cspan.org. It's good to see them fight back against the GOP.

[SpoxLogic]

John McCain and the GOP need to be called out on this. There is no doubt in my mind, taht the whole purpose of this is to prevent those 1.3 million people from voting. Why aren't they harrassing ACORN in NY and CA? Aren't there Republicans in those states?
The MSM is in bed with the GOP on this issue and are not presenting the ACORN side of the story. If the GOP controls the news media so much, just how can the little people fight the machine?

It is VERY frustrating. To say the least.

[dexxjones]

the entire accorn thing is a straw man. "mickey mouse" couldnt have actually gone to vote. why does nobody say this? none of these fake names were in any danger of actually showing up to vote and tilting any election.

conversely, the voter purge perpetrated by the gop CAN and WILL actually effect the election.

this reminds me of the same "false equivalency" gambit which is allowed to continue until people stand up and say "uhhh no." just as rachel maddow did last night to that master of false equivalency mr frum.

ENOUGH!