*sigh* ACORN & "voter fraud": Not guilty, not indicted, NOT BEING INVESTIGATED

[KingOrfeo]

*sigh* ACORN & "voter fraud": Not guilty, not indicted, NOT BEING INVESTIGATED

The GOP was harping on this nonsense as far back as October 2008. Even McCain was. Well, that was then, in a very heated election where a lot of people on both sides said stupid things they now regret, or should. (I don't recall defending the theory Palin had a baby on the campaign trail, but if I had I would regret it.)

But, even now, I keep seeing it asserted as an established fact, here and in other Intertubes fora, that ACORN committed "voter fraud" in the 2008 election, and/or has been indicted for it, and/or is under investigation for it. This is a canard however often and however loudly you repeat it. The flap is all about bogus voter registrations, submitted by a few apparently lazy ACORN employees. ACORN, learning of this, still turned over all such registrations to the election offices (with due notice of their suspect status) as required by law. Harmless error, because elections are not decided by tallying registrations. A registration in the name of Harry Boner* only becomes a voter-fraud issue if someone purporting to be Harry Boner (but who really isn't) actually shows up and votes, and there is not a single proven instance of that happening in the last election. Not a single vote fraudulently cast can be laid at ACORN's feet. And nothing in this incredibly fatuous video MeeMie keeps posting supports a contrary conclusion.

Googling "acorn voter fraud" I found several hits from rottenacorn.com, stoptheaclu.com, pajamasmedia.com, Foxnews.com, and other worthless shit of that kind; as well as a couple of stories on BradBlog and HuffingtonPost, pointing and laughing at the RW for keeping the "ACORN voter fraud" canard alive. What I have not found is anything actually charging ACORN with voter fraud from any source with more credibility than Timecube Guy.

Meanwhile, here's ACORN's response:

The myth of “voter fraud”

The numerous partisan attacks on ACORN voter registration drives and the inflammatory mediareports were all based on the same false and discredited premise: that a voter registration application that contains incorrect information represents an attempt, or at least an opportunity, for someone to commit “voter fraud,” i.e. cast an improper ballot. As numerous studies and reports by responsible media have demonstrated, this is simply not the case. 3 Fraudulent voting itself is close to non-existent in the United States, and there has never been a single documented instance of a problematic voter registration form resulting in an improper vote. Even if someone wanted to influence the election this way, it would not work. Election officials have to verify the identity of each registrant and, if somehow a person made it onto the rolls improperly, they would be a sitting duck to be nabbed and prosecuted as soon as they showed up to vote.

Fortunately, a great number of journalists, opinion leaders, and public figures saw these attacks for what they were: an attempt to justify challenging qualified voters at the polls in order to disenfranchise voters and create long lines in minority polling places, justify legislation to make it harder for people to register to vote, and to smear an opposing candidate. Numerous civic leaders
and thoughtful journalists helped debunk the myth that “voter fraud” was underway and successfully defended the rights of all American citizens to lawfully register and vote.

How ACORN conducted its voter registration work

Across the county, thousands of ACORN canvassers spread out across high-foot-traffic areas in low-income communities. There, they engaged residents on issues that affect them directly, from wage increases to immigration reform, from education to affordable housing, helped them complete voter registration forms, and offered free provisional ACORN memberships as a first step in an ongoing program of civic engagement.

ACORN implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field. Every single application collected was examined by independent staff for completeness and tagged and bundled so we could tell which crew member who gathered it. Registrations were entered into a database by an outside vendor, and call centers made several attempts to call each and every registrant to verify information. Where we were able to do so, ACORN worked to “cure” incomplete registrations by contacting voters to get information about missing or inaccurate entries—such as county or zip-code information—that could get a registration rejected. ACORN turned applications in to election officials in three stacks with separate, detailed cover sheets: those that ACORN believed were complete and ready for processing, those that required additional information and those that ACORN thought we suspicious and should be carefully reviewed by election officials in order to verify the authenticity of the information on the application.

Unfortunately, some of these election officials either ignored ACORN’s attempt to notify them of applications that needed further review or did not conduct such a review. They then came back weeks or months later and accused us of deliberately turning in phony cards. Fortunately, in most cases ACORN’s extensive quality control procedures enabled us to prove that these were the
same cards we had previously called to their attention.

On the whole, however, election officials generally recognized ACORN’s good work and praised our quality control systems. In the course of our voter registration drives, ACORN routinely met and communicated with State and local election officials to review the quality of our work and to establish a cooperative relationship. We worked closely with election officials to resolve any problems, and many officials have been vocal in expressing their support for ACORN’s efforts.

Addressing accusations of voter fraud, for example, the Republican city elections director of St. Louis, Missouri said ACORN had caused no such problems, and that "everything's been on the up and up." The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, and its Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, both broke with their party to deny the allegations against ACORN, saying there was no evidence that ACORN was committing voter fraud.

Why some canvassers submitted bad voter registration cards

In the course of this work, ACORN hired more than 12,000 registration workers to help people register to vote and verify their information. As with any business or agency that operates at this scale, there are always some people who want to get paid without really doing their job, or who aim to defraud their employer. Any large department store will have some workers who shoplift. Any large voter registration operation will have some workers who turn in bogus registration forms – not because the “Jimmy Johns” whose name they put on a registration form will ever attempt to vote on Election Day, but because they want to get paid without actually making the effort to help register actual voters.4

ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for any employee deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality controls identified this happening, we fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement. (Also, contrary to rumor, ACORN paid its canvassers by the hour, not by the card.) Fortunately, only a small fraction of the workers we hire try to defraud ACORN in this way, but we obviously have a big stake in making sure people know we will turn them in and encourage prosecution when we catch them.

Many poorly-reported media accounts further conflated this handful of fraudulent voter registration cards, which constituted at most two percent of all the cards collected with the more routine problems endemic to any effort to collect large amounts of information from the field such as incomplete voter registration cards (applications missing information), handwriting errors, or cards where the voter entered erroneous information or submitted a card not realizing he or she was already on the rolls.5 These distinctions are important yet some media outlets reported on voter registration without discussing them. Predictably, however, partisan forces tried to use these isolated incidents to incite fear of widespread voter fraud.

Why ACORN turns problematic cards over to election officials

In almost all states and localities, ACORN is required either by state law, local election officials or good legal judgment to turn in every voter registration application, even if it knows the card is incomplete or fake. Some states have explicit laws requiring the turn-in of all signed voter registration applications. Other states or localities have policies that require that card be turned in
within a given time period—implying that it must be turned in. In all cases, it is election officials who have the final right and responsibility to determine if a card is valid.

In every state, the worst possible thing an organization could do is discard a registration application that turns out to be valid, thus disenfranchising a voter. This would be in opposition to the organizational goal of helping all citizens register and vote, and would be a legal liability as well. So the advice of our counsel has been in almost every case to turn in every single card,
identifying in writing any suspected problems.6

As Demos President and former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport recently explained, if civic groups began making judgments to discard completed voter registration cards on their own, this would open the possibility that some group would label as suspect and then discard cards from voters who registered from one party or the other, or who came from a certain
demographic.

Partisan attacks and bogus investigations: a Bush Administration tradition

Similar attacks about “voter fraud” were made against ACORN and other voter registration organizations in 2004 and 2006. These attacks were not only groundless, but have since been exposed as a systematic partisan conspiracy of voter suppression that was at the heart of the U.S. Attorneygate scandal — the scandal that led Karl Rove, former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, and other top Department of Justice officials to resign. David Iglesias (former Republican US Attorney in New Mexico) testified that he was forced from office because he refused Karl Rove’s and Alberto Gonzales’ pressure to charge ACORN with voter fraud after he concluded no such fraud had occurred. And another US Attorney, Bradley Schlozman, who did politicize prosecutions against former ACORN canvassers, was forced to acknowledge under cross examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee that ACORN was the victim of fraud by its employees and ACORN had caught the employees and had identified them to law enforcement.

Unfortunately, as each election approaches, partisan forces and politicians seeking to portray themselves as “fraud-busters” can’t resist the temptation to try again.

In October 2008, the Associated Press reported that an anonymous Justice Department source had leaked news of an FBI investigation of ACORN. While this anonymous leak gave right wing media and politicians carte blanche to repeat endlessly that “ACORN is under investigation by the FBI”, other reporters were unable to confirm this story, and to this day ACORN has not been notified of any such investigation, despite inquiries from our counsel.

In Las Vegas, law-enforcement staged a highly publicized “raid” of ACORN’s voter registration offices, despite the fact that ACORN and its attorneys had been proactive in providing election officials and law enforcement with information about problematic cards and any employee suspected of misconduct. In fact, the very affidavit used to support the search warrant documents the extensive quality control procedures ACORN uses to guard against voter fraud, as well as ACORN's thorough cooperation with law-enforcement officials. ACORN’s attorneys had met with officials in the weeks before the highly publicized raid and implored them to follow up with prosecutions against a handful of fired employees who submitted false registration forms. The truth is, no criminal charges related to voter registration have ever been brought against ACORN or partner organizations. Convictions against individual former ACORN workers have been accomplished with our full cooperation and often at our suggestion using the evidence obtained through our quality control and verification processes — evidence which, in most cases ACORN called to the attention of authorities. Press stunts notwithstanding, ACORN’s staff and attorneys have not received notification or information indicating the organization itself is under investigation by any government entity anywhere in the country.

Challenging the great voter fraud fraud

The goals of the people orchestrating these attacks were to distract ACORN from helping people vote and to lay the groundwork for massive voter suppression. While harmful in many ways, the partisan attacks were not successful in achieving either of these goals, in part because ACORN, Project Vote, and a range respected opinion leaders responded forcefully to these attacks.

In October the RNC and the McCain-Palin campaign began an orchestrated attack against ACORN’s voter registration drive. After Presidential candidate John McCain attacked ACORN in a televised debate, ACORN organizers received a wave of racist hate mail and death threats.

In response, throughout October, ACORN and partner Project Vote launched an aggressive fightback strategy of near-daily press releases, press conferences, and targeted strategic outreach to reporters to emphasize the importance of voter registration, debunk the myth of “widespread voter fraud,” and refocus media attention on the real threat to democracy: partisan tactics of voter suppression. A number of key national leaders spoke out eloquently and took strong, principled action to challenge the false, partisan charges and denounce efforts at voter suppression, including Bob Edgar (National Council of Churches), Miles Rapoport (Demos), Julian Bond (NAACP), Andy Stern (SEIU), Randi Weingarten (AFT), Katherine Kolbert (PFAW) elected officials including Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Rep. John Conyers, and organizations including
MoveOn.org, and many others.

Eventually, numerous reports and editorials from major media outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, McClatchy newspapers, and USA Today, deconstructed the myth of voter registration fraud, and correctly contextualized the attacks against ACORN as a smokescreen for partisan voter challenges.

Voter suppression defeated in the field and the courts

The day after Senator McCain made his unfounded accusations against ACORN in the final Presidential debate, New Mexico Republican Party activists held a press conference in which they identified ten persons they claimed illegally cast ballots in New Mexico’s primaries. Following the press conference, ACORN made contact with eight of the ten voters named, and discovered that they were all legitimate voters who were eligible to vote and had no problems with their registrations. Nine of the ten voters were Latino; all identified as Democratic; most were 18-19 years old. One of them was a citizen naturalized in 2007 who was voting for the first time.

Following ACORN’s debunking of the GOP charges, several voters reported receiving intimidating visits from a private investigator, and are now plaintiffs in litigation charging NM party members with voter intimidation. In Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg ruled in favor of ACORN, denying the GOP’s attempt to stop voter mobilization in the state. Republican attempts to block early voting in Lake County, Indiana also failed. The claims of “widespread voter fraud” were used to justify other attempts at voter suppression activities around the country, including reports of attempts by the Michigan GOP to use lists of foreclosure victims as the basis for voter caging, attempts in Montana to challenge thousands of voters who had submitted change of address cards to the post office, and overreaching attempts by local law-enforcement agents in Ohio to “investigate” lawful voters. ACORN and other organizations, bloggers, and the media helped focus attention on these plans and all were eventually withdrawn.

<snip>

Some key media quotes on the ACORN voter registration controversy

“Republicans have leveled similar allegations against the coalition known as ACORN in every election since at least 2000, but they have yet to produce proof that the group poses a threat to election integrity.” (Greg Gordon, “Will McCain get any traction from latest Acorn allegations?” McClatchy Newspapers, October 10)

“The ACORN ‘election fraud’ story is one of those urban legends, like fake moon landings and alligators in the sewers, and it appears three or four weeks before every recent national election with the regularity of the swallows returning to Capistrano.” (Michael Winship, “A Mighty Hoax from ACORN Grows,” Bill Moyers Journal, October 17)

“For all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to...” (New York Times editorial, “The ACORN Story,” October 17)

“…the reckless attempt by Senator McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made Acorn the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. …When it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.” (Bob Herbert, “The Real Scandal,”
New York Times, October 20)



3 One of the more comprehensive studies on the topic is “The Politics of Voter Fraud” by Barnard professor Lori Minnite. projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/Publications/Politics_of_Voter_Fraud_

4 A hostile reporter from CNN and other outlets made much of a card turned into election officials in Lake County Indiana with the name “Jimmie Johns” (a local sandwich shop). They refused to report that ACORN’s Quality Control staff had attached a “problematic card report coversheet” which stated this very fact, despite being provided with a copy of the cover sheet.

5 While there is very little research in this area, a comparison of voter registration records from the state of Pennsylvania indicated that cards collected by civic groups had a lower rate of errors than those that voters completed on their own or while doing business in government offices.

6 ACORN voter engagement staff and Project Vote's senior counsel Brian Mellor met with elections officials around the country as we began our voter registration drive in 2007‐8 and discussed our procedures with them. In only three localities did elections officials ask us to turn cards we knew to be fraudulent into local law enforcement rather than (as opposed to delivering them to the elections office with problems flagged): Flint, Michigan, Broward County, Florida, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Because this was allowable under these states’ laws, we agreed to do this only if we were 100% certain that it could not possibly be an application from a legitimate voter—and that only occurred in one place.

*I'd say "Mickey Mouse," but when the story broke it turned out there was a perfectly legitimate ACORN registration submitted for a legally eligible voter whose name really was Mickey Mouse, and whose parents were abominably cruel.



P.S.: See, MeeMie? That's how to do C&P. You don't present it all by itself, but in support of a position you yourself have articulated; and you include a link, because the most important piece of information in any message is the name of the messenger. Go thou and do likewise.

 

[Ham Murabi]

So you're saying you're uncomfortable with a law that requires fraudulent voter registrations to be turned in.
Me too.

 

[KingOrfeo]

So you're saying you're uncomfortable with a law that requires fraudulent voter registrations to be turned in.
Me too.

No, I'm not. As ACORN's statement explains, the law that all voter registrations an organization collects must be turned over the the election office is necessary and proper, because if the registering organization were allowed to make that call, it might be tempted to discard as "fraudulent" any registration as a voter for the party the organization opposes. Best the election office, a presumptively neutral party, should decide which registrations are fraudulent and which are legit.

 

[KingOrfeo]

And from Factcheck.org:

McCain: The ACORN Fables

In another attempt to paint groups and people with whom Obama has some connection in as unsavory a light as possible, McCain has gone after the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. And we've gone after him, for an ad accusing the group of "massive voter fraud" and for saying in the final presidential debate that ACORN is "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Both claims are breathtakingly inaccurate. There's a huge difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud. And while ACORN, which hires part-time, $8-an-hour canvassers to go door-to-door and register people to vote, has had widespread problems with phony registrations invented by employees who don't want to work, the problem has never been that it sent people to the polls using bogus identities or to vote in any other fraudulent manner. Even the Republican prosecutor of the largest ACORN case to date said the shenanigans of ACORN workers were "not intended to permit illegal voting."

To be sure, Obama's interactions with the group have been greater than he has let on. But whether those ties can accurately be called "long and deep," as McCain's ad claims, is highly questionable.

 

[NObama]

So you're saying you're uncomfortable with a law that requires fraudulent voter registrations to be turned in.
Me too.

Anyone that supports voter fraud can't be mentally stable.

 

[RightField]

Just because they can't prove who committed the crime and get an indictment doesn't mean the crime didn't occur. Them dems have a history of voter fraud that's twice your age (whatever your age is)

 

[TurdFergeson]

Just because they can't prove who committed the crime and get an indictment doesn't mean the crime didn't occur. Them dems have a history of voter fraud that's twice your age (whatever your age is)

You're truly insane.

Shiek El-Boosh, (your hero) was not even elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court through his brother JEB and Kathleen Harris.

 

[Moxon4]

You're truly insane.

Shiek El-Boosh, (your hero) was not even elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court through his brother JEB and Kathleen Harris.

How was he appointed by the Supreme Court when every time they actually counted the ballots he won? Kathleen Harris told the media not to call Florida early, and they didn't listen, and got it all wrong, if anything, it depressed Bush's vote total in the panhandle by tens of thousands.

 

[TurdFergeson]

How was he appointed by the Supreme Court when every time they actually counted the ballots he won? Kathleen Harris told the media not to call Florida early, and they didn't listen, and got it all wrong, if anything, it depressed Bush's vote total in the panhandle by tens of thousands.

Obama's motorcade never got egged and blocked by protestors so he had to enter the White House through the back door.

Face it...your guy was a fraud and everyone knew it.

 

[Moxon4]

Obama's motorcade never got egged and blocked by protestors so he had to enter the White House through the back door.

Face it...your guy was a fraud and everyone knew it.

Just because the network news got it wrong doens't change the fact that every time they actually counted the ballots, he had more votes than Global Warming boy.

 

[TurdFergeson]

Block the Vote Hero

Katherine Harris
Ex-Florida Sec. of State

A Jeb Bush appointee and head of the George W. Bush campaign in Florida, Katherine courageously stopped the counting of her state's votes in the days after the 2000 presidential election. She then certified that George W. Bush had carried the State of Florida.

http://www.billionairesforbush.com/cards.php

 

[Moxon4]

Block the Vote Hero

Katherine Harris
Ex-Florida Sec. of State

A Jeb Bush appointee and head of the George W. Bush campaign in Florida, Katherine courageously stopped the counting of her state's votes in the days after the 2000 presidential election. She then certified that George W. Bush had carried the State of Florida.

http://www.billionairesforbush.com/cards.php

Ok....

Gore conceded that night, Bush always had more votes than him in Florida, the courts declared everything unconstitutional, those are the facts.

 

[TurdFergeson]

Ok....

Gore conceded that night, Bush always had more votes than him in Florida, the courts declared everything unconstitutional, those are the facts.

Yes, the whole thing was unconstitutional...that fact is true.

 

[Moxon4]

Yes, the whole thing was unconstitutional...that fact is true.

I'm glad you see that Gore's whining didn't pay off and that the law ultimately prevailed.

 

[TurdFergeson]

I'm glad you see that Gore's whining didn't pay off and that the law ultimately prevailed.

You mean voter fraud prevailed. Every time they "recounted" they threw out more and more votes...coincidentally all from Blue districts...what a coincidence.

 

[Moxon4]

You mean voter fraud prevailed. Every time they "recounted" they threw out more and more votes...coincidentally all from Blue districts...what a coincidence.

Well they were the ones that were too stupid to operate a ballot correctly....

 

[TurdFergeson]

Well they were the ones that were too stupid to operate a ballot correctly....

Haha...anyway...it's ancient history now...but at least Obama had no such scandal.

He was even able to walk in the front door of the White House.

 

[Moxon4]

Haha...anyway...it's ancient history now...but at least Obama had no such scandal.

He was even able to walk in the front door of the White House.

Well of course the press thinks everything worked perfectly, their boy won. That was the one nice thing about this election cycle after all, but next time a Republican wins, all of those same stories will come out like clockwork, just change the names and the years.

 

[RightField]

You're truly insane.

Yeah, but I'm smart too.

 

[TurdFergeson]

Well of course the press thinks everything worked perfectly, their boy won. That was the one nice thing about this election cycle after all, but next time a Republican wins, all of those same stories will come out like clockwork, just change the names and the years.

Regardless, as I will fully admit ALL politicans are snakes...(it's their job), it's getting more than tiresome to hear the rightwing lunatic fringe go on and on with their doom and gloom future predictions.

They have become the Wicked Witch gazing into their crystal balls.

 

[Moxon4]

Regardless, as I will fully admit ALL politicans are snakes...(it's their job), it's getting more than tiresome to hear the rightwing lunatic fringe go on and on with their doom and gloom future predictions.

They have become the Wicked Witch gazing into their crystal balls.

No worse than all the Bush haters and what they've been spouting for 3 years. At least we have the facts by looking through history that what Obama is doing won't work.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Anyone that supports voter fraud can't be mentally stable.

See post #3.

 

[TurdFergeson]

No worse than all the Bush haters and what they've been spouting for 3 years. At least we have the facts by looking through history that what Obama is doing won't work.

Yes, more than ample evidence of an absolute failure of neo-con policies.

We can only hope Obama can fix the damage done.

(But even I will admit he's no Ron Paul.)

 

[KingOrfeo]

Just because they can't prove who committed the crime and get an indictment doesn't mean the crime didn't occur.

If the "crime" in question is casting of fraudulent votes in the last election attributable to ACORN, there is no evidence at all it did occur.

 

[Moxon4]

Yes, more than ample evidence of an absolute failure of neo-con policies.

We can only hope Obama can fix the damage done.

(But even I will admit he's no Ron Paul.)

You mean Democrats forcing banks to give loans to people who can't pay them? and now we are guaranteeing those loans, even though those people still can't pay them?

Unless we start realizing that if you can't pay your mortgage then you don't deserve to live there we're screwed.