Accusations of stolen votes have a long history in presidential elections. In the 2000 recount debacle, Republicans claimed illegal ballots were cast. Democrats contended that legal ballots were thrown out. In 2004, when Ohio gave the presidency to George W. Bush, Democrats charged that long lines and malfunctioning machines in that state led to an inaccurate count.But in this contest, involving the first African-American in American history with a real chance at becoming president, the vitriol is particularly pointed.”This is all just one big head-fake,” said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause. “What silliness this is, at this point. It’s all about creating this perception that there is a tremendous problem with voter fraud in this country, and it’s not true.”
Common Cause, which worked closely with MoveOn in recent years, is about as nonpartisan as Andrew Sullivan is conservative. Indeed, although the org was instrumental in helping to introduce public financing for presidential candidates, they’re making an exception for the One who signed a document promising to use it, then reneged:
- Statement on Sen. Barack Obama’s decision to opt-out of the public financing system
- June 19, 2008
- “It has seemed clear for some time that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) would not opt into the presidential public finance system for the general election, so his announcement today is not a surprise.
For years Common Cause has said the presidential public finance system is badly outdated and in need of a major overhaul so we made a decision at the beginning of the election season not to criticize candidates for not participating in a flawed system.
But I digress. More from the article:
ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring retaliated this week in a series of conference calls and interviews. “What we’re seeing is the manufacture of a crisis, and attempts to smear Sen. Obama with it. It gives you an excuse should you lose or if there’s a contested outcome of the election.”
Gee, you’d almost think they were using the Alinsky method.
Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center’s report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.
“It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls,” the report said.
Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, calls the current controversy “chapter 22 in a drama that’s been going on awhile. The pattern is that nothing much ever comes from this. There have been no known cases of people voting fraudulently.”
Alex Keyssar is a mendouchious ass and non-partisan professor who blogs at the Huffington Post.
ACORN officials have repeatedly claimed that their own quality control workers were the first to discover problematic ballots. In every state investigating bad registrations, ACORN tipped off local officials to bogus or incomplete cards, spokesman Kettenring said.
That’s not what happened here, though ACORN’s spokespeople keep saying so. ACORN’s workers have told a different story about the organization’s modus operandi:
Several former and current workers demonstrated today in front of the St. Louis office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) demanding to be paid for work they had performed and alleging that they were instructed to tell people to vote for U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill while registering voters in support of the proposed minimum wage increase.
Ten-year ACORN veteran Josephine Perkins claims she was fired last week, in part because she informed the teams she supervised that it was inappropriate and illegal for them to campaign for McCaskill while being paid by ACORN and Give Missourians a Raise, the political action committee which supports Proposition B and, according to campaign finance reports, has given money to ACORN to circulate its literature.
Although AP dutifully repeats the tale that the workers are paid $8 per hour, that’s not the story that they tell their dupes. Either they’re being told to lie about how they’re paid, or they’re doing piece work.
Signing up voters is a small part of ACORN activities. The group frequently leads challenges to minimum wage laws, predatory mortgage lending in poor and working-class neighborhoods and immigration policies.
That is, they bring suit against banks who practice risk management, and they’re out to create more Democrat voters. Nowhere does the article mention the $800k that Obama’s campaign has paid them for “lighting and sound.”
Controversy is nothing new. Its leaders are currently locked in a legal dispute stemming from allegations that the brother of the group’s founder misappropriated nearly $1 million of the nonprofit’s money several years ago.
Since the 2004 election, ex-employees have been convicted of submitting false registrations in states including Florida and Missouri.
“There are certainly problems and I don’t think anyone disagrees on that,” said Wang of Common Cause. “But it doesn’t get reported that ACORN finds these registrations errors themselves. They flag them as being no good, but they have to turn them in anyway.”
There certainly are problems, and they never seem to improve, but Wang repeats the lie when she says that it’s ACORN who are flagging the false registrations. They claim on the one hand that the job of dealing with the false voter registrations belongs to the government, yet, like the NYT, they cheer when pols like Jennifer Brunner refuse to do their job.
Comment by Jim Treacher on 10/19 @ 10:33 pm #
“These are not the frauds you’re looking for.”
Their goal is nothing less than undermining our faith in the electoral process. And then they accuse us of doing so for opposing their efforts. They mewl about “manufactured crisis” after a shout of “Tell ‘im” at a political rally gets turned into Krystallnacht all over again. I just hope enough people wake up to it in time.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 10/19 @ 10:57 pm #
I don’t doubt that ACORN reports some of the fraudulent registrations, particularly the more egregious ones. But they clearly allow others through, and likely have a stable of known (fake or dead) names they can arrange to have voted later.
It’s unclear how ACORN pays their workers. The workers claim they’re paid by the piece, and their behavior backs that up. We know that ACORN isn’t all that interested in paying their staff well — for all they campaign for higher minimum wages, they routinely claim to be exempt from same. I seem to recall they’ve also resisted attempts to unionize, as well.
What is known is that, despite past promises to clean up their process, ACORN continues to be at the center of fraudulent registrations. If they HAVE attempted to clean up their processes, they’ve clearly failed.
Long past time for RICO.
Comment by topsecretk9 on 10/19 @ 11:09 pm #
They claim on the one hand that the job of dealing with the false voter registrations belongs to the government, yet, like the NYT, they cheer when pols like Jennifer Brunner refuse to do their job.
OK. We’re seriously not get our moneys worth.
31 million just in federal dollars and they can’t manage to get legitimate voter registration cards after supposedly years of practice [tax payer screwed #1]
Budgets and Burdens
At the Registrar of Voters Office in Jefferson Parish, they have had to make boxes to store thousands of faulty new voter registration cards.
Rejected applications were thrown out because they were from felons, didn’t have the information completed accurately or were possibly fake registrations altogether. The office also reported that they had lot of duplicate applications as well.
The Jefferson office spent thousands of dollars of their operating budget to mail letters to citizens who think they can vote on November 4 but won’t be able to.
“At least 2,000 people that we’ve sent letters to that, again, we were unable to secure the information either the letter was returned because of no such address or individuals didn’t respond,†said Dennis Dimarco, of the Jefferson Parish Registrar of Voters office.
and
Comment by topsecretk9 on 10/19 @ 11:18 pm #
I don’t doubt that ACORN reports some of the fraudulent registrations, particularly the more egregious ones. But they clearly allow others through, and likely have a stable of known (fake or dead) names they can arrange to have voted later.
It’s funny you say that — NRO Megan Clyne has a pretty detail story from 2004
http://tinyurl.com/4lrg9c
Also, the affidavit request warrant (in the Nevada raid) was the most the most massive and detailed I have ever seen - if they keep copies like this Stuart says, that’s RICO.
Here’s the link to the 20 page affidavit - I highly recommend checking it out
http://tinyurl.com/4zwfb
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/19 @ 11:57 pm #
A national database would be, potentially, unconstitutional.
What you’d want is an interstate compact to link databases.
Comment by geoffb on 10/20 @ 12:08 am #
“What we’re seeing is the manufacture of a crisis,”
True, and ACORN is the manufacturer.
The product is lack of confidence in our entire voting system in order to change it into something as impartial as “card check” is in union elections.
Comment by topsecretk9 on 10/20 @ 12:08 am #
RTO Trainer
Definitely sounds like you know better, but wouldn’t just faxing illegal copies about voters in one state to another state, even for the purposes of paying out, be grounds for a RICO?
Comment by RTO Trainer on 10/20 @ 12:28 am #
TSK9:
Yes, given the description. Too much money changing hands on top of compound violations of law (copying the registrations) and using interstate communications lines to boot. It might matter if the act of copying is considered a felony or a misdemeanor, which may vary state to state, also scale–exactly how many violations are we talking about.
All I’m saying is that any National Database could not be federally administered or paid for. Nor could there be a federal requirement for such a database.
There would seem to be some common-sense reforms to be made, such as anyone accepting voter registration applications or asisting others to register, must themselves be legally registered voters in that jurisdiction. I’d do it down to County level, but I wouldn’t complain if some place wanted it to be precinct. State would be acceptable, but that leaves too much room for abuse in a large state I think.
Simply banningthe practice of paying for voter registrations–volunteer efforts or nothing–would seem to short circut a lot of fraud opportunities, not to mention the inducement to fraud.
Pingback by Why Does ACORN Pressure Its Canvassers To Register More Votes? « Nice Deb on 10/20 @ 6:23 pm #
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