ACORN & GOP Corruption

Amen June,

The GOP can only win elections if they can keep large numbers of the poor, blacks, Hispanics, and young women away from the polls. How do they do this? By coming up with technicalities to disenfranchise American citizens. So, Acorn goes out and signs up millions of new voters, then the GOP needs to raise the level of verification from the country recorder verifying the voter's elegilibilty to the recorder double and triple checking against multiple databases and if any of them have different spellings, then your voter ID gets tossed. So Joe Wortzelberger's name is mispelled in any of the multiple databases, then no vote for Joe the Plumber. Well, except his registration is Republican, so he'd get passed.

Such incisive thoughts, Phaedrus!  I contrast your post with this snippet from a rightie site which ties ACORN, Ayers, Rev Wright and out-and-out corruption to Barack:

[...] Interestingly, despite their damning report on ACORN, CNN uncritically repeated what has now become the official Obama position on all his radical friends, to wit: "I hardly knew the man..." In the final presidential debate Wednesday night Obama reiterated that his only tie to ACORN was representing them along with the U.S. Justice Department, in a lawsuit demanding the Illinois state government enforce the new Motor Voter law. As with Ayers and Wright, he is lying. He knows it. And it is a Big Lie.

One of Obama's first career jobs was with ACORN. He was recognized early on as a talented organizer by ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, (think smooth talker) and she got him to coach ACORN leaders in community activism. At the time, Talbott was focusing on ACORN's efforts to expand bank lending to low-income, high-risk customers - the activity that ultimately precipitated today's mortgage market failure - so it is likely Obama trained her leaders with a focus on that effort. Project Vote In 1992, Obama ran Chicago's office of Project Vote, an ACORN subsidiary which was credited with registering 150,000 voters in a successful effort to elect Democrat Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate. According to a 1993 article in Chicago Magazine, Obama was Project Vote's shining star:

The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama...

How many of those votes were fraudulent we will never know but Moseley-Braun was a one-term Senator, shot down by allegations of corruption. Her 2003 bid for the presidency was also very short-lived due to the resurfacing of these allegations. Of George Will, who wrote an article about her alleged corruption, Braun had particular contempt: "I think because he couldn't say nigger, he said corrupt. I mean this very sincerely from the bottom of my heart: He can take his [Ku Klux Klan] hood and put it back on again, as far as I'm concerned." Charming! Just the kind of "centrist," like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, I would expect Barack to support...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/post_20.html

Hey, I'm ecumenical!  I've read so much of this guilt by association crapola that I could probably outdo My 2 Cents and Postman when it comes to regurgitation but there's a significant difference between publishing this tripe at American Thinker and posting it here - the AT author doesn't have to defend his venom whereas anyone who carries this kinda stuff into VoA should be prepared to be challenged!

My 2 Cents and Postman have shown they're not up to the job!

Now, let's cut to the chase that Phaedrus describes. 

This week, an ACORN spokesman observed:  "Enough is enough of these Nixon-style gutter politics being perpetrated by the Bush Administration and McCain campaign. The two of them are continuing to abuse federal law enforcement to intimidate their political opponents and suppress the vote."

This isn't the first time the Republican Party has misused the Justice Department in their attempt to disenfranchise voters! In 2004, the Bush Administration used DOJ to gin up partisan prosecutions of ACORN despite there being no evidence of wrong-doing.

David Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney of New Mexico, made it clear in the investigation of the Bush Administration's abuse of the Justice Department that he was fired in part because of his refusal to pursue a politically directed investigation of ACORN.

Now, the ACORN President, Maude Hurd, issues a challenge: "We call on the McCain campaign to directly answer whether they, the Republican Party or their operatives have been conspiring with the Bush Administration to misuse the Justice Department in order to suppress voter turnout in 2008."

Helloooooo!  Anyone out there wanta answer?  Postman?  My 2 Cents?  Anyone?

Faked names on voter registration forms. Error rates as high as 60 percent. Firing the people responsible for these errors. Investigations launched by local and state police. Sound familiar? This is not ACORN in the 2008 election's final days.

This is the California Republican Party and its contractors in 2006, when the same problems that are now dogging ACORN and providing political fodder for GOP attacks plagued an effort by California Republicans to register 750,000 people.

ACORN has not said how many bad registrations were flagged in 2008, but one nationwide estimate was 10,000. What is ACORN's error rate then? It would be less than one percent. Yes, in one Indiana County a third or more of its submissions were bad. In 2006, contractors for the California Republican Party had local error rates of 60 percent in San Bernadino County, the Los Angeles Times reported, where 1,800 out of 3,000 submitted registrations were incomplete and could not be processed.

DOH!!

[link:oxdown.firedoglake.com]

So now the FBI says they are going to investigate ACORN.  Well, why not just code name it:

"OPERATION: VOTER SUPPRESSION AND INTIMIDATION"

Thanks, Indie - looks like the GOP isn't as well-organized as we thought when it comes to initiating voter registration fraud - their strength is rooting it out!

But, your example addresses the point Phaedrus and I have been hammering on in the context of the recent Ohio flap - the verification measures in the voter registration process DO WORK!

Along that line, ACORN went outta its way to detail its in-house verification procedures last week, in the wake of the Las Vegas flap.  I heard it on the radio several times but can't seem to tease it outta the Internet.

Anyway, ACORN verifies the correctness of the applications and sorts them into 3 categories: Valid; Maybe Valid, but with Problems; and, Invalid or Fraudulent. 

In most states, ACORN is required by law to submit ALL voter registration applications to the State (for obvious reasons), so the headlines proclaiming ACORN FILES FRAUDULENT VOTER REGISTRATIONS are absolutely correct - it's that third stack that's behind the headline.

Clearly, the kinda detailed explanation ACORN presented is an overload for the low-info Republican - they'd prefer to truck only in the headlines!

DOH!    

It is pretty obvious that Tony Romo (the QB for the Dallas Cowboys), Mickey Mouse, or dead people are going to vote in the Nevada Presidencial Election.  It seems to me that ACORN is the victim of fraud from it's employees if they were paid for the fake voter registration forms they handed in.

If you ask me, the supposed "Protect the American Vote Act" is supposed to catch these things, (fradulent registrations and such) before they make it to the voter rolles used at the polling places.  If Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, or Barney the Purple Dinosaur makes it onto these voter rolls, it shows a failure of the law, and that is not the voter's fault. 

My belief is this...the ACORN row is a 2 pronged tactic.  The first prong is to give reason to surpress and or discorage voters probably by giving a "probable cause" to question voters on the legitimacy of thier ballot either to thier faces, or after the ballot has been posted.  This tactic in ceritan high traffic voting posts will make lines longer, will purposely try and confuse voters and poll workers.  The voters, having to wait might become discuraged and go home instead of casting thier ballots.  During the count, the back and forth legal challenges will certianly come, based on this probable cause as well.  That is of course if the tactic works to supress the vote.

Surely, there will be some voter surpression, but if all of it is overcome by the number of voters, this ACORN accusation will be used to delegitimise the vote.  The Neocon will claim that Obama/Biden won by cheating, rather than admitting that the Neocon was simply outperfomed.  This is the second prong of this type of approach.

All the voter intimidation techniques you mention have been put into play by the GOP, at one time or another.  However, the focus of this article is on the GOP's gaming of the voter registration process - to  discredit organizations like ACORN with claims of fradulent registration applications (which gets characterized as "voter fraud") and/or to place in limbo or eliminate altogether the maximum number of registration applications.

In most cases, the states, as well as ACORN, validate an application by comparing it with the info in existing databases.  Also, in most states, registering organizations like ACORN are bound by law to submit 100% of the applications they've collected - even those they've identified as INVALID! 

After receiving the ACORN material, the State conducts its own independent verification and - guess what - it discovers the INVALID ACORN applications are, in fact, INVALID! 

The headline breathlessly proclaims, "STATE FINDS ACORN SUBMITTED FRAUDULENT VOTER REGISTRATION APPLICATIONS!" and the FBI heads over to the ACORN offices to investigate!

The next headline screams, "FBI INVESTIGATES ACORN - ELECTION FRAUD ALLEGED!"

Misrepresentation is a Republican thing - we should be used to by now, but McCain and Palin are getting a lotta mileage outta shouting VOTER FRAUD and pointing their fingers at ACORN!

Zanubiyah - to place this in a current context, consider last Wednesday night's debate wherein McSame suggested that ACORN is "on the verge of committing one of the greatest voter frauds" ever.

The following day, Rick Davis, McSame's campaign manager, issued the following statement:

Given the fact the FBI has launched a nationwide investigation into the questionable voter registration practices of ACORN, it is imperative that Barack Obama's campaign cooperate fully with this important investigation. To date, in public announcements including last night's debate, Barack Obama has attempted to conceal and distort his and his campaign's relationship with a group that is currently engaging in systematic voter fraud. Barack Obama's campaign must fully disclose the true nature of his association with ACORN.

As you see, not only has ACORN been cast as a lawless voter registration outfit, the GOP ties ACORN to Obama's tail - that's called a 'twofer' political smear!

Now, the truth from MoveOn.org:

* ACORN hired 13,000 workers to register a remarkable 1.3 million new voters. And a few of them turned in registration forms with inaccurate and even made-up names to get credit for work they didn't do. ACORN fired them and turned them over to the authorities.

* ACORN reported the fraudulent registration forms. In most states, ACORN is required by law to submit all forms collected whether they appear to be bogus or not-that way election officials, not partisan groups, can make the call. ACORN flags cards that may not be legitimate. And in many places, the charges of fraud only came up because ACORN themselves were the ones who flagged the cards!

* This won't have any impact on the election. No one is allowed to vote unless they are properly registered. And there is no evidence of false registrations actually leading to organized voting fraud.

File this under THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY or Never Was:

RNC On New Mexico "Voter Fraud": Never Mind

By Zachary Roth - October 20, 2008, 4:10PM

As if you needed any more evidence that the Republican effort to tout voter fraud is less about legitimate claims and more about a political agenda, consider this sequence of events:

Last week, as we noted at the time, the New Mexico GOP had publicly claimed that 28 people voted fraudulently in the Democratic primary, held in June, for a local race.

Then this morning, the RNC sent out a press release announcing a 3pm conference call with reporters "on the recent developments in New Mexico regarding ACORN."

But at 11am, ACORN -- the community organizing group that Republicans have been trying lately to turn into a voter fraud boogeyman -- held a conference call of its own, asserting that local election officials had confirmed that the 28 people in question, mostly low-income Latinos, were valid voters.

So here at TPMmuckraker, we wondered what the RNC's response to this would be. And on the 3pm call, we asked party spokesman Danny Diaz.

Diaz dodged the question. He talked about an incident with ACORN in Washington state, then referred us to an October 9th Wall Street Journal story, which did not address the allegation made last week by the state GOP about fraudulent voting in the Democratic primary. (Instead, it reported that the FBI had opened a preliminary investigation into thousands of fraudulent registration forms submitted in an area near an ACORN office.)

When we tried to follow up, Diaz cut us off and shifted the discussion toward a general attack on ACORN for submitting fraudulent registrations.

In other words, it looks like the RNC had scheduled a call to tout evidence of voter fraud -- not voter registration fraud, mind you, but actual voter fraud -- being perpetrated by ACORN in New Mexico. But when ACORN appeared to come up with compelling evidence that no such fraud had occurred, the RNC held the call anyway, simply shifting the focus to other vague allegations against ACORN -- then refused to address the New Mexico situation when asked.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/rnc_on_new_mexico_voter_fraud.php