Cracking ACORN

International bloggers have begun to file their opinions on ACORN, a 38-year-old community organizing group which registers voters across the United States that has come under attack for allegedly creating fraudulent voter registrations cards.

Criticism began to mount last week after federal authorities with search warrants raided ACORN's state office in Nevada under the assumption that it “submitted nearly 300 apparently fraudulent voter cards as part of its drive.” According to Nevada’s Secretary of State, some registration cards included names were of people who did not live in state, along with names of members of the Dallas Cowboy football team.

Members of the Republican National Committee argue the group’s aggressive tactics has created faulty registration in other parts of the country.

By its own admission, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN has attempted to help low-income, minority and young people register to vote across the country. This year, the group has staked a goal of registering 1.3 million people, which it hoped to meet by paying people to canvass neighborhoods searching for unregistered voters. Nevada authorities claim canvassers must meet a strict daily quota of 20 new registrations or face probation.

This is not the first time since ACORN has raised the ire of Republicans. In 2004, the RNC complained the group participated in voter fraud during the Presidential election. A former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico appointed by President Bush contends one of the reasons he was fired was after an investigation he argued that complaints of alleged voter fraud against ACORN during the 2004 election were “not criminally prosecutable.”

Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has joined the attacks, telling a rally in Wiconsin:

“You've seen the allegations, the multiple registrations under the same name, the more registered voters than the population. These are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth.”

McCain’s campaign has pointed out that as a lawyer in 1995 Barack Obama represented ACORN in a federal suit to force the State of Illinois to make it easier to vote.

Even with the alleged fraud, it will be hard for the McCain camp to prove it, argues Alberto de la Cruz, in the Cuban Babalu blog:

With all of the outright fraud going on right now and more of it surely to come, one would think that it would all eventually catch up to Obama and derail his presidential bid. Under normal circumstances, that would be the case. But these are not normal circumstances, and the Obama campaign knows it. In fact, they are counting on it. Regardless of how many instances of voter fraud in favor of Obama are uncovered between here and Election Day, McCain and the Republicans will be powerless to do anything about it. If Obama wins the election, any denouncement of voter fraud by the McCain campaign or the Republicans will be condemned as racism; old, gun toting, Bible thumping, white males trying to steal the election from a black man. The media would gladly jump all over a story like that. Just as they have done up until now, they would quickly cover up the fraud and destroy those that dare challenge the election outcome.

Moxyfilms in Dublin twittered this point:

Obama's no fraud just because ACORN's business model has a flaw. There's no voter fraud until the voters vote. Full stop.

One can make the argument that two different kinds of voter fraud exist: As in this case, we could have corrupt voter registration, a type of chicanery that attempts to place more people than possible on the voting rolls; Secondly, and arguably much more serious, is tampering with the vote by getting people to cast more than one ballot by using fake names or by stuffing ballots boxes.

According to a commentator at Babalu named Cigar Mike Pancier, the best way to counter true voter fraud is:

…Volunteer as a poll watcher for the election.

I've done it for several elections now. Unless we have people in the polls, the risk of fraud at the polls will be greater.

From Dissecting Left an Australian blog whose tagline reads “American Liberals Don’t Love America. They despise it,” wonders whether ACORN could really tip the election to Obama.

Is it really possible that the presidency could be stolen for Obama by virtue of a massive voter fraud here in Pennsylvania? And elsewhere? ACORN seems to think so. One so-called “non-partisan” ACORN member, Gleason pointed out, has been captured on video tape saying the group's objective was to “beat McCain down.” Not exactly “non-partisan” sounding, is it?Newman, the retired Supreme Court Justice, was blunt on the evidence: “I don't want a president who does this.” ACORN clearly does. Makes you wonder: why?

4 comments

  • Obama cannot be trusted with all the shady people in his life in such a short political career. He won\’t win the election, all his shady friends will help him steal it. It is a shame people don\’t get to know more about him, if they did, I\’m sure that he wouldn\’t win. O.J. got away with murder and Obama might just steal the White House with fraud, lies and deception

  • What does OJ Simpson have to do with Barack Obama?

  • Mike Thompson in So. California

    The only lies, fraud, and deception that several of you speak of so easily as being rife in the Obama Campaign seem to be from those of you who have no part in it. I am a Litigation Paralegal and I have done extensive background investigations from public sources and some not so public, and find that Mr McCain is a less than honorable candidate because his main approach to Office seems to be based on trying to make his opponents (in this race and in other races he’s been in) look bad…rather than focus on the issues, and it shows. It also shows that he is an egotist that seeks the public eye of sympathy…I’m also a Veteran of the US Armed Forces and many Vietnam Veterans are friends of mine… our thoughts are this: no real, honorable self-respecting and other Vietnam Veterans respecting Veteran would put out a video Commercial for Public Office that depicts himself performing a “Heroic Act”… Hero’s – REAL HERO’S …don’t proclaim themselves as Noble… History does it for them… isn’t interesting that in the 40 years since Vietnam that this alleged act of heroism didn’t come up ONCE before?

    Don’t prattle to me or other American’s about Obama’s race, it’s not the race we vote for, don’t tell us about his “lie’s and deception”, Mr. McCain and Mz. Palin have already proven themselves much more adept at both, and Mr. Bush? There’s the real liar… thanks to him and the Republican Party… many previously able to vote American’s won’t be able to …because they won’t have a home to vote FROM, Mr. Bush’s wealthy Business cronies who we BAILED OUT… didn’t lose their homes, but millions of American’s did…and we won’t forget…

    Am I a Democrat? Darn right I am!

  • Mike Thompson in So. California

    Reference ACORN… in 2006 Mr. McCain appeared at ACORN events smiling and showing those pearly whites frequently… until they registered too many anti-Republican’s… then there was a hue and cry to “oust ACORN!”… it may interest you to know that ACORN then registered 1.5 million people to vote and had only 10,000 errors (about 1.5%) , but THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’s OWN registration process screwed up more than 2/3rd of it’s own Party’s registrations by the same “errors” that McCain is now “seriously concerned is voter fraud” – (Example … 1800 people in San Bernadino County California (that’s California’s largest County – it’s east of Los Angeles) didn’t have their voice counted in that Election AT ALL, due to Republican Party Voter Registration errors…and that’s 66% .. or about 600 TIMES more errors than ACORN made in voter registrations… So I’d say ACORN’s record is a lot better than Senator McCain’s own Party…

    So I don’t think Mr. McCain can throw any soiled shoes here … his own need some cleaning … if it weren’t for the Election clearly showing Mr. McCain’s mounting desperation to get into Office any way he can… we’d probably never hear about ACORN’s problems… and certainly not if the voters they were registering were FOR the Republican’s…

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.