Behind McCain’s ACORN gambit: The fraud of voter ‘fraud’

The FBI is investigating Acorn voter fraud in eleven states. McCain and the RNC have nothing to do with this. Wanting an honest election has nothing to do with voter suppression. To suggest that it does is a Mickey Mouse argument.

The anti-ACORN campaign has two goals:

1. They want to “turn the page” from the subject of the economy. To do this, the Republicans are creating a Boogey Man out of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
2. At the same time they are trying to justify why they will not accept the results of the election if Barack Obama wins.

According to a Washington Post article,

“On the way into the event [in Waukesha, WI], the Republican Party of Wisconsin handed out fliers reading ‘Your Vote Is Being Stolen,’ an anti-ACORN leaflet that concluded, ‘Why is vote fraud allowed? Vote fraud is allowed since it benefits Democrats.’”

In the next week you’re going to hear plenty about ACORN. You’re going to hear about raids on their headquarters and suspected voter fraud. For example, in Las Vegas, the police raided the ACORN headquarters and seized computers and papers. If you just read the headline, you feel sure the local ACORN office must have been up to no good. But read this press release from ACORN that tells their side of the story. According to the press release:

“Anytime ACORN quality control staff has identified a suspicious application, we have separated that application out and flagged it for election officials. We turn any suspicious applications to election officials separately, along with a cover sheet identifying the nature of the problem and an offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual. (Note that civic organizations are required by law to turn over ANY signed voter registration applications even when they are known to have problems). We immediately dismiss any employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations. “

Let’s be clear. ACORN has had some serious issues with overzealous workers who falsified voter registrations. This is tragic and alarming. But it does not mean that all of the millions of voters that were registered by ACORN are invalid.

What is behind the sudden surge of stories on ACORN? Ask Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner who said on Fox News:

“…these rumblings that you’re hearing, it’s quite interesting. Our office is being barraged by numerous, numerous, tens, dozens, hundreds of phone calls. In addition, people close to me who do not work in the secretary of state’s office are getting calls from random callers about one issue after another concerning voter fraud, even at 2:00 in the morning.

“So there is a concentrated effort going on out there to try to build the noise that you’re discussing. And it’s unfortunate because if we can find a specific allegation, we’ll deal with it directly. But again, this creating fear in the minds of law-abiding citizens that somehow their vote is not going to count or that it’s going to be diluted is a huge disservice to the voters of Ohio and to the rest of the country.”

Obviously, Republican operatives are fanning the flames of this story. Watch for propaganda against ACORN to spring up on blogs, YouTube and other outlets, including the mainstream media.

But what’s the end game? Besides distracting us from the economy, what’s the point of all of this noise about ACORN?

According to a story by Tom Curry at MSNBC:

“The co-chairman of the McCain advisory team in charge of monitoring alleged voter fraud, former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, hinted this week at potential post-Nov. 4 litigation if Obama wins due to suspect voters who had been registered by ACORN. ‘The contest could go on for a very long time,’ he told reporters.”

So, the McCain campaign is trying to simultaneously distract you from the financial crisis, while preparing to contest the election if Barack Obama wins.

This is nothing more than a preemptive strike by the Republicans to reject the results of an election that they have already lost. If the McCain campaign is so concerned about your right to vote, why are they not talking about is the illegal purging of voter rolls? The Republicans are not interested in talking about voters who are being disenfranchised. They’re too busy setting up their cover story for rejecting the election.

Here’s what we can do. First, don’t let them change the subject. Keep the conversation focused on what everyday Americans need: the kind of change in Washington that Barack Obama can bring.

Second, the best way to ensure we prevent a long contracted legal battle over the election is for Obama to win by a landslide. If Obama wins every swing state by a significant margin, the Republicans will have a harder time crying foul.

In many states you can vote today. Check http://www.voteforchange.com/ for details of where and when you can vote.

Don’t let the Republicans turn the page on us. Don’t let them steal the election with allegations of voter fraud.

Lindsey Graham is a Republican, not a Democrat as your story wrongly reports.

McCain’s argument against ACORN died the day he attended the rally in 2006. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Registration mishaps happen all the time. To deem this as ‘black folks’ issue is racist. If anything, we should worry about those extremely hackable electronic voting machines that don’t leave paper trails.

Lil’ Bo Peeped

Your jaundiced view of ACORN totally misses the point – and quite on purpose, I suspect.

ACORN is being investigated in multiple states, and it’s not because of John McCain or the Republican party. It’s because there’s overwhelming evidence of continuing voter registration fraud to accompany a long history of investigations, indictments and convictions of ACORN staff members.

But that’s not the point either. The point is that ACORN is making MY vote, which is LEGITIMATE, count for less. I am being disenfranchised by ACORN’s illegal activity, and I’m utterly sick of it.

Defense of ACORN is small-minded and willfully ignorant of the facts.

Bryan Ellis
http://politics.BryanEllis.com

JohnK incorrectly said:

“The FBI is investigating Acorn voter fraud in eleven states. McCain and the RNC have nothing to do with this”

Followed by Bryan Ellis who incorrectly echoed with:

“ACORN is being investigated in multiple states, and it’s not because of John McCain or the Republican party.”

Wrong. Guess you guys haven’t paid much attention to who is carrying out these investigations, which officials are declaring “voter fraud!” suddenly, and what the GOP has been doing (in the form of the ACVR, John Fund, Hans von Spakovsky, Thor Hearne, Bradley Schlozman, Tim Griffing, etc.) for years.

You couldn’t be more wrong. Google for more than a minute or two, and you’ll find out. Or, you can just read the stories about all of this — even the bad ones — a bit more closely.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_nuts_at_acorn_could_cause.html
ACORN Becoming an Embarrassment for Obama
By Dick Morris

Let me try and get this straight.

Didn’t we just endure 4 years of incessant Democrat tantrums based upon a perception that GWB won through voter fraud?

Anyone remember “selected not elected”?

But now

Democrats were against election fraud, before they were for it.

It is incredibly small minded to attempt to justify the notion that it’s OK for ACORN to submit illegal fraud. “It happens all the time” as if it’s part and parcel to the process and we are supposed to just put up with it.

Illegal activity is illegal activity and should be dealt with seriously no matter the guilty party. The fact they have a long standing record of flagrant disregard for the law makes it all the more perverted to try to defend them at any level.

How do you get these people to vote? There are 2 simple ways ACORN pulls it off. First, once registered, ACORN just gets any body to the precinct to check in as the name of that person they registered. As long as that person also knows the address that they were registered under, they do not have to prove anything else. No ID, no nothing. The same people can be going to different precincts pretending to be various fraudulent registrants of ACORNs.

The 2nd way is even easier. ACORN picks up 30 homeless people (or anyone they want) and 1 registered voter in a precinct can simply declare they know this person and that they have lived in the precinct for 21 days. That person can then register, without ID, using any address in the precinct and any name they choose. The registered voter can do this for 30 people. Those same 30 people can move on to the next precinct where they are greeted by someone else who is registered in that precinct and get registered under false identity to vote all over again, without ever being asked to prove who they are or provide an ID of any kind.

MN election law is so perverted. It makes every attempt to facilitate fraud at every possible turn. There is no justification for not wanting every single voter to go through the effort to prove who they are and they are eligible to participate in our democracy.

And yes, the dems are at the heart of this concerted effort to encourage this fraud.

Response to TJSwift, history has shown way back in 1876, and obviously in 2000, that the Republicans are drunk on power abuses. To hear them now is just a bad dream. You know it really sounds bigoted to virtually say,”My vote counts for ten of any ACORN registered votes”. After the past eight years, whats so hard about giving the other party a chance? Must be drunk on power, and proud of it.

CEOlson, explain to me how the party of smaller government is more power drunk than the party that wants to expand government power.

Kaplan,

Get a clue please, this article is completely preposterous. You are basically taking Obama’s and the Acorn spokesman’s word for it and implicating McCain as a racist for wanting a fair election. Personally being the objective person I am, I see the logic of an investigation when you have 40,000 people registered to vote in a district and only 35,000 residents, but thats just me.

“the McCain campaign and its surrogates have continued to falsely link Obama to ACORN” — Falsely? please read this independant article:

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/7203

You sir, seemingly have fallen for Obama’s lies.

This basically is a repeat of the same strategy that gets used every a conservative has a close election. Suppress voter turnout among low income voters. Their total inability to ever actually find a fake ballot doesn’t bother them. Where are these false votes? Why is it so easy to find cases when citizens are turned away from the polls? Is it ok to you to disallow 100 legitimate votes to find 1 false one?

What good is being the party of smaller gov’t, when the result seems to be “a kid in the candy store” gone mad?? The age old retort by conservatives, like “joe the plumber” that big gov’t or social welfare is the root of all evil is a farce. The “founding fat fathers” from all the private country clubs conceive and foster corprate welfare, while 95% of us toil for our existance. Not all repubs or dems are rotten or greedy at heart, but I’m convinced the top 5% of the conservative wing costs this country a 1000 times more than the bottom 5% of the liberals. Special interests, no-bid contracts, tax evasion, and pure cronyism are the foundations of big business. Spending is spending whether it be social, or private. Lets talk turkey, not the blind regurgitations of the right. When they start the voter reg. wars this early, you know the McSame folks are wetting their pants.

Nick,

What kind of cases are you talking about?

BlueLark,

“”The age old retort by conservatives, like “joe the plumber” that big gov’t or social welfare is the root of all evil is a farce.”"

Its more than an age old retort and its not a farce, its the philosophy of liberty and freedom. its the belief that people are entitled to the fruits of their own labor and that we know whats best for our own money.

**I’m convinced the top 5% of the conservative wing costs this country a 1000 times more than the bottom 5% of the liberals**

Thats in interesting conclusion and is completely opposite from the evidence I have seen. Especially when Obama proposes a trillion in new spending and McCain proposes a spending freeze.

Ahem, Nick, are we missing the point about “spending”? Independent budget groups have predicted both candidates are going to keep us in the red for sometime. OB/BI will get us above water faster. How would McSame do it with a cabinet full of plump lobbyists? I can just see them meeting, “Oh John, you can have the big tax break this year, my group got crowned last year”. “Oh no Bob, I wouldn’t have it any other way, I insist you have my $20mil?? Nick, we are in different worlds I guess, because I’ve read the papers and followed the past eight years closely. Between Iraq, and the corporate welfare GWB has snoozed over, this election shouldn’t even be close. “Joe the plumber” from the recent debate appears to be a “poser” just like the throngs that have been drawn to the right since the birth of the GOP. How do you explain hundreds(some say thousands) of Black Americans being turned away from the polls at 8:00 P.M. in Cleveland last election? They just happened to be black?? Get serious, and get out the “Depends”.

The independant analysts are most likely correct, here is the reason why: There is no way a spending cut will go in with a democrat majority in congress. Congress will tack on oodles of pork to any bill on McCain’s agenda and there won’t be anything he can do about it. Even if he veto’s it they will probably be able to override the veto. So in that sense I would have to agree with you, Barack and the democrat congress would be more than happy to tax our economy into the ground. Barack will bring the government’s ability to do what they want with our money to a whole new level. There by increasing government power significantly. who is power drunk?

“Black Americans being turned away from the polls at 8:00 P.M. in Cleveland last election?”

I suppose McCain was responsible for this? I suppose he called in his KKK posse?

I have to step in and correct and rebut CommonSenseRambler.

First, there’s just the plain factual error about MN’s law regarding vouching. The maximum number of people that can be vouched for by one person in a precinct is 15, not 30. (Exception – an employee of an authorized residential facility may vouch for an unlimited number of the residents of that facility — this is nursing homes, VA homes, homeless shelters & domestic violence shelters, basically). But the real problem I have with the Rambler’s “common sense” analysis of MN election law is that it theorizes a straw-man worst case scenario that simply ignores the reality of how a polling place works and the procedural mechanisms that exist to ward against widespread fraud in MN. As an experienced election judge, this fear of a polling place being overwhelmed by people brought in from all over in order to game an election is laughable, to be honest. It ignores the human element on both sides as well as the procedures, processes and penalties that are in place to ensure a clean election. I’ll start by saying that he idea that the registration judges working the registration table on election day would just roll over and not start asking questions if a person in a precinct started to vouch for a lot of unknown faces is absurd on its face. In fact, the more people that a single voter vouches for, the more fishy that’s going to look. Heck, in most places, even the event of someone registering by voucher will cause a stir because they are rare in most polling locations. (And just want to be clear that once vouched for, you can’t turn around and vouch for anyone that day, which is a reasonable abuse-prevention measure). Then there’s the various oaths and penalties that are in place that stare the voucher and the vouchee/registrant in the face throughout the process. The penalties for registering when you are not eligible to do so are not light — a felony, punishable by a fine of up to $10,000, and up to 5 years in prison. And ALL registrants sign an acknowledgment of that penalty twice before they vote. How many people are going to take a chance on that penalty? I think you can go ask any of the county election administrators about how many voter fraud prosecutions occur after an election and find out that the number is slim, and that’s not because they are not vigilant or willfully blind; it is because it is infrequent and that severe penalty is definitely a significant factor behind the low volume of fraud. Next, we’ll add in the other sets of vigilant eyes at the polls, known as challengers. In the spots where the major political parties expect there to be potential for fraud, especially on the big presidential general elections when voter turnout is enormous, they send out challengers who are able to contest voters who they reasonably believe are ineligible (based on personal knowledge). And let’s not forget that the voters themselves also serve as eyes and ears for misbehavior. Then to top all of that off, you need to have the one thing that is most difficult to maintain in any conspiracy — silence. The larger the number of people involved in perpetrating a voting fraud, the less likely that a tongue won’t slip at some place or time that leads to it all being uncovered. And I’d also throw into the mix that with every passing election cycle we have more and more electronic systems and databases that help to make sure that dead people aren’t registered, that you exist and live where you say you do and that anyone voting has some footprints in the system that allow them to be verified and, if they are perpetrating fraud, findable. And that technology will just keep improving. I won’t go so far as to say it is impossible to enact a scenario like CommonSense is suggesting, but it is far from a common sense concern in my experience. If CommonSense is looking for areas to be concerned about in terms of voter fraud, I’d suggest that an area far more open to widespread exploitation is absentee voting. With fewer or even zero face-to-face contacts, there’s a much greater opportunity for abuse in that realm than what’s being quibbled about here.

For further reading, I’d suggest the following as a couple of decent starting places on voting fraud:
http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7Bfb3c17e2-cdd1-4df6-92be-bd4429893665%7D/VOTINGIN2008.PDF

http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/interviews/tova_andrea_wang/

I’ll also say that the debate going on here, when boiled down, is one that the field of election law will always struggle with, involving two ideals that are great in theory but problematic when put into a real world setting. On one side, we can say that ideally only those who are eligible to vote in an election should be allowed to vote. But on the other side to this coin, ideally anyone who is eligible to vote should be allowed to vote. Thus this big dispute is between two points that any reasonable person should agree to, at least in their ideal form. Of course, as is usually the case, in reality these two ideals end up rubbing up against one another and can run contrary to one another at those points. So at the tension point, a legitimate question arises as to which right to elevate into primacy when they come into conflict. Specifically, is it better to have election laws that end up denying the vote to someone who should have been allowed to vote? Or is it better to open up the franchise, knowing that a few ineligible votes are likely to get cast? Whatever your answer, one of the legitimate rights loses, so there’s no easy answers here. In fact, the answers are even less easy because those aren’t the only two considerations we might factor; there’s other related issues such a race, gender, criminal punishment and a number of other factors that we could toss in here and really muddy the waters. Bottom-line, this is not easy stuff and there’s good arguments to be made on both sides about what right is more fundamental. Personally, I am proud to live in a state that errs on the side of making sure the vote is open to those who are eligible, despite the potential for a few additional votes getting in that should not have. I recognize and respect that others are entitled to a different valuation of the ideals I’ve outlined and that people can arrive at different conclusions about the best system to put in place to best cater to the “winning” ideal. However, I ultimately base my preference on a belief that the real strength of a democratic society comes from openness in all facets, including openness of franchise. I find it far more unconscionable to outright deny a legitimate voter’s right to vote by having more restrictive laws than it is to let a vote through that should not have been cast, especially when we toss in those additional factors, like race. In my opinion, we do more damage to democracy by using exclusionary laws that turn away persons who have been traditionally unrepresented or under-represented. But that’s just one bleeding-heart progressive’s opinion. Again, your mileage may vary.

OK, if you’ve made it to this point in the posting and you’re just itching to post back at me and tell me how naive I am or whatever else you feel I’ve gotten wrong or missed, I’ve got one last thing to get out here. I’d like to put forth a challenge to those who are so concerned about voter fraud in the polling place. If you honestly imagine that this precinct-level, in-person registration abuse is a rampant, systematic problem that is going to impact you on election day, then do something about it by filling one of those two key human roles I mentioned above that are necessary to make the system work in preventing fraud.

Option 1) Go get trained to be an election judge and work the polls on election day (it might be too late to get in for this election cycle – you’ll have to put in a call to your county or city election office to see if they still have needs). If you want to know exactly where the real problems are on election day, this is the best place to learn about it instead of theorizing about it. I’d prefer to talk all day about real problems in the system rather than these largely theoretical ones we’re discussing here. In fact, I’d say that if you’re concerned about vote dilution, there are real problems encountered in every precinct I’ve ever been associated with that have at least as much of an impact as this purported on-site voter fraud.

Option 2) Go get trained to be an election day challenger. There’s less training required (actually, there is NO training requirement for challengers, but the major party you are appointed by will usually not want a clueless person representing it and thus there’s normally some training element involved), it is easy to get a party to sponsor you as a challenger because the parties like having helpers on election day, and being a challenger is going to allow you more flexibility and choice in terms of how long your election day is and possibly even where you go to be a challenger. The three recognized major parties are the I-R, the DFL and the Independence Party of MN. Give them a call! And if they are not doing trainings at this point, I can point folks at training materials online, as well as an actual non-partisan challenger training being held in St. Paul on Friday, Oct. 24th, if there is interest.

I’ll close by saying that informed, experienced discussion is usually better discussion, so go work the polls. The analogy I’ll draw is that working an election, seeing democracy in action all day long and up close is like having an HDTV – you get to see the warts, the wrinkles, the blemishes and the perspiration that the normal picture from your old TV can’t show you. A voter’s view of the process is that old TV view – it does not give you adequate exposure. So come in and serve at the polls. Be part of the solution instead of another angry person posting on a website.

Thank you for the very interesting post. For the record I am against voter fraud, dilution, and suppression.

You bring a good argument about the concept of “openness” around voter registrations and I would have to agree for the most part, but I don’t think that voter fraud should be ignored.

“”Be part of the solution instead of another angry person posting on a website.”"

Careful, you are making a little too much sense here.

Nate,
Thanks for not flaming me. I do TRY to make sense, especially if I pop my head onto a board on the “internets”. And for the record, I’m not suggesting that ignoring voter fraud is a good idea or one that I would condone. But I’d like to see evidence that at least rises to the standard of creating reasonable doubt about how clean an election is. And that’s been a fairly consistent problem to the voter fraud accusations about these false registrations. They don’t lead to a lot of people with faked ID’s or other means of getting by the system descending on the polls and voting when ineligible in some way or another. False registrations displease me because of the administrative burden they create, which means my tax dollars being wasted to add them to the rolls, carry them on the rolls for a while, investigate them and them purge them from the rolls. But as far as voting fraud investigations, I again want to see my tax dollars, and my government’s resources, used wisely, which means focusing in actual problem areas that have been investigated and found to be problematic in the past.

And since I’m posting again, I have to pass along a comment made by an acquaintance who is a former reporter and who had occasion in the past to cover ACORN here in town. She told me she thought the idea that ACORN is capable of perpetrating intentional fraud was hilarious because in her experience the only time ACORN and actual organization ever touch is in their Acronym name. She characterized the group as a bunch of kids with good intentions running around trying to do good, but felt that if there was something they were not good at, being organized was that something.