Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is drawing huge crowds as she campaigns through swing states. At a stop in Indianapolis Palin challenged the Obama campaign release all communications it has had with left leaning activist group, ACORN.
“John [McCain] and I are calling on the Obama campaign to release communications it has had with this group, to do so immediately,” Palin told 24,000 cheering fans at the Verizon Wireless Music Center.
The crowd was larger than showed up here for Jimmy Buffet or Dave Matthews this summer and 3,000 more than came out to hear Obama last week.
Palin demanded answers to “unanswered questions about his connections with ACORN.”
The fans screamed “Booo!” at least 10 times when Palin mentioned Obama’s name.
“ACORN is under investigation for rampant voter fraud in 13 states. ACORN received over $800,000 from the Obama campaign,” Palin said. All 13 are swing states like Indiana.
“Booo!” Palin’s supporters shouted. Obama has said the $800,000 was for voter canvassing during the primary election, not for voter registration during the general election.
“We have not worked with ACORN at all in the general election,” Obama spokesman Ben Labolt said. “Rather than make these false, desperate attacks, the McCain-Palin campaign should release an economic plan that actually helps the middle class instead of giving billions in tax cuts to big corporations.”
ACORN submitted 5,000 voter registration forms in northwest Indiana in recent weeks. About half of them appear to be fraudulent, local election officials say. They registered a “Jimmy Johns” to vote at the address of a Jimmy Johns restaurant in Crown Point. They registered Levy McIntosh to vote in Gary even though McIntosh passed away last year.
The Washington Post takes up the voter fraud controversy from a surprising (well, maybe not) perspective. At the Post, they have no interest in ACORN or Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's past or current ties to it. In a page A01 story about the voter registration systems put in place to prevent just this sort of fraud, the Post focus is on eligible voters who it says may be turned away if voter information cross checked against drivers' license or Social Security records doesn't match. No mention is made of ACORN and the role it has played this year flooding swing state registrars with thousands of fraudulent voter registrations.
The changes stem from the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002 in the aftermath of the deadlocked presidential race two years earlier. The law provided millions of dollars for states to upgrade voting equipment and procedures, and to create the centralized databases, which allow voters in most states to check their registrations and polling places on the Internet.
As the databases are implemented, voters' names and other information are verified against state driver's license records or Social Security records to determine their eligibility. Federal law allows each state to decide what constitutes a match -- whether it will accept nicknames, for example.
But states are not using "the best scientific knowledge known today" when they verify the information, said Herbert Lin, who is studying the issue for the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees election reforms.
By federal law, anyone whose name is flagged must be notified and given a chance to prove his or her eligibility. But voting rights experts say voters are not always alerted, and even if they are, some may decide to simply skip the election. If questions about eligibility remain on Election Day, those voters are entitled to cast a "provisional" ballot. But which of those ballots are ultimately counted depends on local and state rules.
The ACORN story is beginning to catch some traction, but as seems typical, an Associated Press article seems intent on assuring readers that it's only voter registration fraud not voter fraud. No big deal.
The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls — in Nevada.
But no one in either presidential campaign is laughing. Not publicly, anyway.
Republicans, led by John McCain, are alleging widespread voter fraud. The Democrats and Barack Obama say the controversy is preposterous and is just political mudslinging.
In the middle is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, a grass-roots community group that has led liberal causes since it formed in 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.
They submitted 1.3 million registration cards to local election officials.
Along the way, bogus ones appeared — signed in the names of cartoon characters, professional football players and scores of others bearing the same handwriting. And in the past few days, those phony registrations have exploded into Republican condemnations of far-ranging misconduct, and a relatively obscure community activist group took a starring role, right behind Joe the Plumber, in the final presidential debate.
Looking beyond the smoke and fire, the raging argument boils down to essentially this:
Is ACORN, according to McCain, perpetuating voter fraud that could be "destroying the fabric of democracy"? Or are Republicans trying to keep the disadvantaged, who tend to be Democrats, from casting ballots in a hotly contested presidential race that has drawn record numbers of new voters?
The AP article goes on to assure us that voter fraud -- the real thing -- really can't happen.
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."
"They don't get processed," she said. "And Mickey Mouse is not going to vote."
in the same vein Andrew Romano of Newsweek employs bullet proof logic to deduce that ACORN and Barack Obama are not trying to steal the election. Look how he destroys allegations one by one. I'll give you the abridged version:
I. Obama Has Ties to ACORN: This is true... Of course, there's no proof here that Team Obama coordinated with ACORN on registering voters or anything.
II. ACORN Is Trying to Steal the Election. This is not even remotely true... why all the fuss? Because people are confusing voter fraud (a dangerous offense) with voter registration fraud (a petty crime). ACORN stands accused of the latter.
III. Obama is Trying to Steal the Election: Back to the transitive property. If Obama has ties to ACORN but ACORN ISN'T trying to steal the election, how could Obama possibly be cheating?
Could there be a more conclusive argument? "If Obama has ties to ACORN but ACORN ISN'T trying to steal the election, how could Obama possibly be cheating?" Such powerful simplicity is nothing short of inspiring. And about all those criminal charges and investigations? Says Mr. Romano,
To date, there has been no shortage of charges against ACORN: Ohio in 2004; Colorado in 2005; Kansas City, Missouri in 2006 and Washington state in 2007. This year alone, authorities are investigating the organization's branches in Lake County, Indiana; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; Michigan; Nevada and Missouri. But not a single case alleges that ACORN is attempting to influence the outcome of the election.
No need to worry. ACORN is not attempting to influence the outcome of the election. But then I suppose we might wonder, what exactly are they trying to do?
As a Republican I am always disturbed by the Republican's weak registration efforts; I am also disturbed by the much heralded "low voter turnout"; and I am totally perplexed why anyone would not want everyone to vote.
The problem seems to be not that they will vote ... but WHO will they vote for?
This is deplorable.
Posted by: Lee Russ | October 19, 2008 at 08:07 AM
I for one, would prefer voters not to vote when they have no idea what they are voting for, but it would be their choice. Staying home on election day is a valid choice. It's really a vote.
ACORN introduces the risk that there will be true voting fraud. Nobody is likely to walk into a polling place with false ID and risk jail time for a political candidate. But phony absentee ballots can turn up. Republican challenges will inevitably be met with Democratic howls about voters being disenfranchised. It's a plan.
Posted by: Tom Bowler | October 19, 2008 at 09:24 AM
As a libertarian, without Republican leanings, may I take issue with your take on the ACORN issue?
Of course ACORN is trying to "influence" the election. Aren't we all? There's nothing illegitimate about trying to "influence" voters.
But the allegations of voter fraud/voter registration fraud against ACORN are demonstrably weak. As ACORN follows the very common practice of paying people to register voters, they will--as will all voter registration organizations--have some unscrupulous people in it for the money, not the beliefs, and those people will turn in some fraudulent registrations.
It is also inevitable that any organization registering as many people as ACORN will inadvertantly collect some innaccurate or duplicate registrations, because when you stand ouside a store with a card table registering people, you can't check their previous registrations, and some will fill out the cards wrong, or will forget they're already registered, etc.
Now here's the kicker. It would be wholly unethical for ACORN to collect voter registration cards and not turn them in. Can you imagine the uproar if a group went out pretending to register people and then never submitted the voter registration cards? It is in fact the responsibility of the government elections officials, not independent registration groups, to verify registrations.
But more than that, ACORN bundles the registrations it finds dubious or suspicious, letting the elections officials know which ones they themselves are uncertain about. That is, ACORN goes beyond what they are legally required to do, in order to try to prevent actual voter registration fraud.
You and I may both disagree with much of ACORN's ideology, but if you are concerned with truth, you will join me in hoping that this story dies the unlamented death it so deserves.
Posted by: James Hanley | October 31, 2008 at 06:35 PM
I hope you'll forgive my skepticism, but I don't thinks it's at all appropriate for this story to die an unlamented death. I'm convinced that ACORN is purposefully flooding state voter registration officials to overwhelm them with registrations which all happen to come from demographic areas which are heavily Democratic.
Democrats continue to oppose any obstacle to the casting a ballot. They claim that requiring voters to show identification before being allowed to vote subjects them to onerous hardship.
To suggest that "allegations of voter fraud/voter registration fraud against ACORN are demonstrably weak" is ludicrous. There have been numerous convictions as reported in this article.
Now you may say that the defendents were only temporary workers, so ACORN itself is not really to blame. But that article was written over a year ago. At what point does ACORN management have to take responsibility for the actions of the people they recruit? Since they register Democrats the answer is, "Never." Plausible deniability.
Posted by: Tom Bowler | November 01, 2008 at 06:51 AM