The ACORN Doesn't Fall far from the tree.

Bad news for the Payday Loan Initiative, Prop 200.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has established a campaign committee and dished out $32,500 in opposition to Proposition 200, according to state records.

I don't think supporters need to worry much about the $32,500.  What ACORN really brings to the table are thousands of voters who live the same PO BOX in Avondale.  The pro 200 forces should be very worried about that. 

Comments

[DJ]

Greg, maybe you can get a job with Andy Thomas after you graduate law school. You certainly know how to lie with a straight face. There is not a PO Box in Avondale with thousands of voters. This is easily verifiable in the voter file...but you know that.

[The Klute]

Yeah, I guess state-sanctioned usury is just so passe these days.

[Nick S.]

ACORN only registers Democrats. That means they are completely legit and any questioning of a voter named Mickey Mouse is just voter intimidation and racism (sarcasm).

Free Mumia!

[ron]

Prop 200 is no reform - as much as they claim it is...

[Prince]

Desperate, getting blind-sided by a conservative radio host who says his position is "hogwash," Mr. Yes on 200 convinces a less than talented Biz reporter to pick up this complete non-story, calls a sitting Senator sanctimonious, and asks the best man at his wedding (Our fav blogger, Greg) for a favor, hoping the real news will pick up this story because it's in a popular blog.

Dude.

If I were running a second losing campaign in as many elections, I'd be doing the same thing. At least he doesn't have to worry about money if he starts losing clients, which I'm not suggesting should happen. He takes on difficult issues. Regardless, Payday lenders are making sure he's taken care of...

[D. Alter]

Oh NUTS!
i am trying to figure out why the NUT committee didn't file their $10k notification with the SOS???

Are they so sactimonious that they think they are exempt from federal AND state laws!

[muckraker]

Greg, you lose credibility when you make statements such as thousands of registered voters using the same PO Box. C'mon, you can't bash MSM and then write such irresponsible crap.

[AZGuy]

Greg are you actually supporting the Trojan Horse that is Prop 200?

[M]

So, exactly how much is the payday lending industry paying you Greg? This is a page right out of their way-too-obvious playbook.

Is it too much to ask for some original thought with this site? If I wanted regurgitated talking points from a desperate campaign, I'd go straight to Stan Barnes.

[SonoranSam]

Despite all the ACORN nonsense, it was Mark Jacoby, an Arizona Republican, who was arrested for fradulent voter-registration activity. F
ollow this link for details:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud20-2008oct20,0,3842357.story

[Prince]

I've been informed I was wrong about the best man thing... But I remember some "Uncle Stan" comment recently about his appearance on Channel 12 not wearing a tie. You know what I mean...

[VWgal]

I'm still voting NO on prop 200 - it is a non partisan issue. Lets not let the loan industry run the program here. Let the Citzens and the representives the citzen elect run the show.

[Lance E]

I oppose Prop. 200, but that said, I cannot believe anybody in their right mind would offer a defense of ACORN. The organization has committed more verifiable voter fraud than any political organization since the senior Mayor Daley's Chicago machine in the early sixties. And no, DJ, muckraker and SonoranSam, the fact that ACORN was committing felonies to help Democrats get elected does not make it OK.

[Matt]

Hiring Greg might make MCAO's reputation even worse.

[todd]

Lance E ,
Actually, ACORN has not committed a single verified act of voter fraud, so, what are you talking about.

[Paul]

Hmmm... you're right, Todd - technically, ACORN has not committed vote fraud. However, they have committed voter REGISTRATION fraud.

[todd]

Paul,
Have they? Does this mean that the Prop. 104 organizers were guilty of petition fraud because they turned in petition forms which had invalid people? ACORN is required to turn in all registration forms even if if is obvious the information supplied is incorrect (like "Mickey Mouse" registering). They normally flag these as being likely fraudulent but that is all they can do.

If people want us to believe ACORN is purposefully trying to register non-existent people the obvious question would be what could they possibly gain from this because these fictitious people would not be able to vote.

[Lance E]

Todd,

"...the obvious question would be what could they possibly gain from this..."(?)

You are clearly not familiar with the process.

ACORN registers "John Doe" and then buses a felon whose voting rights have not been restored, an illegal immigrant or someone who did not register to vote in time (frequently recruited at a day labor center or homeless shelter) to the polls and he says "I'm John Doe."

In Arizona, this would be a problem because of the ID requirement, which is why Democratic Party interest groups fought the ID requirement tooth and nail and have appealed it to the 9th Circuit twice. However, most states do not have a comparable requirement and saying "I'm John Doe" is good enough.

Also, if the poll worker says "this is a very recent register, can I see some ID?" in some states, count on a Democratic "poll watcher" (read: fraud enabler) to protest and try to get the guy through and if it doesn't happen, the poll watcher will go to the media with yet another account of "voter intimidation and suppression."

My friend is a documentary film maker. He had to shut a project down because after two years of research, he determined that modern Republican voter fraud is so rare and modern Democratic voter fraud is so common, his target audience would have been offended by the film.

[todd]

Lance E,
You are clearly not familiar with reality.

Please point to one documented case of ACORN doing what you claim. I have never heard or read of a single case. This is total make-believe as is your claim of systemic voter fraud. Voter fraud is so rare now because there is more oversight of collection of ballots (well maybe not electronic voting ones) which is where traditional voter fraud occurred. Actually trying to swing an election by having individuals come down and fraudulently vote would be so unwieldy it would nearly be impossible. What we do have and should be worried about is efforts to disfranchise voters before they even get to the polls. There has been widely documented efforts of the GOP in this area, although I am sure the Dems would do similar things if they believed it would aid them.

[Lance E]

Todd,

Below are over 20 incidents in over 10 states leading to more than 15 criminal convictions with several felony cases ongoing. I can get more if you need them.

AR 1998 A contractor with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote was arrested for falsifying about 400 voter registration cards.

CO 2004 An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.

2005 Two ex-ACORN employees were convicted in Denver of perjury for submitting false voter registrations.

FL 2004 A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was “singled out” among suspected voter registration groups for a 2004 wage initiative because it was “the common thread” in the agency’s fraud investigations.

MI 2004 The Detroit Free Press reported that “overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters.” ACORN-affiliate Project Vote was one of two groups suspected of turning in the documents.

MO 2007 Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for charges including identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 election.

2006 Eight ACORN employees in St. Louis were indicted on federal election fraud charges. Each of the eight faces up to five years in prison for forging signatures and submitting false information.

2003 Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.

NC 2004 North Carolina officials investigated ACORN for submitting fake voter registration cards.

NM 2005 Four ACORN employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group’s Albuquerque ballot initiative. A local sheriff added: “It’s safe to say the forgery was widespread.”

2004 An ACORN employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was “manufacturing voters” throughout New Mexico.

OH 2007 A man in Reynoldsburg was indicted on two felony counts of illegal voting and false registration, after being registered by ACORN to vote in two separate counties.

2004 A grand jury indicted a Columbus ACORN worker for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, two ACORN workers submitted what the director of the board of election supervisors called “blatantly false” forms. In Cuyahoga County, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group.

MN 2004 During a traffic stop, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of a former ACORN employee, who had violated a legal requirements that registration cards be submitted to the Secretary of State within 10 days of being filled out and signed.

PA 2008 An ACORN employee in West Reading, PA, was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison for identity theft and tampering with records. A second ACORN worker pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is free on $10,000 bail.

2004 Reading’s Director of Elections received calls from numerous individuals complaining that ACORN employees deliberately put inaccurate information on their voter registration forms. The Berks County director of elections said voter fraud was “absolutely out of hand,” and added: “Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registration but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations.” The Berks County deputy director of elections added that ACORN was under investigation by the Department of Justice.

TX 2004 ACORN turned in the voter registration form of David Young, who told reporters “The signature is not my signature. It’s not even close.” His social security number and date of birth were also incorrect.

VA 2005 In 2005, the Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN for turning in a significant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons in violation of state and federal election law.

In a letter to ACORN, the State Board of Elections reported that 56% of the voter registration applications ACORN turned in were ineligible. Further, a full 35% were not submitted in a timely manner, as required by law. The State Board of Elections also commented on what appeared to be evidence of intentional voter fraud. "Additionally,” they wrote, “information appears to have been altered on some applications where information given by the applicant in one color ink has been scratched through and re-entered in another color ink. Any alteration of a voter registration application is a Class 5 Felony in accordance with § 24.2-1009 of the Code of Virginia."

WA 2007 Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history. More than 2,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted by the group during a voter registration drive.

WI 2004 The district attorney’s office investigated seven voter registration applications Project Vote employees filed in the names of people who said the group never contacted them. Former Project Vote employee Robert Marquise Blakely told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not met with any of the people whose voter registration applications he signed, “an apparent violation of state law,” according to the paper.

[todd]

All these are voter registration fraud. Most likely due to paying workers per person they register, which certainly is a bad policy.

None of these involve people voting who were not eligible to and none support your assertion that ACORN or Democrats or anyone else is falsely registering people and then busing in people to vote use the fictitious registered voters' name.

Your examples do not support the claims you have been making.

[ron]

I remember after 06 when the immigration debate was warming up. There were all these remarks about election fraud apparently carried out by illegals. Remember that? The SOS came out and said they found nary one piece of evidence of any election fraud by illegals.

[Sam]

Given the nationwide scope of ACORN, with its declared partisan position and multi-million dollar privately and publicly-funded operations, filing thousands upon thousands of bad registrations…HOW IS IT SO UNREASONABLE TO SUSPECT THAT VOTER FRAUD MIGHT ACTUALLY OCCUR ON A LARGE SCALE?

I have asked this question in numerous conversations, blogs and forum boards and have yet to get an answer from any liberal. All you get is a re-directed non-answer about “voter suppression” or some other bumper sticker slogan. I did have one lefty blogger tell me that voter fraud is illegal and the consequences for being caught would prevent people from engaging in it. Uhh…HELLO…voter registration fraud is illegal and look how much of it we’ve seen…God knows how much hasn’t been caught. I’m not kidding…this is the level of ignorance/dishonesty you get when trying to engage some people on this issue.

We won’t know until Election Day if anyone will attempt actual voter fraud…just like you can’t say a robbery has occurred until it actually goes down, but Democrats and other mongoloids like Todd want us all to ignore the four armed men wearing ski masks while sitting in a car parked in the loading zone with the engine running outside our local bank. They say “it may be illegal for them to have guns (fraudulent registrations), but that doesn’t mean they are going to rob the bank (commit vote fraud).” That’s how stupid they think you, the average voting citizen, are.

A handful of people won’t make a difference when it comes to casting illegal ballots, that’s true. But what would an organized effort be capable of? A bad registration makes it through and is now on the books. ACORN and similar groups keep records of all their registrations. How hard would it be to have organizers marshal people from poll to poll, telling each person which name they are to use at every new stop? The registrations are on the books so there is no identification requirement. It’s that simple.

[todd]

Sam,
You have lots of insults to through out but no proof of anything.

Also, your analogy doesn't hold up. There is no direct path from false registrations to voting. The registrations get thrown out because they are not valid. There are not all these fictitious people on the voting rolls because of false registrations and I have seen no evidence ever showing there is. The false registrations make some registration gatherers some extra money. The registrations are no on the books because they get declared invalid. Do you no understand that.

[todd]

"Through" should be "throw", of course.

[Sam]

Which is more appalling -- Todd's lack of reading comprehension, Todd's lack of basic English usage, or Todd's failure to see facts?

GFY

[vet66]

Plan "A" for BHO is to buy the election to the tune of $700M U.S. plus or minus a few million. Plan "B" is to steal the election by turning ACORN loose on the election process.

Putting a pretty bow on the stinking package is for the looney left of the party to steal signs, key cars, issue death threats to Joe the Plumber, and scream dirty tricks when Aunty Zeituni is supposedly outed after doing the same to Joe the Plumber's records.

Note to fellow posters here; It is not racist to vote against BHO no matter what they say. Let us give George Soros one more sweatshirt that will say, once again, I spent hundreds of millions of dollars and all I got was this cheap sweatshirt made in China.

[The Klute]

I love how everyone's for capitalism until the guy they don't want to be president raises more money than their guy.

"Waaaah! Barack Obama raised 700 million dollars. We're the Republicans! We should have that money"

I will second vet66. It is NOT racist to vote against Barack Obama, as long as your thought process is: "I think McCain's a better candidate" and not "I'm not voting for a n****r!". If it's the latter, than it, and you, *are* a racist.

[todd]

Sam,
Sorry I did have some typos in my last comment, please forgive me. As to the rest, I still stand by my statement that there is no evidence that there has been a systematic effort to register fictitious people so that others can then vote in their place. If you really think ACORN is an organized plot to subvert the election process then please show me where they have aided people in casting ballots illegally. I do comprehend what you have written I just to not find your arguments persuasive.

One point that no one has picked up on is something I alluded to earlier, mainly that we have just seen locally massive problems with the petition process because of duplicate signatures and false names. Is the explanation that Andy Thomas as chairman of 104 committee sanctioned widespread fraud to try to illegally get the initiative on the ballot? Hardly. The problem was with paying people to collect signatures who are getting paid per signature and not per valid signature since this incentivizes this type of behavior.

I was approached numerous times to sign a petition and after saying I had already done so, was asked to fill it out again since the person got paid per signature. I of course would not, but one can assume this is a widespread problem. Likewise, we have ACORN who wishes to get more people registered to vote so that they will actually vote legally in elections but they do this through paying registration gatherers per registration received. I have no doubt that if a conservative organization was paying people to get people registered to vote they would have the same exact problem. Of course, I know of no such organization because conservatives generally benefit when less people vote.

Regardless, I return to the simple case that voter fraud - actually people fraudulently voting is almost completely unheard of in the US. Claiming there is some widescale voter fraud going on flies in the face of every recent study and investigation looking into this issue.

Finally, I would point out the recent comments of Republican Governor Crist in Florida, which are a sensible reaction to what has been happening:
http://www.kansascity.com/449/story/871035.html

[Joe G.]

"Dead Voters Submit Ballots from Beyond":
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/17859950/detail.html?rss=nn5&psp=news

[todd]

Joe,thanks for proving my point. At the end of the article the election official explains these are due to technical mistakes and she has never seen a case of fraud.

[Chad]

So if the NRA had registered hundreds of thousands of fake voters, lefties would just dismiss it? I think not.

Here is a scary read on the left-leaning Politico website about voter fraud:

"Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. "It's ludicrous to say that fake registrations can't become fraudulent votes," she told me. "I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots."... She has given me documents that back up many of her statements, including one that indicates that the goal of ACORN's New Mexico affiliate was that only 40 percent of its submitted registrations had to be valid.

MonCrief also told me that some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15189.html

Voting is one of our most fundamental rights. I would like to think all people can agree we can be as tough on voter fraud as we are on under-age people buying alcohol.

[JG]

Apparently registration fraud does lead to election fraud and it's almost impossible to detect without checking ID.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445805,00.html

[Joe G.]

Oh, I see. These aren't the dead voters you're looking for.

Nor, I assume, the dead voters in the same county two years ago.

[todd]

JG,
Thanks for posting a link to something that actually mentions a somewhat contemporaneous case of voter fraud.

Relevant to this discussion are two points the Heritage Foundation Columnist does not mention.

The first is that this is a case of voter fraud aimed at getting a Republican elected. This kind of contradicts the image being put forth that Democratic voter fraud is rampant. Of course, this is an isolated incident so I would not suggest the GOP has a problem with supporting voter fraud.

The second point that is not made clear in the column is how the fraud worked. This is fraud by absentee ballot because Florida had a weird law that allowed political party workers to being the absentee ballot to the person, claim they witnessed it being filled out and then bring it to election officials. The people involved in he fraud requested ballots for people who had died and had not been removed from the rolls yet. They also requested ballots for people in nursing homes and then stole them out of their mail. The law that allowed this has since been changed.

In the end, I am sure there will be all sorts of investigations and I doubt anything will be shown about ACORN. I find disturbing this effort to scapegoat ACORN, first for the economic meltdown and now for the results of the upcoming elections.

[Donna]

Lance E, I love how you think that felons, who have a lot to lose by getting charged with ANOTHER felony, are going to obligingly go along with a scheme that involves them showing up at a polling place, crawling with Republican operatives who are challenging anyone who appears the slightest bit "suspicious", to cast a felonious vote for Mickey Mouse. For $50.

And since a miniscule percentage of Americans are felons, it's funnier still that you think that these ACORN shenanigans of your fevered imagination would even register in the overall vote tally.

It gets even more amusing when you think that undocumented immigrants (who live in constant fear of being deported) are going to do it as well.

[Joe G.]

No, what's funny is that an organization being investigated in numerous states and behind tens of thousands of fraudulent registrations is the victim here.

[Lance E]

Donna and Todd,

I am afraid you are both more familiar with blogging than with actual elections.

Donna, massive numbers of felons and non citizens vote in every election. If you want the data from liberal think tanks like the Urban Institute, I can direct you to it. This is not even debatable. If felons "lived in fear" of violating the law, they generally would not be felons.

Todd, you repeatedly asserted that there was not a single verifiable instance of ACORN committing voter fraud and when I cited you to 15 felony convictions and offered more, you redefined your criteria. Hilarious.

Both of you need to wake up. Jusr because criminal acts benefit a party you support, that does not make the criminal acts OK.

[todd]

Lance,
No you have redefined your claims. You claim acorn is involved in registration fraud to assist in massive voter fraud. The examples you gave do not back that up as they are examples of people ACORN paid to collect registrations committing fraud with the likely motive of getting paid more and thereby ripping off ACORN as an organization.

Again, the parallel is the people prop 104 paid to gather signature. These people most likely committed fraud in the process and are being investigate. These examples point to the real problems of privatizing civic activities.

All studies show almost no cases of verified fraudulent voting.

Please point Donna and I to the studies from liberal think tanks you claim show felons or non-citizens voting. I don't believe there is an Urban Institute study showing this. I do know there are Urban Institute work showing that there have been large problems with people being denied the ability to vote because they were erroneously on a felony exclusion list. Maybe that is what you were thinking of.

[Donna]

Lance, the only documented case of voter fraud that I'm aware of is Ann Coulter being caught doing it in Florida.