ACORN problems here, there, everywhere!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Michigan attorney general charges ACORN worker with forgery
Paul Egan / The Detroit News

Michigan Atty. Gen. Mike Cox on Tuesday charged a former ACORN worker with forgery in connection with voter registration applications he submitted in the city of Jackson.

Antonio Johnson, 23, a convicted felon who is currently being held in Jackson County on a parole violation, is charged with six counts of forging a public document and faces up to 14 years on each count, Cox said in a news release.

Johnson was working for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now between May and June of this year when he filled out, signed and submitted six voter registration applications, using two Jackson residents' names, without their knowledge, Cox said.

"This is an obvious case of forgery and that is why I am taking action today," said Cox. "This office will not stand by while criminals interfere with the voting rights of Michigan citizens."

The charges come amid widespread complaints in Michigan and around the country about large numbers of duplicate or questionable voter registration applications sent in by ACORN, which has helped to register about 200,000 voters in Michigan and 1.3 million across the country.

Democrats have accused Republicans of raising fears about potential voter fraud in an attempt to deter turnout.

David Lagstein, ACORN's head organizer in Michigan, said his group will cooperate with the investigation.

ACORN does not vet its workers for criminal records, he said.

"At the end of this cycle, we're going to have a full evaluation of the process for our program," he said.

You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com

NEWS FROM THE PLAIN DEALER
Headlines for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio

Multiple registrants tell Cuyahoga County Elections Board ACORN workers begged for signatures
Pair signed multiple vote cards for ACORN
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Joe Guillen
Plain Dealer Reporter

Teenager Freddie Johnson said he was offered smokes and dollar bills to fill out voter registration cards.

And now the Cuyahoga County Elections Board has 73 cards with Johnson's name on them.

Johnson and another prolific registrant were subpoenaed to testify at a meeting Monday as the Elections Board continued its look at possible fraud by ACORN, a national organization that tries to get low- and moderate-income people to register. ACORN's methods have drawn interest in a number of states this presidential election year.

Johnson, 19, said he mostly was trying to help ACORN workers who begged him to sign up because they needed to keep their jobs.

"They'd come up with a sob story why they needed the signature," said Johnson, of Garfield Heights.

ACORN leaders have acknowledged that workers paid by the hour were given quotas to fill.

Board member Sandy McNair said ACORN did not do a competent job carrying out its business plan. Members, in fact, said little about ACORN. And they turned their investigation over to the county sheriff and prosecutor.

A second person to testify, Christopher Barkley, 33, said ACORN workers pestered him while they tried to gather signatures.

Barkley, of Cleveland, said he was homeless and reading a book on Public Square when he signed some of the 13 cards that contain his name. He filled out cards - with his mother's house or workplace as the address - to help workers stay employed.

"Me being a kind-hearted person, I said 'Yeah,' " Barkley recalled.

Barkley, who wore a Domino's Pizza polo shirt, also told the board he was not sure he signed all the cards that had his name.

After the testimony, board Chairman Jeff Hastings paged through a binder that contained copies of cards with Barkley's name on them, and said, "This is ridiculous."

Sheriff's deputies interviewed both men separately after their testimony. They were released and not charged. Chief Deputy Doug Burkhart said they are possible witnesses.

The board decided that Johnson and Barkley must cast provisional ballots if they vote in the presidential election. Provisional ballots are not counted until after the election and only after a voter's address is verified.

Two other people were subpoenaed for Monday but could not be found. The board canceled both of their registrations and forced another woman involved in the investigation to vote provisionally in the Nov. 4 election.

One of the no-shows has already tried to vote, the board was told. His registration already had been canceled, yet he tried to register and vote on the same day about two weeks ago. Board workers recognized his name and stopped him.

Katy Gall, ACORN's Ohio director, said outside the meeting that she's proud of the work her group did. Gall said some of the 13,000 canvassers nationwide obviously didn't live up to the organization's standards. She said ACORN will continue to help with the county's investigation and try to refine its programs.

The Cuyahoga board identified up to 60 people whose names appeared on suspicious ACORN-submitted cards.

Elections Director Jane Platten said the board has safeguards to catch fraudulent cards and stressed that voter registration fraud is not the same as voter fraud.

Ohio law says a person must cast a provisional ballot if an address cannot be verified. The board checks addresses by sending out mail that is not to be forwarded. Poll books are marked to tell workers who must cast provisional ballots.

Board member Rob Frost, also the county GOP chairman, said he is not convinced Barkley and Johnson would have tried to vote more than once. He said it's clear ACORN workers disregarded registration laws.

"I wouldn't want there to be widespread fear that what ACORN has caused will lead to widespread [voter] fraud," Frost said after the meeting.

Board workers said ACORN had turned in nearly 72,000 cards since January. Of those, more than 5,000 were missing information and so could not be used. The board could not verify the address on 3,500 others. Those people will have to vote provisionally if they turn out at the polls.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jguillen@plaind.com, 216-999-4675

ACORN Registers Mickey Mouse

Posted on October 14, 2008
ACORN has registered Mickey Mouse to vote — in Orlando, of course. Here’s the registration application:



As reported by the St. Petersburg Times, it is “stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN.”

What a coincidence: the Obama campaign furtively paid this same group $800,000 to get out the vote, presumably by using tactics ACORN activists were taught by Obama himself, who also took part in ACORN’s contribution to the sub-prime disaster by forcing banks to make loans based on skin color.

Even ACORN goons are probably smart enough to come up with more subtle names than Mickey Mouse or the lineup for the Dallas Cowboys. But why should they bother? It’s not like Obama will be taken to task for it. Just chalk it up to the Audacity of Arrogance.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Complete Guide to ACORN Voter Fraud-- 14 States Investigate Obama's Community Organization
And, you thought 2000 was bad?
This year's election is shaping up to be one of the most controversial in History. Just this week a federal judge ordered Ohio's top elections official to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The very next day a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the federal judge's order on verifying legistrations.
And, so it goes.

To further ignite the voter fraud-voter registration debate this week was
the news that a national community organizing group is being investigated in at least 14 states and several swing states for massive voter registration irregularities. This news would make headlines anyway but what made it worse was that Barack Obama worked for this organization, theAssociation of Community Organizations for Reform Now, in the past. Obama trained its local leaders, represented the organization in court, and worked to funnel funds to the organization. The Obama Campaign also donated $800,000 this year to an ACORN affiliate.

Who is ACORN?

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a community based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado. Rathke, one of the most powerful of America's hard-Left activists, is a former member of the radical 1960's group the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Weathermen terrorist group split off from the SDS in 1969. ACORN says its priorities include: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, and better public schools.

ACORN is also known for its voter registration efforts.


This year alone ACORN has registered 1,315,037 voters.

Although the organization prides itself for its registration efforts it also has a long history of scandal. In the state of Missouri in 1986, 12 ACORN members were convicted of voter fraud.
But that was not an isolated incident in Missouri...

** The rest of this report is posted at **Pajamas Media** today includint a state-by-state breakdown.
The best comment on the report at Pajamas Media goes to shnargley:

You conservatives want to have your cake and eat it too. You wanted us of the Left to stop bombing, terrorizing and committing acts of revolutionary rage and participate in the institutions of democracy. Now that we put aside our kidnappings, molotovs, and urine bags to participate in the democratic process, you still complain.

Funny.

Glenn Reynolds wonders where the feds are on this.

Plus-- Gay Patriot did his own research on the ACORN voter fraud with a state by state breakdown and The Wall Street Journal has more.

No wonder Barack Obama distorts the work he did with ACORN...

UPDATE: Another 4,000 bogus voter registration forms were found in Ohio yesterday.

UPDATE 2: ACORN registers Mickey Mouse.

UPDATE 3: Investor's Business Daily has an excellent piece on Obama's background with ACORN.
Labels: Campaign08

posted by Gateway Pundit at 10/14/2008 04:44:00 AM

ACORN Workers Indicted For Alleged Voter Fraud

POSTED: 5:02 pm CST November 1, 2006
UPDATED: 10:25 pm CST November 1, 2006

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Four people have been indicted on charges of voter fraud in Kansas City, officials said Wednesday.

Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.

The four indicted -- Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner -- were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.

Federal indictments allege the four turned in false voter registration applications. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.

ACORN and Project Vote recruit and assign workers to low-income and minority neighborhoods to register people to vote.

The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.

"There is some motive behind it -- this is not accidental," said Ray James with the Kansas City Election Board.

Election officials said some of the application cards had false addresses, signatures and phone numbers.

ACORN officials in Kansas City said they turned in the four people who were indicted.

"We're very happy that they were indicted," said Claudie Harris with ACORN.

Harris said ACORN workers are paid by the hour and not by the number of voter registration cards they turn in.

"When you fraudulently defraud this, that gives us a bad name and what we're trying to do a bad name," Harris said.

ACORN officials said the four indicted have been fired.

Harris said ACORN workers check every voter registration card before sending it to the Election Board.

Last month, ACORN claimed to have processed more than 35,000 voter registration applications in Kansas City since the summer.

Previous Stories:

• October 24, 2006: Feds To Probe Voter Registration Problems
  

ACORN Voter Registration Fraud Allegations Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg, Says Employment Policies Institute

Illegalities, Fraud and Contradictions Detailed in Report
on Lead Organizer of Florida's Amendment 5

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- A Florida state attorney is investigating thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registrations associated with the leading organizer of Florida's Amendment 5 ballot initiative. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of illegalities, fraud and contradictions connected to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In recent days, ACORN has been at the epicenter of reports on thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registrations across the nation -- including many by ex-felons -- submitted by ACORN employees in the presidential swing states of Ohio, Colorado, Missouri Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Minnesota.

The Employment Policies Institute has updated and re-released its report, "The Real ACORN: Anti-Employee, Anti-Union, Big Business" with the latest details on ACORN's involvement in what appears to be widespread voter registration fraud. The report includes statements from former ACORN employees on the illegal nature of the organization's promotion of the ballot initiative to raise Florida's minimum wage to $6.15 per hour.

"This report reveals ACORN's pattern and practice of deception and fraud," said EPI research director Craig Garthwaite. "The latest allegations of widespread voter registration fraud should prove to be the last of ACORN's nine political lives."

Former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart has declared an intent to sue ACORN and has made charges of rampant voter fraud operations. Stuart was employed and specifically tasked by ACORN to generate 103,000 new voter registrations from Dade County. He reports that ACORN threw out Republican registrations while paying for Democratic ones. Stuart also charges that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail. He went on to state, "The voter registration project has been operating illegally since it started."

ACORN has paid workers for every voter registration card collected -- a felony in Florida and also illegal in Missouri and Pennsylvania. ACORN also routinely accepted signatures for Amendment 5 from individuals who were not currently registered to vote -- a requirement under Florida law.

Voter registration and petition fraud is just the latest chapter in ACORN's long sordid history. The EPI report also reveals:

ACORN Involved in Union Embezzlement -- In the late 1990s, ACORN's Project Vote was involved in an $850,000 embezzling scheme, where union funds and kickbacks were used to illegally aid the 1996 re-election bid of then-Teamsters President Ron Carey. A New York federal jury found the Teamsters political director guilty of the conspiracy.

ACORN bilks AmeriCorps -- In 1996, the Inspector General of the AmeriCorps program stripped a $1 million grant from the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC). When applying, AHC had denied any connections to ACORN, since the grant was not intended for political advocacy organizations. Evidence later uncovered by the Inspector General found that not only was AHC created by ACORN, engaged in numerous transactions with one another, and sharing staff and office space -- but it utilized the AmeriCorps grant to increase ACORN membership, a violation of federal guidelines.

ACORN Union-Busts Own Workers -- On March 27, 2003 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that ACORN had violated the National Labor Relations Act and was required to rehire and pay restitution to employees terminated for attempting to form a union. The NLRB ruling is just the latest in a trend of ACORN's union-busting tactics. ACORN employees have historically demanded higher wages, safer working conditions and more timely contracted wages. These efforts have been repressed behind closed doors by the hypocritical ACORN leadership, which publicly advocates higher pay and better working conditions for private sector workers.

ACORN and Minimum Wage Hypocrisy -- Most egregiously, ACORN promotes ballot initiatives and local ordinances to force businesses to pay higher minimum wages, as they are currently doing with the minimum wage proposal in Amendment 5. In 1995, however, ACORN sued the state of California to have its employees exempted from the state minimum wage. ACORN argued that being forced to pay higher wages would mean that they would hire fewer employees -- the very dilemma faced by businesses. Incredibly, ACORN stated that paying its employees a lower wage would allow them to be more sympathetic to the low-and moderate-income families they were attempting to help. ACORN argued that abiding by the state minimum wage would limit their ability to promote their agenda and would therefore be a violation of their First Amendment rights. The trial court judge dismissed ACORN's suits, stating, "leaving aside the latter argument's absurdity ... we find ACORN to be laboring under a fundamental misconception of constitutional law."

"ACORN's history of voter registration fraud, hypocrisy, abuse of federal grant programs, and disregard for sound economics should raise a red flag for voters considering support for Amendment 5," Garthwaite said.

The full report is available online at http://www.EPIonline.org .

The Employment Policies Institute is a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding entry-level employment.

ACORN is such a fitting name for this group


Because they all a bunch of nuts outta the tree

gs78 wrote:

ACORN is such a fitting name for this group


Because they all a bunch of nuts outta the tree

Ain't THAT the truth!

Here's one for ya......

Q: What did Obama get on his S.A.T.?

A: Barbecue Sauce!
(I wonder if he got A Corn to go with his sauce...lol)

NOBAMA!



Everytime he tells a lie;

His ears get bigger

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
ACORN's policy: Send all voter forms
Mich. organizer says even applications signed 'Mickey Mouse' are submitted to clerks; group will cooperate in forgery case.
Paul Egan and Tanveer Ali / The Detroit News

The head Michigan organizer for a community group accused of generating bogus voter registrations said Tuesday his group's policy is to send local clerks all voter registration applications they get -- even those they believe may be fraudulent.

"We have, on occasion, gotten (applications with names such as) Mickey Mouse or something that's ridiculous," but forward those registration application cards to local clerks as well, said David Lagstein of ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now). "We just think it would be irresponsible not to send in every single card."

Lagstein made his comments amid widespread complaints from local clerks about duplicate and questionable voter registration applications submitted by ACORN and shortly before Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced forgery charges against a former ACORN worker in connection with voter registration applications the group submitted in the city of Jackson.

The forgery charges were filed as David Plouffe, campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, accused Republicans of using complaints about ACORN as "a smokescreen" to disguise what he called longstanding GOP efforts to suppress voter turnout.

Antonio Johnson, 23, a felon who is being held in Jackson County on a parole violation, is charged with six counts of forging a public document and faces up to 14 years on each count, Cox, a Republican, said in a news release.

Johnson was working for ACORN between May and June when he filled out, signed and submitted six voter registration applications, using two Jackson residents' names without their knowledge, Cox said.

"This is an obvious case of forgery and that is why I am taking action today," Cox said. "This office will not stand by while criminals interfere with the voting rights of Michigan citizens."

Lagstein said his group will cooperate with the investigation.

ACORN, which has helped to register about 200,000 voters in Michigan and 1.3 million across the country, does not vet its workers for criminal records, Lagstein said. "At the end of this cycle, we're going to have a full evaluation of the process for our program," he said.

Local clerks in Michigan, who are completing a registration that will set a record for the number of qualified voters, complain they have been swamped with duplicate and questionable applications from ACORN and other third-party groups.

That has forced them to perform hundreds of hours of additional work to assure the integrity of Michigan's qualified voter file.

"For anyone to tell you that they would turn in Mickey Mouse, that's a terrible thing to say," said Southfield City Clerk Nancy Banks. "Shame on them."

Lagstein said ACORN does attempt to verify all of the voter registration cards it collects and assists local clerks when it "flags" the voter registration applications it believes may be fake or problematic.

Banks said Southfield received large numbers of duplicate and otherwise questionable applications from ACORN, but "we had no applications from ACORN that have been flagged."

Michigan is one of about a dozen states where officials have complained about possible fraud involving voter registrations organized by ACORN, whose offices in Nevada were raided by state officials earlier this month.

Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land turned information regarding ACORN's activities over to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the summer, but there was no word from federal authorities Tuesday on whether an investigation is under way.

Cox also asked for a copy of the file, which his officials are continuing to review, and that investigation led to Tuesday's charges against Johnson, Cox spokesman John Sellek said.

Lagstein said people can agree or disagree with ACORN's national policy of submitting all voter registration cards it collects -- a policy he said is required under some state laws.

However, "if ACORN mistakenly, or by choice, submitted duplicate cards or cards with nonsense names, there is no evidence that this is for the purpose of trying to get people to vote that are not qualified."

Bill Nowling, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said he believes third-party groups such as ACORN are flooding the system with duplicate and questionable applications to create confusion and lay the groundwork for a federal court challenge of his party's election-day poll challengers.

Brent Colburn, a spokesman for the Obama campaign in Michigan, said there is no connection between the campaign and the work of groups such as ACORN.

Roseville City Clerk Richard Steenland said his office has been "barraged" with voter registrations through ACORN and many have raised red flags.

For example, he said, six applications were exactly the same.

"I'm looking at turning it over (to) the prosecutor's office," Steenland said.

Banks said Southfield is still processing its voter registrations.

As of Tuesday the city had more than 2,000 from third-parties, most of them duplicates, she said.

In the past three months, more than 4,000 voters were newly registered in Farmington Hills, a 10 percent increase over the 2004 election, Clerk Kathy Dornan said. Half of those registrations came from third-party sources. Dornan said her office has investigated several illegible and incomplete forms, but fewer than 10 were flagged as potentially fraudulent and sent to the state election bureau.

Detroit News Staff Writers Delores Flynn, Christina Stolarz and Gordon Trowbridge contributed to this report.

Ouch

WHAT IS ACORN?

TG wrote:

WHAT IS ACORN?

ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now)

They are basically a creation of the democratic party, but are supposed to remain non-partisan in signing up new voters. The problem is they are now very corrupt and are being investigated in many, many states for voter registration fraud. They have been taken over by radical democrats who sign up the same people over and over again illegally! In Ohio, out of 600,000 new registered voters, 200,000 are found to be non-residents, no such Soc Sec. number, fake, and on and on. They have signed up fake ballots for dead people, Mickey Mouse, and the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada!

Many members are going to jail. Obama was part of a Community Organization group who trained ACORN members, in the past!

This group needs to be permanently shut down nationwide.

Damn ACORN

ACORN INSTILLED FEAR: WORKERS

By ADAM NICHOLS and JEANE MacINTOSH

Posted: 4:51 am
October 20, 2008

Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn't, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.

"Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day," said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.

"We had meetings every morning where they'd go over your quota; they'd yell at you if you were low," said Elder, 21. "They'd sit us down and say if you didn't do better, they'd suspend you. They'd say, 'Try harder next time,' [and] if you didn't get it, you'd be fired."

Desperate canvassers sometimes resorted to trading cigarettes, cash and food in exchange for registrations, according to Elder and two other former ACORN workers, Jaymes Sanford, 18, and Selvin Cunningham, 23.

Some voters were signed up more than once, and said that worried - or lazy - canvassers sometimes filled out bogus cards.

The three workers were all fired after they and a dozen other canvassers were identified in a Cuyahoga County Election Board probe as having turned in multiple registrations for the same voters.

The board, which estimates it got more than 8,700 suspect cards - with multiple registrations, bad addresses or phony information - from ACORN has turned the matter over to local prosecutors.

"It was just little stuff - a dollar, a cigarette - given to people so that they'd register," said Sanford, a former team leader.

"People are scared of not making their quotas," he said. "I didn't do it, but it's the way it worked."

Elder added, "I've got no money to give out. I don't smoke, so I had no cigarettes to offer. But other people did, and the pressure you were under forced you to."

Cunningham, who also had been a team leader, said, "They're pretty lenient if you're off [quota] by just a few names. But if you're repeatedly missing your quota, if you only had three or four [people signed up], then you might start paying people."

Anyone caught offering bribes, Cunningham said, was supposed to be fired.

But a woman with Cunningham who identified herself as a current ACORN director said not all rogue canvassers are shown the door.

"Those guys are still working at ACORN," said the director, who asked not to be identified. "We know who they are; we've told them not to do it. But they weren't among the people fired."

The director also confirmed the ousted workers' quota claims: team leaders, who are paid $9 an hour, are required to get 26 registrations a day. Canvassers, who make $8 an hour, need 22 sign-ups.

Sanford, who estimates he registered 500 to 1,000 voters, and Cunningham, who signed up about 1,500, said its hard not to get multiple registrations.

"When you're asking 1,000 people a day if they registered, you don't remember every face," Cunningham said.

jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

I can't believe this

Is this really happening in America?

You would expect this shit in Russia


Not the USA

ACORN selling out America

Indiana official seeks criminal probe of ACORN
Posted: 08:50 PM ET


From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

(CNN) — Indiana's secretary of state has requested a criminal investigation into the embattled community organizing group ACORN, which is accused of
submitting hundreds of bogus voter registration forms in northern Lake County.

Watch: Drew Griffin on ACORN in Indiana

The request is based on Secretary of State Todd Rokita's preliminary examination and analysis of 1,438 questionable voter registration applications ACORN submitted in the county, which includes the city of Gary. Rokita, a Republican, has concluded there is "significant, credible evidence" that ACORN violated Indiana and federal law.

Read: Rokita's request to prosecutors

"This is a fraud perpetrated on all of the people of Indiana, because fraudulent registrations are the first step in diluting the voice of honest voters and rendering an inaccurate tally on Election Day," Rokita wrote in his request to state and federal law enforcement officials.

In response, ACORN said, "We believe the law requires us to turn in every card."

The group, which is the target of intense GOP attacks, says it flagged questionable registration forms collected by its canvassers. The group has been criticized for submitting phony forms in several states — many of which are considered battlegrounds in next week's presidential election.

But Rokita said ACORN should have turned the documents over to law enforcement, not registrars.

"Complying with the law to submit legitimate applications does not allow ACORN officials to evade the law against knowingly submitting fraudulent applications," Rokita wrote.

ACORN said Rokita "appears to have changed his opinion on this question two weeks before the election."

The group said it detailed its quality control procedures and said that election officials in Lake County had refused the group's documentation flagging applications the group considered questionable and refused to meet with ACORN to discuss how to handle the applications ACORN had flagged. It also said it looked forward to cooperating with Indiana authorities in prosecuting employees "who have defrauded us" by filing faked forms.

ACORN's registration activities in Lake County hit the headlines amid a wave of press reports about questionable voter registration applications submitted by the group in several states.

CNN also recently reported that federal law enforcement officials are reviewing information provided from several state investigations into ACORN's registration activities to determine whether a federal criminal investigation of the group should be opened.

Related: Obama camp calls for special prosecutor in fraud inquiry

In early October, ACORN and Project Vote announced that their extensive voter registration drive in 21 states had yielded 1.3 million registrations. But The New York Times reported last week that ACORN had dramatically reduced its estimate of the number of new voters actually registered during the drive.

Of that 1.3 million, roughly 400,000 were new voters who were not previously registered; another 400,000 were previously registered voters who needed to re-register for various reasons; and another 400,000 involved applications that were unusable because of they are illegible or incomplete, were duplicate applications or were "knowingly bogus," in the words of ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring.

"The Times piece got something very fundamental wrong," Kettenring said Monday. "We've never claimed that we put 1.3 million voters on the voter rolls. What we've said is we've registered 1.3 million people or when we are being more technically precise, that we have submitted 1.3 million voter registration applications."

Kettenring also said that a yield of 70 percent valid registrations is common for drives like ACORN's. He estimated that the roughly 30 percent of the 1.3 million applications that are not usable break down into 24 percent of the total pool that are duplicates, 5 percent of the total that are illegible or incomplete, and roughly 1.5 percent of the total pool that are "knowingly bogus," as in a registration for "Mickey Mouse."

Echoing prior statements by ACORN, Kettenring also said "what's clear is that there is a coordinated Republican effort to go after, to manufacture a crisis of voter fraud."

"Bogus voter registration applications are not fraud, period," Kettenring said, distinguishing between a fraudulent application and the later act of someone casting a ballot on the basis of a fraudulently procured registration that was submitted and resulted in a tainted registration being placed on the voter rolls. "And, so what you really have is a hysteria about a non-issue," Kettenring added.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." And he has challenged Democratic nominee Barack Obama's to explain his ties to the group.

The Obama campaign maintains that it has never paid ACORN or any of its affiliates to register voters on the campaign's behalf and that the campaign has its own voter registration effort that is problem-free.

"We register our own voters under our own standards and we do so successfully," Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer said during a conference call with reporters in mid-October.

–CNN's Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston contributed to this report.

Filed under: ACORN • Indiana • Voter Problems

ACORN = Corrupt Political Organization


Their leaders should be sharing a cell with Kwame

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

ACORN Registers Mickey Mouse

Posted on October 14, 2008
ACORN has registered Mickey Mouse to vote — in Orlando, of course. Here’s the registration application:



As reported by the St. Petersburg Times, it is “stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN.”

What a coincidence: the Obama campaign furtively paid this same group $800,000 to get out the vote, presumably by using tactics ACORN activists were taught by Obama himself, who also took part in ACORN’s contribution to the sub-prime disaster by forcing banks to make loans based on skin color.

Even ACORN goons are probably smart enough to come up with more subtle names than Mickey Mouse or the lineup for the Dallas Cowboys. But why should they bother? It’s not like Obama will be taken to task for it. Just chalk it up to the Audacity of Arrogance.

This would be histerical except that it is a REAL person!!

You Said it Tigersaint