ACORN, Voter Registration and Voter Fraud.

[Rex Kickass]

So ACORN came to register voters in Lake County, IN. In Indiana, you are required by law to turn in any filled in Voter Registration card. Be it incomplete or obviously fraudulent. They registered a lot of people. Some people working for ACORN faked some cards for their $8/hour paycheck. As a result, some people might not get registered in time to vote.

 

http://www.post-trib.com/news/elections/12...lcacorn.article

 

Eric Weathersby, director of the Northwest Indiana chapter of ACORN, counters the group caught nearly all the problematic applications itself and brought them to election officials' attention.

 

ACORN canvassers -- mostly Gary residents hired at $8 an hour for part-time work -- likely falsified application information so they would have something to submit to supervisors at the end of the day, Weathersby said.

 

"They wanted to try to bring something in. Some people are not personable," he said. "They wanted to work. But to approach people on the street, they couldn't do it.

 

"You're talking about a city with double-digit unemployment, where people need the work. But some took on a task they weren't prepared to handle."

 

Jonah Goldman, director of the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition, said election officials are obliged to check the accuracy of applications.

 

But any delay in processing registrations likely will cause more election problems than close scrutiny of the ACORN applications will prevent, Goldman said.

 

"Election fraud just isn't the motivation for these false applications," Goldman said. "But if people's registrations aren't getting processed, it's potentially going to cause huge problems on Election Day. More people will turn up at the polls, and more people will be forced to cast provisional ballots.

 

"You also could see people turned away at the polls, in situations where poll workers have not been trained properly on how to deal with these situations."

 

Law enforcement officials, meanwhile, are preparing to investigate ACORN's registration process.

 

So, ACORN followed the law. In fact, they did more than follow the letter. According to the Indianapolis Star, they followed the spirit of the law.

 

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...S0502/810180457

ACORN said it took steps to ensure officials knew some of the registrations it turned in were potentially bad.

 

"We ID'd those applications as questionable," Charles D. Jackson, spokesman for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said of the Lake County applications.

 

"We turned them in three separate stacks: ones we had been able to verify, ones that were incomplete and ones that were questionable or suspicious."

 

Jim Gavin, spokesman for Secretary of State Todd Rokita, Indiana's top election official, confirmed that groups that conduct registration drives in the state must turn in all applications they collect.

 

Failure to do so, Gavin said, is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and up to one year in prison.

 

Ruthann Hoagland, assistant registration administrator with the Lake County Board of Elections and Voter Registration, confirmed that about 2,500 applications ACORN submitted were divided into three groups, as Jackson described.

 

Those last-minute applications were among about 5,000 in total submitted in the county by ACORN, said Hoagland, a Republican member of the board.

 

Election officials have so far reviewed about 2,500 of the ACORN applications and have found nearly half of them are bad, she said.

 

As a result of these problems, five of the 82 ACORN staffers working on the Indiana voter drive were fired.

 

So I guess, here's the question. With all the allegation about ACORN fraud, is it institutional fraud? Who was the biggest victim here? McCain? The Lake County registrar who has to do all this extra work now? Or ACORN's bank account, having spent all that money hiring unemployed Gary residents and give them a boot strap to pull themselves up with only to have crap blow right back on the organization?

[bmags]

If you want to know the reason behind ACORN in the news, start looking at recent history. The DOJ firing scandal was born out of these accusations. DOJ lawyers were fired for not further pursuing prosecuting ACORN because they couldn't find anything.

[Texsox]

Allow me to translate since the usual translator is away:

"We turned them in three separate stacks: ones we had been able to verify (Dems), ones that were incomplete (Ind) and ones that were questionable or suspicious.(GOP)"

 

Next chance I get, I'm going to register AlphaDog and AHB in Texas

 

Seriously, the process sucks when we have these voter drives, no matter how clean you try and make them. Partisan drives in the past have caused these laws to be written where ever registration is turned in.

[mreye]

I don't like these registration drives by third parties. You should only be able to register at a government entity - state building, county courthouse, DMV, etc. It opens it up to too many questions. I wouldn't have a problem with a third party like ACORN renting a bus and driving these people to a place to get registered.

 

Who knows if actual election fraud is behind this or if it really was people that were too shy to talk to others. And will they know the true answer before the election and will the electorate be happy with the result of the investigation, regardless of the victor? See? Too many questions.

[lostfan]

I don't like these registration drives by third parties. You should only be able to register at a government entity - state building, county courthouse, DMV, etc. It opens it up to too many questions. I wouldn't have a problem with a third party like ACORN renting a bus and driving these people to a place to get registered.

 

Who knows if actual election fraud is behind this or if it really was people that were too shy to talk to others. And will they know the true answer before the election and will the electorate be happy with the result of the investigation, regardless of the victor? See? Too many questions.

In theory, the FBI doesn't give a s*** about partisan motivations. They care if somebody was doing something wrong. So, again, in theory, whatever they find during the investigation should give us a better picture I'm guessing they won't find anything, but of course that's all speculation on my part and I have zero inside knowledge. In reality, partisan hacks will find something else to complain about because they always do.

[Rex Kickass]

I don't like these registration drives by third parties. You should only be able to register at a government entity - state building, county courthouse, DMV, etc. It opens it up to too many questions. I wouldn't have a problem with a third party like ACORN renting a bus and driving these people to a place to get registered.

 

Who knows if actual election fraud is behind this or if it really was people that were too shy to talk to others. And will they know the true answer before the election and will the electorate be happy with the result of the investigation, regardless of the victor? See? Too many questions.

 

Given the nature of how ACORN hires people to register voters, I think its hard to believe that they would be part of a coordinated campaign to register someone. If there were, we'd see something more along the lines of YPM in California. People having their affiliation switched without their knowledge, etc.

 

You don't hire the homeless and crackheads to execute a conspiracy.

[Texsox]

I don't like these registration drives by third parties. You should only be able to register at a government entity - state building, county courthouse, DMV, etc. It opens it up to too many questions. I wouldn't have a problem with a third party like ACORN renting a bus and driving these people to a place to get registered.

 

Who knows if actual election fraud is behind this or if it really was people that were too shy to talk to others. And will they know the true answer before the election and will the electorate be happy with the result of the investigation, regardless of the victor? See? Too many questions.

 

I was agreeing with you all the way, then we got to the conclusion and it feels wrong to me. It takes the process another step towards the parties and away from the people and that just isn't a goal I can support. This isn't perfect by any stretch but I would like to see neighbors registering neighbors. Community groups getting involved, etc.

[Balta1701]

I was agreeing with you all the way, then we got to the conclusion and it feels wrong to me. It takes the process another step towards the parties and away from the people and that just isn't a goal I can support. This isn't perfect by any stretch but I would like to see neighbors registering neighbors. Community groups getting involved, etc.

So, in other words, you'd like to see voter registration carried out in part by community organizers. Perhaps even an association of community organizers?

[Texsox]

So, in other words, you'd like to see voter registration carried out in part by community organizers. Perhaps even an association of community organizers?

 

Works for me. I've always supported that grass roots type movement.

[lostfan]

Works for me. I've always supported that grass roots type movement.

This means that you support ACORN in principle then.

[Texsox]

This means that you support ACORN in principle then.

 

In principle. I don't believe I ever said I was against them. Basically I view all of these groups as merely conduits for information to get to the election officials. Much like the US Postal Service. If the USPS delivered voter registration forms for Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse no one would blame them for delivering the obviously false applications. So I fail to see why these gorups should be treated any differently. Where I do see a problem is they are creating an enormous work load for election officials sifting through garbage. But as I mentioned, it is far more dangerous to have them not send in everything.

[lostfan]

In principle. I don't believe I ever said I was against them. Basically I view all of these groups as merely conduits for information to get to the election officials. Much like the US Postal Service. If the USPS delivered voter registration forms for Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse no one would blame them for delivering the obviously false applications. So I fail to see why these gorups should be treated any differently. Where I do see a problem is they are creating an enormous work load for election officials sifting through garbage. But as I mentioned, it is far more dangerous to have them not send in everything.

When you said "partisan drives" a few posts ago it made it sound as if you were referring to ACORN but reading it again it sounds like you were talking about something else.

[Balta1701]

In principle. I don't believe I ever said I was against them. Basically I view all of these groups as merely conduits for information to get to the election officials. Much like the US Postal Service. If the USPS delivered voter registration forms for Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse no one would blame them for delivering the obviously false applications. So I fail to see why these gorups should be treated any differently. Where I do see a problem is they are creating an enormous work load for election officials sifting through garbage. But as I mentioned, it is far more dangerous to have them not send in everything.

While I think we can all agree that is a problem...it's a problem without a solution. Because it's a much, much worse idea to let organizations on their own, rather than the government, decide which registration forms they're going to send in. Something tells me it wouldn't be that hard to find an awful lot of typos on people who registered for one specific party, for example, if you really wanted to. A little more work checking and fixing databases, and thus a little more money spent, seems like the much better option here. You can't stop people from filling out forms incorrectly if they're trying to reach some sort of quota, it happens whether people are paid or not.

[Texsox]

When you said "partisan drives" a few posts ago it made it sound as if you were referring to ACORN but reading it again it sounds like you were talking about something else.

 

I am thinking those with a ® and (D) firmly and closely attached.

[Texsox]

While I think we can all agree that is a problem...it's a problem without a solution. Because it's a much, much worse idea to let organizations on their own, rather than the government, decide which registration forms they're going to send in. Something tells me it wouldn't be that hard to find an awful lot of typos on people who registered for one specific party, for example, if you really wanted to. A little more work checking and fixing databases, and thus a little more money spent, seems like the much better option here. You can't stop people from filling out forms incorrectly if they're trying to reach some sort of quota, it happens whether people are paid or not.

 

Agreed.

 

I am assuming, without evidence, that the incorrect application rate is much higher for these drives than for applications that are either filled out in person or mailed in individually by the voters themselves. So these drives create more "garbage" work. That is about the biggest issue I see with them.