ACORN VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD

[Guest ALWAYS RED_*]

The McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis released the following statement in response to ACORN's letter:

 

Almost a month ago, the McCain-Palin campaign reached out to Barack Obama's campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state election officials in an effort to cooperate on potential Election Day problems, including voter fraud. To date, we have not received a response. Today, our campaign's Honest and Open Election Committee, chaired by former Senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman, re-proposed that invitation in an event at the National Press Club. Given the extensive relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN, our campaign also feels that Senator Obama has a responsibility to rein in ACORN's efforts and to work aggressively against wide-scale voter fraud. In addition, Senator McCain has reached out to Rep. John Conyers, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to reject reports on voter challenges based on home-foreclosures.

 

"If left uncorrected, these numerous investigations and accusations of voter fraud with ACORN could produce a nightmare scenario on Election Day. It is our hope that the Obama campaign joins us in our efforts to prevent voter fraud prior to Election Day.

 

Read the Sen. John McCain's September 23 remarks on ACORN in his letter to Rep. John Conyers, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee

 

state and local election officials across the nation have reported being overwhelmed with fraudulent or incomplete voter registration applications gathered by activist groups with a history of such registrations, such as ACORN. While my campaign welcomes the participation of every possible new and qualified voter, we have read with concern reports that the large numbers of these new duplicate, incomplete, and downright fraudulent applications will slow the processing of legitimate new registrations, resulting in confusion and long voting lines on Election Day as polling officials struggle with incomplete registration lists, and have to resort to provisional ballots (which present possible post-election complications of their own). This is exactly the confusion that the Help America Vote Act mandate of accurate state-wide electronic voter registration lists, cross-checked and verified before Election Day, was supposed to combat. The widespread and repeated nature of such

improper voter registration activity, and the likelihood that it will impede the voting process, demands a federal response. - John S. McCain

 

 

ACORN and its affiliates have a multi-decade history of fraud and abuse of taxpayer funds. Recently, the Consumers Rights League released a whistleblower report that uses internal ACORN documents to highlight alleged misuses of taxpayer money by ACORN Housing Corp, which took in 40% of its funds from the government and sent more than a million dollars to ACORN’s affiliate, Citizens Consulting.

 

On Oct. 6, ACORN and Project Vote announced the conclusion of the most successful voter registration drive in history with more than 1.3 million new voters registered in 21 states.

"We met with unprecedented success in our efforts to ensure that all eligible applicants are on the voter rolls," said Michael Slater, Executive Director of Project Vote.

Slater said that the voter registration system in the United States – in which individual voters are responsible for getting on the rolls, unlike many European countries in which governments take responsibility for compiling voter lists – was designed to disenfranchise voters.

 

ACORN pays workers to get registrations. A small percentage of those workers fill out registration forms fraudulently rather than do the presumably greater amount of work of actually finding unregistered voters. Some of those people who commit this fraud get busted, rightfully so. One could make a case that ACORN should supervise its staff more carefully, or provide better training, or something else to eliminate this illegal behavior by its employees.

 

As of October 9, 2008 the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has subpoenaed several individuals as part of a larger investigation into possible voter fraud by ACORN in Ohio. http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/news/...uts__132771.htm

 

ACORN has repeatedly been implicated in scandals involving public funds and political activities.

 

Below are a few examples:

 

Voter Fraud

 

Since 1998, ACORN and Project Vote employees were implicated in voter registration fraud allegations in more than a dozen states.

 

In 2003, ACORN employees in Missouri turned in a batch of thousands of registration forms — of which only about 40 percent were valid, with another 1,000 believed to be attempts to register

voters illegally.

 

Following Colorado’s 2004 election, two ex-ACORN employees were convicted of perjury for submitting false voter registration forms; one ex-ACORN employee admitted to registering her

friends 40 times.

 

In 2004, police pulled over a former ACORN employee who had more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of his car, many of which had not been turned in within the legal

time limit.

 

In 2005, Virginia authorities found that of a sample of Project Vote-gathered registrations, 83% were rejected for using false or questionable information.

 

In 2007, King County, Washington officials announced the indictment of seven workers ACORN had hired to register voters, calling the episode the “worst case of voter registration fraud in the history of the state.” At least three of those individuals have pleaded guilty and ACORN was forced to pay a $25,000 settlement.

[Guest Linc]

ACORN is Obama's tool to steal the election. Obama will be the end of America as we know it. A vote for Obama is a vote for a socialistic state.

[Guest GOP]

Obama’s Campaign “Paid More Than $800,000” To ACORN For Get-Out-The Vote Efforts; The Campaign Originally “Misrepresented” The Group’s Work To The FEC. “U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports. An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in ‘get-out-the-vote’ projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.” (David M. Brown, “Obama To Amend Report On $800,000 In Spending,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 8/22/08)

[BlingBling]

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

 

Fact: John McCain attended an ACORN sponsored event to promote immigration reform.

[always red]

Acorn claims it signed up more than a million new voters is now facing allegations that many forms may be fake. There have been hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations processed in Philadelphia, including a vast majority of good, clean registrations from ACORN. The bad news, Philadelphia has already sent 1,500 obvious fraudulent registrations to the U.S. Attorney to be investigated. Every one of them from the same group, ACORN.

 

 

 

Learn more about Acorn.

 

http://www.johnmccain.com/videolanding/aco...obamaacornvideo

[Guest Obama4America]

Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with unclothed lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

 

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.

Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.

Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

 

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called 'Motor Voter,' Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack’s career, check out our Obama bio.)

 

Ken Blackwell is best known today for disenfranchising Democratic voters in his dual role as Ohio Secretary of State and chair of George Bush’s Ohio campaign in 2004. To see him shed crocodile tears for the integrity of the vote while making accusations about Barack and ACORN with absolutely no basis in fact is disturbing. Blackwell held the position of Chief Elections Officer, overseeing Ohio's elections process. In Congressional testimony, Blackwell stated that every Republican holder of statewide office in Ohio was named an honorary "co-chair" of the Bush campaign, that the position carried no responsibilities, and that previous Ohio Secretaries of State from both parties had held similar honorary positions.

 

Blackwell also announced he would enforce an Ohio State election law decreeing that any person who appeared at a polling place to vote but whose registration could not be confirmed would be given only a provisional ballot; if it were later determined that the person had attempted to vote in the wrong precinct, then their provisional ballot would not be counted. He also directed poll workers to refuse to distribute provisional ballots unless they were satisfied as to the voter's residence. The Democratic party promptly filed a lawsuit claiming that the policy was "intended to disenfranchise minority voters" and in violation of federal election law, specifically section 302 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

 

On October 21, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge James G. Carr issued an order rejecting Blackwell's policy. Blackwell said that he would go to jail rather than comply.

 

Blackwell appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. On October 26, 2004 the Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court agreed with the plaintiffs and the District Court that Blackwell's directive violated HAVA to the extent that it empowered poll workers to withhold a provisional ballot based on their "on-the-spot determination at the polling place". The court also ruled, however, that if a subsequent review concluded that the voter was not entitled to vote in that precinct, then the provisional ballot would not be counted.

 

On March 1, 2006 Blackwell's office accidentally published a list of 1.2 million Social Security numbers of Ohio citizens on a website along with their business filings. A Federal class-action lawsuit was filed by Darrell Estep who claimed that the release of the data had caused his Social Security number to appear three times on the website. The lawsuit was settled on March 28, 2006 after the numbers were removed from the website, a registration process was enacted to view the data and Blackwell's office agreed to make monthly progress reports to the court. The data was part of a centralized voter database, required by Federal law. At that time, Blackwell promised to only retain the last four digits of the Social Security number in the database to prevent future problems.

 

However, on April 26, 2006, Blackwell's office disclosed Ohio Social Security numbers again, mailing out computer disks containing the names, addresses, and the Social Security numbers of 5.7 million registered voters in Ohio (80% of all registered voters in the state). The list was released as a standard practice under the Freedom of Information Act and Help America Vote Act. Blackwell's office apologized, indicating that the release of the Social Security numbers was accidental and attempted to recall all 20 of the disks. At least one recipient of the disks has refused to comply.

 

Jim Petro, then Republican Attorney General of Ohio, has launched an investigation into the disclosure, citing a legal requirement to "investigate any state entity where there may be a risk of a loss of private data." Blackwell stated that he considered the issue to be closed, but Petro disagreed, saying that he will use "maximum due diligence" to ensure that the data was not copied before it was returned. Ohio law requires that individuals be notified if their Social Security numbers are compromised.

 

Blackwell's attacks against ACORN and community organizers continue a vile Republican pattern of mockery and viciousness against this noble profession. Community organizers are the very individuals Republicans should be celebrating for helping people to help themselves rather than depending on the government.

[Guest ALWAYS RED_*]

http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/chicag...ma-campaign.pdf

 

This is a very interesting read about Obama's grab power strategy. I am surprised none of the media has picked it up.