It's Back: "Voter Fraud"

Some compiled comments on the role of ACORN and the noise the GOP is generating:

1. ACORN's primary goal is to empower economically lower class citizens. One of the many ways they do this is by registering people to vote. While ACORN does not discriminate, they do focus primarily on exploited groups such as Hispanics and African Americans, which of course have higher numbers of impoverished individuals. Such groups obviously pose a threat to McCain and his fellow Republicans.

2. It is ILLEGAL for ACORN, or any other group or individual, to NOT submit a completed voter registration form to the appropriate office of the supervisor of elections. THEY ARE LEGAL DOCUMENTS and ACORN cannot withhold them or throw them away, for any reason. It does not matter whether or not the form is obviously filled out fraudulently (e.g. if the person writes his or her name as Mickey Mouse) or even if the person who fills it out says they are lying. The reason this law exists is to prevent groups from discarding, and therefore disenfranchising, groups that they do not want to vote. What this means is that in any and every voter registration drive there will be fraudulent registration forms.

3. ACORN takes extra time and effort to separate voter registration forms that are obvious forgeries from the legitimate forms so that the supervisor of elections can deal with them properly. They flag these before they turn them in, and there is nothing they can do about the fraudulent ones except point them out. It's up to state elections officials to weed out those that aren't legit, and all applications are marked as good, incomplete or suspect. Unfortunately, many of the state elections officials are GOP, and therefore choose to disregard the flagged applications and cry "VOTER FRAUD!" These officials come back weeks or months later and accuse ACORN of deliberately turning in phony cards. In many cases, ACORN can actually prove that these are the same cards they called to official's attention.

4. McCain spoke at a pro-immigration rally in Florida in 2006 that ACORN co-sponsored. A recent response from ACORN:

While in recent weeks your campaign has stooped to engaging in tactics that do not reflect the John McCain who proudly appeared at the 2006 ACORN event, we hold out hope that the 2008 John McCain will do the right thing and call upon his supporters...to take the necessary steps to protect the public's constitutional right to participate in our nation's democracy.

5. ACORN's canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the card, so there is NO incentive for them to falsify cards. And trust me, ACORN does NOT want the falsified cards as it creates the bad press we're hearing 24/7 from Fox and the like. Even if Mickey Mouse fills out an application, Mickey Mouse can't show up at the polls to cast a legal vote. ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the relatively rare cases where their internal quality controls have identified this happening, they have fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement.

6. No criminal charges related to voter registration have ever been brought against ACORN or partner organizations. Convictions against individual former ACORN workers have been accomplished with ACORN's full cooperation, using the evidence obtained through their quality control and verification processes — evidence which, in most cases, ACORN called to the attention of authorities.

7. The plain truth is: there are only about SIX voters found guilty of federal voting fraud in a year - out of over 178 million registered voters, despite the large amount of time and money that the GOP spends crying VOTER FRAUD! every election.

8. I'd like to take this moment to personally chide America for only having 178 million registered voters when we have a voting populace (as of 2004 statistics) of over 215 million. In 2004, only 125 million actually voted, which was only 58% of the population. Come on people... it's not hard. Get out there and VOTE. I don't even care who you vote for. Make your voice be heard. One of the greatest threats to our democracy is the silence (read: apathy) of the people.

< / stepOffSoapbox> Anyway, the bigger issue here is voter disenfranchisement.

Mainly excerpted from gregpalast.com, with links added for verification:

In the swing state of Colorado, we found that the Republican Secretary of State wiped out 19.4% - THAT'S ONE IN FIVE - voter names in an unnoticed mass purge.

In swing-state New Mexico, in the February caucus, one in nine Democrats found their names missing from the voter rolls supplied by the State. The elections supervisor of San Miguel County - whose own name was missing from the rolls - has no confidence the state contractors will fix it. Our statistical analysis showed there was a direct relationship between your name and your race and income. The poor and the dark were disappeared.

In Indiana, 10 nuns lost their vote because their ID - drivers' licenses - had expired (they were all over eighty). But what about the others? We've calculated that 143,000 others were turned away - disproportionately Blacks and new voters.

Visit www.stealbackyourvote.com if you're interested in learning more about disenfranchisement and what you can do about it. They even have a nifty comic book and movie.

Don't let them steal it from us again. Be informed and protect the vote!