Inside Obama’s Acorn

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Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them.

By Stanley Kurtz

What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.

This is a story we’ve largely missed. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn.

An Anti-Capitalism Agenda
To understand the nature and extent of Acorn’s radicalism, an excellent place to begin is Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities.” (For a shorter but helpful piece, try Steven Malanga’s “Acorn Squash.”)

Sol Stern explains that Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960’s “New Left,” with a “1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism” to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of “one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.” In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide.

While Acorn holds to NWRO’s radical economic framework and its confrontational 1960’s-style tactics, the targets and strategy have changed. Acorn prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas — where, Stern observes, local legislators and reporters are often “slow to grasp how radical Acorn’s positions really are.” Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown. Perhaps most mischievously, says Stern, Acorn uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive “donations” that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives.

According to Stern, Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism.” Fully aware of its living-wage campaign’s tendency to drive businesses out of cities, Acorn hopes to force companies that want to move to obtain “exit visas.” “How much longer before Acorn calls for exit visas for wealthy or middle-class individuals before they can leave a city?” asks Stern, adding, “This is the road to serfdom indeed.”

In Your Face
Acorn’s tactics are famously “in your face.” Just think of Code Pink’s well-known operations (threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you’ll get the idea. Acorn protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers’ dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor’s home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.

Acorn, however, defiantly touts its confrontational tactics. While Stern himself notes this, the point is driven home sharper still in an Acorn-friendly reply to Stern entitled “Enraging the Right.” Written by academic/activists John Atlas and Peter Dreier, the reply’s avowed intent is to convince Acorn-friendly politicians, journalists, and funders not to desert the organization in the wake of Stern’s powerful critique. The stunning thing about this supposed rebuttal is that it confirms nearly everything Stern says. Do Atlas and Dreier object to Stern’s characterizations of Acorn’s radical plans — even his slippery-slope warnings about Acorn’s designs on basic freedom of movement? Nope. “Stern accurately outlines Acorn’s agenda,” they say.

Do Atlas and Dreier dismiss Stern’s catalogue of Acorn’s disruptive and intentionally intimidating tactics as a set of regrettable exceptions to Acorn’s rule of civility? Not a chance. Atlas and Dreier are at pains to point out that intimidation works. They proudly reel off the increased memberships that follow in the wake of high-profile disruptions, and clearly imply that the same public officials who object most vociferously to intimidation are the ones most likely to cave as a result. What really upsets Atlas and Dreier is that Stern misses the subtle national hand directing Acorn’s various local campaigns. This is radicalism unashamed.

But don’t let the disruptive tactics fool you. Acorn is a savvy and exceedingly effective political player. Stern says that Acorn’s key post–New Left innovation is its determination to take over the system from within, rather than futilely try to overthrow it from without. Stern calls this strategy a political version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Take Atlas and Dreier at their word: Acorn has an openly aggressive and intimidating side, but a sophisticated inside game, as well. Chicago’s Acorn leader, for example, won a seat on the Board of Aldermen as the candidate of a leftist “New Party.”

Obama Meets Acorn
What has Barack Obama got to do with all this? Plenty. Let’s begin with Obama’s pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Few people have a clear idea of just what a “community organizer” does. A Los Angeles Times piece on Obama’s early Chicago days opens with the touching story of his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago’s “Friends of the Parks,” so that parents in a blighted neighborhood could have an inviting spot for their kids to play. This is the image of Obama’s organizing we’re supposed to hold. It’s far from the whole story, however. As the L. A. Times puts it, “Obama’s task was to help far South Side residents press for improvement” in their communities. Part of Obama’s work, it would appear, was to organize demonstrations, much in the mold of radical groups like Acorn.

Although the L. A. Times piece is generally positive, it does press Obama’s organizing tales on certain points. Some claim that Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, exaggerates his accomplishments in spearheading an asbestos cleanup at a low-income housing project. Obama, these critics say, denies due credit to Hazel Johnson, an activist who claims she was the one who actually discovered the asbestos problem and led the efforts to resolve it. Read carefully, the L. A. Times story leans toward confirming this complaint against Obama, yet the story’s emphasis is to affirm Obama’s important role in the battle. Speaking up in defense of Obama on the asbestos issue is Madeleine Talbot, who at the time was a leader at Chicago Acorn. Talbot, we learn, was so impressed by Obama’s organizing skills that she invited him to help train her own staff.

And what exactly was Talbot’s work with Acorn? Talbot turns out to have been a key leader of that attempt by Acorn to storm the Chicago City Council (during a living-wage debate). While Sol Stern mentions this story in passing, the details are worth a look: On July 31, 1997, six people were arrested as 200 Acorn protesters tried to storm the Chicago City Council session. According to the Chicago Daily Herald, Acorn demonstrators pushed over the metal detector and table used to screen visitors, backed police against the doors to the council chamber, and blocked late-arriving aldermen and city staff from entering the session.

Reading the Herald article, you might think Acorn’s demonstrators had simply lost patience after being denied entry to the gallery at a packed meeting. Yet the full story points in a different direction. This was not an overreaction by frustrated followers who couldn’t get into a meeting (there were plenty of protestors already in the gallery), but almost certainly a deliberate bit of what radicals call “direct action,” orchestrated by Acorn’s Madeleine Talbot. As Talbot was led away handcuffed, charged with mob action and disorderly conduct, she explicitly justified her actions in storming the meeting. This was the woman who first drew Obama into his alliance with Acorn, and whose staff Obama helped train.

Surprise Visit
Does that mean Obama himself schooled Acorn volunteers in disruptive “direct action?” Not necessarily. The City Council storming took place in 1997, years after Obama’s early organizing days. And in general, Obama seems to have been part of Acorn’s “inside baseball” strategy. As a national star from his law school days, Obama knew he had a political future, and would surely have been reluctant to violate the law. In his early organizing days, Obama used to tell the residents he organized that they’d be more effective in their protests if they controlled their anger. On the other hand, as he established and deepened his association with Acorn through the years, Obama had to know what the organization was all about. Moreover, in his early days, Obama was not exactly a stranger to the “direct action” side of community organizing.

Consider the second charge against Obama raised by the L.A. Times backgrounder. On the stump today, Obama often says he helped prevent South Side Chicago blacks, Latinos, and whites from turning on each other after losing their jobs, but many of the community organizers interviewed by the L. A. Times say that Obama worked overwhelmingly with blacks.

To rebut this charge, Obama’s organizer friends tell the story of how he helped plan “actions” that included mixed white, black, and Latino groups. For example, following Obama’s plan, one such group paid a “surprise visit” to a meeting between local officials considering a landfill expansion. The protestors surrounded the meeting table while one activist made a statement chiding the officials, after which the protestors filed out. Presto! Obama is immunized from charges of having worked exclusively with blacks — but at the cost of granting us a peek at the not-so-warm-and-fuzzy side of his community organizing. Intimidation tactics are revealed, and Obama’s alliance with radical Acorn activists like Madeleine Talbot begins to make sense.

“Non-Partisan”
The extent of Obama’s ties to Acorn has not been recognized. We find some important details in an article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board. The odd thing about this article is that Foulkes is forced to protect the technically “non-partisan” status of Acorn’s get-out-the-vote campaigns, even as he does everything in his power to give Acorn credit for helping its favorite son win the critical 2004 primary that secured Obama the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.

Before giving us a tour of Acorn’s pro-Obama but somehow “non-partisan” election activities, Foulks treats us to a brief history of Obama’s ties to Acorn. While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.

So along with the reservoir of political support that came to Obama through his close ties with Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, and other Chicago black churches, Chicago Acorn appears to have played a major role in Obama’s political advance. Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”

Foundation Money
Although it’s been noted in an important story by John Fund, and in a long Obama background piece in the New York Times, more attention needs to be paid to possible links between Obama and Acorn during the period of Obama’s service on the boards of two charitable foundations, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.

According to the New York Times, Obama’s memberships on those foundation boards, “allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants” to various liberal organizations, including Chicago Acorn, “whose endorsement Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.” As best as I can tell (and this needs to be checked out more fully), Acorn maintains both political and “non-partisan” arms. Obama not only sought and received the endorsement of Acorn’s political arm in his local campaigns, he recently accepted Acorn’s endorsement for the presidency, in pursuit of which he reminded Acorn officials of his long-standing ties to the group.

Supposedly, Acorn’s political arm is segregated from its “non-partisan” registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, but after reading Foulkes’ case study, this non-partisanship is exceedingly difficult to discern. As I understand, it would be illegal for Obama to sit on a foundation board and direct money to an organization that openly served as his key get-out-the-vote volunteers on Election Day. I’m not saying Obama crossed a legal line here: Based on Foulkes’ account, Acorn’s get-out-the-vote drive most likely observed the technicalities of “non-partisanship.”

Nevertheless, the possibilities suggested by a combined reading of the New York Times piece and the Foulkes article are disturbing. While keeping within the technicalities of the law, Obama may have been able to direct substantial foundation money to his organized political supporters. I offer no settled conclusion, but the matter certainly warrants further investigation and discussion. Obama is supposed to be the man who transcends partisanship. Has he instead used his post at an allegedly non-partisan foundation to direct money to a supposedly non-partisan group, in pursuit of what are in fact nakedly partisan and personal ends? I have no final answer, but the question needs to be pursued further.

In fact, the broader set of practices by which activist groups pursue intensely partisan ends under the guise of non-partisanship merits further scrutiny. Consider the 2006 report by Jonathan Bechtle, “Voter Turnout or Voter Fraud?” which includes a discussion of the nexus between Project Vote and Acorn, a nexus where Obama himself once resided. According to Bechtle, “It’s clear that groups that claimed to be nonpartisan wanted a partisan outcome,” and reading Foulkes’s case study of Acorn’s role in Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, one can’t help but agree.

Radical Obama
Important as these questions of funding and partisanship are, the larger point is that Obama’s ties to Acorn — arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country — are wide, deep, and longstanding. If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself. This is hardly a coincidence: Obama helped train Acorn’s leaders in how to play this game. For the most part, Obama seems to have favored the political-insider strategy, yet it’s clear that he knew how to play the in-your-face “direct action” game as well. And surely during his many years of close association with Acorn, Obama had to know what the group was all about.

The shame of it is that when the L. A. Times returned to Obama’s stomping grounds, it found the park he’d helped renovate reclaimed by drug dealers and thugs. The community organizer strategy may generate feel-good moments and best-selling books, but I suspect a Wal-Mart as the seed-bed of a larger shopping complex would have done far more to save the neighborhood where Obama worked to organize in the “progressive” fashion. Unfortunately, Obama’s Acorn cronies have blocked that solution.

In any case, if you’re looking for the piece of the puzzle that confirms and explains Obama’s network of radical ties, gather your Acorns this spring. Or next winter, you may just be left watching the “President from Acorn” at his feast.

— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an NRO contributing editor.

— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=

[Sorros]

Don't be talking bad about the Messiah.

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Ah, looks like the Dems are up to their old tricks. :laugh:


Oct. 08, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Alleging fraud, authorities raid voter group

ACORN's canvassers filled out forms with fake names, addresses, officials say

By ADRIENNE PACKER and MOLLY BALL
REVIEW-JOURNAL

State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities.

The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election.

"Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot."

Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and identify employees who were responsible.

They also sought information regarding current and past employees and managers.

"We don't know how many (falsified forms) are here; there may be two, or there may be thousands," said Bob Walsh, spokesman for the secretary of state's office.

Registration fraud typically stems from workers striving to meet their daily quota of submitted voter forms, Miller said.

Most organizations require their workers to sign up 20 voters a day. Fraudulent forms start filtering in when workers struggle to meet their quota and either fill in bogus names or accept documents with names that are clearly falsified, Miller said.

In a statement released by ACORN on Tuesday, Interim Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis said the group based in Clark County routinely flagged suspect applications and notified the Clark County Election Department. The group provided state and county officials with the names of individuals who submitted the falsified registration forms.

"Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act," Lewis said. "ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously."

In late July, election officials requested copies of the same documents that previously had been handed over by ACORN, Lewis said. In September, ACORN received a subpoena requesting information on 15 employees, whose names already had been turned in to election officials by the organization.

"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls," Lewis said.

Miller said that is not the case. He said the state's investigation began before ACORN submitted the forms referred to in Lewis' statement. In early July, investigators began looking through ACORN's registration forms. One canvasser turned in 17 applications; only four addresses existed, the investigators alleged.

According to an affidavit filed by the secretary of state, the canvasser was interviewed and told investigators that meeting the daily quota was difficult because it was hot outside and potential voters rejected her invitation to register.

Other canvassers hired by ACORN were residents at the Casa Grande Transitional Housing Facility, a Nevada Department of Corrections institution that offers convicted felons an opportunity to take part in work-release programs.

"It raises significant concerns that they hired prison inmates, some of whom have been convicted of identity theft," Miller said.

ACORN's field director in Nevada and the head of its voter registration effort, known as Project Vote, said the agency is cooperating fully with the investigation.

"We're proud of what we did here," Chris Edwards said. "We've got nothing to hide."

Tuesday morning's raid came on a day when ACORN had been planning a news conference and potluck lunch to celebrate the culmination of its voter registration drive, which the group said resulted in 90,000 new registrants since February, and to launch a get-out-the-vote push for the election.

The event went ahead around noon, starting with a pep talk of the group's staffers and volunteers, who stood to testify to the mission of the enterprise and who said they would remain undaunted.

"This is a great organization," Bonnie Smith-Greathouse, head organizer for Nevada ACORN, told a group of about 15 gathered in front of the organization's office. "We've done great things in the community, and we're going to do even greater things in the future."

Smith-Greathouse suggested that powerful interests were trying to squelch the voices of the poor that ACORN is trying to empower.

"Project Vote has been attacked all over the country because we registered at least 1.2 million voters," she said. "That could sway an election. You should be very proud. Something so significant in history has never happened in Nevada before."

Edwards stressed the mission of empowering those on society's lower rungs. "We don't go to Trader Joe's to register voters," he said. "We don't go to Macy's or Whole Foods. We sign people up to vote at welfare offices. We sign people up at post offices in poor neighborhoods."

ACORN's voter registration drive has consisted of recruiting people from off the street, many of them down-and-outers desperate for work, with the promise of $8 an hour for often grueling work. The canvassers were required to be on their feet, flagging down potential registrants, often in the 100-plus-degree heat of the Las Vegas summer.

Although they were not paid a set fee per registration form collected, which is illegal, they had to meet certain quotas of registrations each day, which is legal.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax, who has been speaking out about the fraudulent submissions and passing them along to the secretary of state's office for months, said under those circumstances, there was an obvious temptation for workers to duck into an air-conditioned library, for example, and start copying out of the phone book or off a sports roster.

"Anybody who decides they're going to pay people to go out and register voters is basically opening themselves up to that," he said. Lomax said he did not think there was a systematic attempt to submit phony forms.

Once turned in, the voter registration forms are subject to a verification process by Lomax's office.

People whose forms listed phony or business addresses would have been sent a letter advising them they would be voided if they didn't respond within 15 days. People who didn't list a driver's license or Social Security number that matched their name and address would be flagged on the voter rolls and required to bring photo identification to the polls to be allowed to vote.

Because of the safeguards, Lomax said he was confident no one will vote who shouldn't be allowed. "People don't need to fear for the integrity of this election," he said.

ACORN said it had a quality-control operation of its own in place to check registration forms before they were turned in. Joe Camp, who was in charge of the effort, said he would call the phone number the registrant had listed and ask whether the information on the form was correct.

"To my standards, to ACORN's standards, everything that was turned in to the Board of Elections was legitimate," said Camp, a 28-year-old Las Vegan who said he previously worked as a real-estate appraiser.

Lomax said he has seen some evidence of quality control on ACORN's part this year. The registration forms legally cannot be discarded or destroyed, and some would be turned in with a note saying that they appeared to be fraudulent and that the canvasser had been fired, but that was "by no means the majority" of the suspect forms, Lomax said.

ACORN is a nonpartisan organization, but it is affiliated with a political action committee that has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election. The Nevada authorities spearheading the investigation, Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, are both Democrats.

Obama's work as a community organizer in Chicago in the early 1990s was with Project Vote, but his campaign said it was not affiliated with ACORN at the time. Obama also was part of a team of lawyers representing ACORN in 1995 in a lawsuit that accused the state of Illinois of putting up barriers to poor people trying to register.

A spokeswoman for Obama's campaign would not comment on his past ties to the group but said the work ACORN is now engaged in is separate from the campaign.

"The Obama campaign is not affiliated with nor do we work with ACORN," Kirsten Searer said. "We have our own, separate voter registration campaign."

Republicans seized on the news of Tuesday's raid. The Clark County Republican Party issued a statement condemning voter fraud and calling for full prosecution of anyone responsible.

ACORN's other major activity is housing aid, for which it is eligible for federal grants from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under newly enacted affordable-housing provisions.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, on Tuesday called for the suspension of the affordable housing funds because they might be going to "controversial groups like ACORN."

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, also a Republican, said the ACORN problem was evidence Nevada needs a law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert, R-Reno, has proposed such a bill to be considered by the 2009 Legislature.

In the interim, Miller urged residents who registered with third parties to check the Nevada secretary of state's Web site to reaffirm their voting status. The deadline to register for the November election is Oct. 14. New registrations must be submitted in person at the Clark County Government Center or the Clark County Election Department.

Contact reporter Adrienne Packer at apacker@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/30613864.html

So I wonder who Terrell Owens and the rest of these bogus registrants will be voting for? :rolleyes:

[Webmaster]

Missouri officials suspect fake voter registration

By BILL DRAPER, Associated Press WriterWed Oct 8, 9:45 PM ET

Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."

The nonpartisan group works to recruit low-income voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Most polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain with an edge in bellwether Missouri, but Democrat Barack Obama continues to put up a strong fight.

Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn't done any registrations in Kansas City since late August. He said he was told three weeks ago by election officials that there were only about 135 questionable cards — 85 of them duplicates.

"They keep telling different people different things," he said. "They gave us a list of 130, then told someone else it was 1,000."

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency has been in contact with elections officials about potential voter fraud and plans to investigate.

"It's a matter we take very seriously," Patton said. "It is against the law to register someone to vote who does not fall within the parameters to vote, or to put someone on there falsely."

On Tuesday, authorities in Nevada seized records from ACORN after finding fraudulent registration forms that included the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

In April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said they submitted cards with false addresses and names, and forged signatures.

Ordower said Wednesday that ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some politicians don't want that many low-income people having a voice.

"It's par for the course," he said. "When you're doing more registrations than anyone else in the country, some don't want low-income people being empowered to vote. There are pretty targeted attacks on us, but we're proud to be out there doing the patriotic thing getting people registered to vote."

Republicans are among ACORN's loudest critics. At a campaign stop in Bethlehem, Pa., supporters of John McCain interrupted his remarks Wednesday by shouting, "No more ACORN."

Debbie Mesloh, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Missouri, said in an e-mailed statement that the campaign supported any investigation of possible fraud.

According to its national Web site, the group has registered 1.3 million people nationwide for the Nov. 4 election. It also has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, where new voter registrations have favored Democrats nearly 4 to 1 since the beginning of this year.

Missouri offers 11 electoral votes; the presidential candidates need at least 270 to win the election.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081009/ap_on_el_ge/voter_fraud

and a little more...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/news/politics/nuts__132771.htm

[Webmaster]

ACORN's voter registrations questioned

By Matthew Santoni
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, October 9, 2008

Thousands of allegedly fake voter registrations by a nationwide organization are being investigated. At least nine states are reviewing voter paperwork, and Allegheny County police are looking into similar accusations.

Employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN, are under investigation in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin since local election officials started noticing irregularities among the thousands of registrations submitted by ACORN.

The ACORN organizer in one state said the organization had no way of checking all registrations.

Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration from ACORN were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."

Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn't done any registrations in Kansas City since late August.

In April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said they submitted cards with false addresses and names, and forged signatures.

Ordower said ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some politicians don't want that many low-income people having a voice.

Some applications were made under obviously false names, such as the Dallas Cowboys' starting lineup registered in Nevada; others had multiple registrations under the same name, but with different addresses or birthdays.

Similar questions have arisen about voter registrations in Pennsylvania, but Allegheny County elections officials did not return phone calls requesting comment.

"Our office received a referral regarding questionable activities regarding voter registration forms," said Mike Manko, spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. "That matter is now being investigated by county police."

Manko could not say whether the questionable registrations involved ACORN because the investigation is ongoing.

"We don't comment on whether we have an active investigation," county police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. "We look at anything that's brought to our attention, but I can't comment on any specific (investigation)."

ACORN national communications director Charles Jackson said the Allegheny County chapter has registered more than 40,000 voters in the Pittsburgh area, but he could not confirm whether there is an investigation.

"Anytime there's been a problem, we have been very proactive in notifying authorities," he said.

In Lake County, Ind., Elections Board Director Sally LaSota told The (Munster) Times newspaper that out of 2,000 new voter applications dropped off by ACORN employees, "about 1,100 were no good."

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, ACORN's Cleveland organizer suggested the organization did not have the time or resources to catch every instance of employees submitting false registrations in order to meet quotas and get paid for the day's work.

Jackson said canvass workers are paid by the hour and don't have to meet quotas.

ACORN Interim Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis said the organization reviews its own registrations when they are submitted by canvassers, flagging suspicious registrations for follow-up by local elections officials and offering to help them follow up with any investigation into the employees submitting them.

In a statement, ACORN officials said staffers try to call every voter listed on registration cards before they are submitted, and those they can't reach are flagged and submitted separately.

In Clark County, Nev., ACORN met with election officials in July about canvassers they suspected of submitting fake registrations, re-sent information about the questionable applications and answered subpoenas when they came, Lewis said.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_592407.html

[Webmaster]

VOTE-FRAUD-A-GO-GO

Let every vote count, is the Democratic Party's mantra these days. That slogan might better be: Let every vote count as often as we need to win.

Such, at any rate, are the tactics of ACORN, Barack Obama's favorite "community organizers," and its Project Vote - of which, the Democratic presidential candidate has boasted, "I started working as the director . . . here in Chicago."

ACORN has been implicated in voter-fraud schemes in 15 states - including Ohio, from where The Post's Jeane MacIntosh reports today that a Board of Elections investigation has unearthed evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Two voters told MacIntosh they had been dragooned by ACORN activists into registering several times - one reporting having signed up "10 to 15" times.

ACORN canvassers "would ask me if I was registered," he said. "I'd say yes and they'd ask me to do it again."

Tuesday, Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas offices as part of a probe into voter-registration fraud - noting that some forms submitted by ACORN workers included the names of Dallas Cowboys players.

Officials in Lake County, Ind. report that fully 1,100 of 2,000 new voter-registration forms delivered by ACORN were "suspicious."

In Washington state, officials recently closed an investigation into ballot cheating that resulted in prison terms.

ACORN submitted more than 800 phony registration forms in Independence, Mo., with one woman registering 10 times, using three birthdates, four different Social Security numbers and six different phone numbers.

And, as The Post reported Monday, another pro-Obama group, Vote Today Ohio, took advantage of a quirk in that state's law, which allows people to register and vote on the same day without having to prove residency, to drive hundreds of people from homeless shelters and drug-rehab centers to the polls.

John McCain's campaign says all this "doesn't pass the smell test."

Actually, it stinks.

And it's being done by a group with which Barack Obama has proudly been associated.

What, then, would they be able to pull off with a friend in the White House?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10092008/postopinion/editorials/vote_fraud_a_go_go_132852.htm

[jwinch2]

Finally, this is being reported on by FOX and CNN this evening. Nothing will likely come of it, unfortunately.

[Webmaster]

Looks like Obama's ACORNs are coming home to roost (a little Rev. Wright lingo for you). :laugh:


Ohio Secretary of State Ordered to Verify Voter Registrations
Federal judge orders Ohio's top elections official to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Ohio's top elections official to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents.

U.S. District Judge George C. Smith in Columbus ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must perform verification required by the Help America Vote Act. That includes matching new registrants' information against information in databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

The order was the result of a lawsuit the Ohio Republican Party filed against Brunner, a Democrat.

"Plaintiffs assert, and the court agrees, that it is hard to imagine a public interest more compelling than safeguarding the legitimacy of the election of the president of the United States," Smith wrote in his ruling.

Brunner also was ordered to establish a process by which Ohio's 88 county election boards can access information generated by the checks.

Residents registering to vote must provide their name, address, date of birth and either their driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Brunner has said the state matches registration information against data in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles system and the Social Security database. But she also has said federal law doesn't say what should be done if a mismatch is discovered, and it is up to counties to check the system for flagged registrations and investigate if warranted.

An after-hours call seeking Brunner's comment on the ruling was not immediately returned Thursday.

Republicans, who have been at odds frequently with Brunner, hailed the ruling.

"For some reason, Jennifer Brunner does not want these new registrations checked," said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. "Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election."

Separately Thursday, the sheriff in Greene County in southwest Ohio requested registration cards and address change forms for all 302 people who registered to vote and cast ballots during the state's weeklong same-day voting window, which ended Monday.

Sheriff Gene Fischer, a Republican, told elections officials he had been flooded with telephone calls from people concerned about possible fraud.

Greene County is home to five colleges or universities -- Wright State, Central State, Wilberforce and Cedarville universities and Antioch College. Most of its students lean Democratic.

County Prosecutor Stephen Haller, who is representing Fischer, said the records request was not politically motivated. Haller is a former law partner of Mike DeWine, a former U.S. senator and chairman of the Ohio campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

McCain's rival, Democrat Barack Obama, launched a major push to attract new voters during the window, which was the subject of an unsuccessful challenge by the Ohio Republican Party.

Lyn McCoy, the county's deputy elections director, said the records request was being processed. Names, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers will be blackened out before the documents are release, she said.


http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/09/judge-orders-ohio-elections-chief-verify-voters/

[Webmaster]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10142008/news/politics/bogus_voter_booted_amid_probe_of_acorn_133540.htm


BOGUS VOTER BOOTED AMID PROBE OF ACORN

By JEANE MacINTOSH in Cleveland and MAGGIE HABERMAN in New York

October 14, 2008 --

Investigators probing ACORN have learned that an Ohio man registered to vote several times and cast a bogus ballot with a fake address, officials said yesterday, as they revealed that nearly 4,000 registration applications supplied by the left-leaning activist group were suspect.

The vote of Darnell Nash, one of four people subpoenaed in a Cuyahoga County probe of ACORN's voter-registration activities, was canceled and his case was turned over to local prosecutors and law enforcement, Board of Elections officials said yesterday.

Nash had registered to vote repeatedly from an address that belonged to a legitimately registered voter, officials said during a hearing at which the subpoenaed voters were to testify.

Board officials had contacted Nash this summer, questioned his address and told him to stop repeat registering.

But still, he breezed into Ohio election offices - the state allows early voting for president - reregistered with a fake address and cast a paper ballot, officials said.

"He came in on 9/30 and Mr. Nash again registered to vote at [someone else's] address, and he cast a ballot," said board official Jane Platten.

Nash did not turn up for the hearing.

The Post reported last week on the Cleveland-area probe and the subpoenas, which were sent out to four people - including two voters who said they were hounded by ACORN workers to register over and over, even when they warned they'd already done so.

It's the latest issue in the probe of ACORN's registering voters in Ohio, one of at least nine states where officials are investigating similar reports of phony sign-ups by the group.

At the same time, officials said, some 5 percent, or 3,650, of the 73,000 total registration cards turned in by ACORN in the Cleveland area from its Project Vote initiative to sign up low-income voters were "questionable," Platten said.

There were "egregious acts of registering multiple times," said Platten. "The extent of it is beyond the resources of this board."

Nash's case and three others were turned over to authorities yesterday, said Ryan Miday, a spokesman for prosecutor Bill Masson.

"We will consider presenting it to a grand jury," Miday said.

A member of the board said if necessary, the FBI or federal prosecutors could be brought in for assistance.

Still, members of the bipartisan board downplayed any voter fraud.

And Platten insisted officials with ACORN have offered "any and all" help in probing the questionable activities. Katy Gall, the Ohio state director for ACORN, said her group is cooperating fully with the investigation.

She added that her group has fired anyone who was found soliciting duplicate registrations.

ACORN, whose political arm has endorsed Democratic nominee Barack Obama, has signed up more than 1.3 million voters for this cycle.

ACORN adviser Scott Levenson said, "If one of the 13,000 [people] we hired is potentially a bad apple in the bunch, we encourage the authorities to prosecute, as appropriate, anyone that did the wrong thing. We discipline [and] we fire workers who [abuse their position] . . . We encourage prosecutors to follow suit."

He also denied suggestions that the group pays canvassers by the number of names they sign up, and that they have quotas.

Also yesterday:

* Two of the four subpoenaed voters, Freddie Johnson and Christopher Barkley, met privately with sheriff's deputies and described what they'd told The Post about being hounded by ACORN workers. Barkley testified at the hearing that some of the registration cards listing his name weren't filled out by him.

* In an e-mail to supporters, John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, slammed "the left-wing activist group ACORN" and suggested, "We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election."

jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

[Webmaster]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1223973289273860.xml&coll=2


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.

[Webmaster]

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/article852295.ece


Vote drives defended, despite fake names

By Richard Danielson, Times Staff Writer
In print: Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote in Florida this summer.

Orange County elections officials rejected his application, which was stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN.

Tow truck driver Newton Bell did register to vote in Orange County this summer. In the hands of ACORN, his paperwork went through without a hitch.

Two cases, two outcomes, each with a connection to ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Nationwide, ACORN is a favorite GOP target for allegations of voter registration fraud this year.

That's not new. Similar complaints followed the 2004 elections. A criminal investigation in Florida found no evidence of fraud. ACORN even has a cameo role in the scandal over the 2006 firings of several U.S. attorneys by the Bush Justice Department.

Under attack again, ACORN leaders defend their work. Often, they say, things are as not simple as they're portrayed.

Take Mickey Mouse.

Yes, that's their logo. But they say their workers routinely scanned all suspicious applications.

"We don't think this card came through our system," said Brian Kettenring, ACORN's head organizer in Florida.

With more than 450,000 member families nationwide — 14,000 in Florida — ACORN is a grass roots advocacy group focused on health care, wages, affordable housing and foreclosure.

Bell, the truck driver, certainly, is more representative of ACORN's work in Florida than the cartoon mouse is.

This year, ACORN signed up 1.3-million voters nationwide and about 152,000 in Florida, mostly in Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. ACORN estimates it flagged 2 percent of its Florida registrations as problematic because they were incomplete, duplicates or just plain bogus.

That's enough to give headaches to election officials and to provide ammunition to Republican activists.

Brevard County elections officials have turned over 23 suspect registrations from ACORN to prosecutors. The state Division of Elections has received two ACORN-related complaints, in Orange and Broward counties.

ACORN wasn't active in the Tampa Bay area. Last week, however, Pinellas County elections officials gave local prosecutors 35 questionable registrations from another group, Work for Progress.

The GOP accuses ACORN of registration fraud all over the country. In Las Vegas, authorities said the group's petitions included the names of the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

"This is part of a widespread and systemic effort … to undermine the election process," says Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross, who describes ACORN as a "quasicriminal organization."

No, Kettenring said, it's more like Wal-Mart.

"Some percentage of Wal-Mart workers try to get paid without doing their work or steal from their employer," he said.

Some ACORN workers, he said, have simply made up names.

Maybe, elections officials say, but it's still annoying.

"We did experience a significant amount of problems, enough that we did contact the group to express some of our frustration with their work," said Linda Tanko, Orange County's senior deputy supervisor for voter services.

ACORN's problems included applications with unreadable handwriting, missing information, signatures that didn't match those on file, altered dates of birth or Social Security numbers, applications for people already registered to vote and names that appeared repeatedly, often with different addresses.

ACORN said it terminates canvassers who forge applications. In Broward County, it fired one worker after he turned in applications with similar handwriting and brought the matter to the attention of the Supervisor of Elections Office.

Pay to gather registrations started at $8 an hour, and the goal was 20 signups per day. The organization did not pay by the signature or pay bonuses for volume. The organization also tried to follow up on each registration, calling the person listed to confirm that the form is accurate.

In most states, ACORN must turn in every form that is filled out. "We must turn in every voter registration card by Florida law, even Mickey Mouse," Kettenring said.

Well, not yet, said Jennifer Krell Davis, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State.

Florida does have a law saying third-party voter registration groups must turn in every form without regard to things like party affiliation, race, ethnicity or gender. So far, however, the state has not written the rules to implement it.

In Florida, ACORN is best known for its 2004 effort to lead a petition drive to raise the minimum wage. The FDLE looked into voter fraud allegations then and found no laws were broken.

ACORN also played a role in the firing of one of nine U.S. attorneys dismissed in 2006.

In New Mexico, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired "because of complaints by elected officials who had a political interest in the outcome" of, among other things, a Republican voter fraud complaint against ACORN, according to an internal Justice Department report last month.

This year, 39 members of the House of Representatives have asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate ACORN.

One of those, Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, also has written to supervisor of elections offices in Central Florida seeking "all ACORN-related registration of voters within the last two years."

Republicans also accuse Sen. Barack Obama of trying to distance himself from ACORN, which he represented in a federal lawsuit in 1995.

ACORN's political action committee has endorsed Obama, but the group says its voter registration efforts are nonpartisan.

And the McCain campaign's complaints now are puzzling, ACORN says, because two years ago McCain was the keynote speaker at an immigration reform rally ACORN co-sponsored in Miami. "In 2006," Kettenring said, "we were working together."

[Webmaster]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230749.html?mod=djemEditorialPage


OCTOBER 14, 2008

Obama and Acorn
Community organizers, phony voters, and your tax dollars.

At the recent Emmy Awards, historian Laura Linney averred that America's Founders had been "community organizers" -- like Barack Obama. Too bad they aren't like that any more. Mr. Obama's kind of organizers work at Acorn, the militant advocacy group that is turning up in reports about voter fraud across the country.

Acorn -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- has been around since 1970 and boasts 350,000 members. We've written about them for years, but Acorn is now getting more attention as John McCain's campaign makes an issue of the fraud reports and Acorn's ties to Mr. Obama. It's about time someone exposed this shady outfit that uses government dollars to lobby for larger government.

Acorn uses various affiliated groups to agitate for "a living wage," for "affordable housing," for "tax justice" and union and environmental goals, as well as against school choice and welfare reform. It was a major contributor to the subprime meltdown by pushing lenders to make home loans on easy terms, conducting "strikes" against banks so they'd lower credit standards.

But the organization's real genius is getting American taxpayers to foot the bill. According to a 2006 report from the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), Acorn has been on the federal take since 1977. For instance, Acorn's American Institute for Social Justice claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003. Its American Environmental Justice Project received 100% of its revenue from government grants in the same years. EPI estimates the Acorn Housing Corporation alone received some $16 million in federal dollars from 1997-2007. Only recently, Democrats tried and failed to stuff an "affordable housing" provision into the $700 billion bank rescue package that would have let politicians give even more to Acorn.

All this money gives Acorn the ability to pursue its other great hobby: electing liberals. Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats and is already boasting it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question is how many of these registrations are real.

The Michigan Secretary of State told the press in September that Acorn had submitted "a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications." Earlier this month, Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller requested a raid on Acorn's offices, following complaints of false names and fictional addresses (including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys). Nevada's Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications Acorn submitted weekly.

Officials in Ohio are investigating voter fraud connected with Acorn, and Florida's Seminole County is withholding Acorn registrations that appear fraudulent. New Mexico, North Carolina and Missouri are looking into hundreds of dubious Acorn registrations. Wisconsin is investigating Acorn employees for, according to an election official, "making people up or registering people that were still in prison."

Then there's Lake County, Indiana, which has already found more than 2,100 bogus applications among the 5,000 Acorn dumped right before the deadline. "All the signatures looked exactly the same," said Ruthann Hoagland, of the county election board. Bridgeport, Connecticut estimates about 20% of Acorn's registrations were faulty. As of July, the city of Houston had rejected or put on hold about 40% of the 27,000 registration cards submitted by Acorn.

That's just this year. In 2004, four Acorn employees were indicted in Ohio for submitting false voter registrations. In 2005, two Colorado Acorn workers were found to have submitted false registrations. Four Acorn Missouri employees were indicted in 2006; five were found guilty in Washington state in 2007 for filling out registration forms with names from a phone book.

Which brings us to Mr. Obama, who got his start as a Chicago "community organizer" at Acorn's side. In 1992 he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded Acorn's leaders for being "smack dab in the middle" of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting." It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law -- on the taxpayer's dime.

[jwinch2]

Scary stuff Robert. There is slimy stuff going on from each side of the aisle to be sure, but this is so rampant that I feel it represents a real threat to the legitimacy of the electoral process. I have no earthly idea why there are not more stringent regulations on how voter registration occurs and how votes are tallied. It's not like it is that complex of a process, but for whatever reason the problem never gets fixed.

[Cliff Hargrave]

The left has always used fraudulent voter registrations in the low income neighborhoods. It's a tradition :)

Acorn is just a well organized version of it. Around here at every election there are vans that go around and pick up the vagrants, crack heads, etc. (who are ALL registered, probably multiple times) and drive them to the polls and give them cigarettes and beer afterwards.

[David Craik]

Man, wish one of those vans could swing by my house. :booze:

[jwinch2]

I could go for some free beer myself Dave... Though, if a bunch of idiots trying to rig an election came by my house, I doubt they would be offering me free beer after they heard what I had to say.

I don't understand why it is so hard for people to register to vote. When I knew I was moving to VA from LA, I called the local elections board and requested a voter registration application be sent. I filled it out, slapped a stamp on it, and put it in the mail. End of transaction. This is probably wrong but part of me thinks that if someone is too damn lazy to go through the minimal process, they don't deserve to vote.

This whole thing, just pisses me off...

[David Craik]

I could go for some free beer myself Dave... Though, if a bunch of idiots trying to rig an election came by my house, I doubt they would be offering me free beer after they heard what I had to say.

Hell, I'd be saying 'Hope! Change! Go Obama!' all the way to the private voting booth where I would write in Ron Paul. :laugh:

After I've drank up their beer I would probably have something to say to them. I may even be moved to rap them on their assorted beaks at that time.

Of course, they likely wouldn't come back with more brew in 2012, damn it.

[Webmaster]

Sometimes cartoons can sum it up better than a long article.

[Maro]

In all honesty, to answer an observer, do you agree with these people?


“What turned me off was the way he wouldn't put his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a flag pin. I don't know how you can call yourself an American if you don't do that,” Heather Zimerman, 39, a substitute teacher, said.

“He's smart, articulate and beguiling but his supporters — his inner circle— are radicals who want revolution,” Billy Benton, 55, an estate agent, said. “I don't know what he was doing in Indonesia all those years — hanging around with Muslim terrorists?” Madeleine Willis, 60, a retired factory worker, asked.

[Webmaster]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93R8IE00&show_article=1


About 200K Ohio voters have records discrepancies
Oct 15 08:18 PM US/Eastern
By TERRY KINNEY
Associated Press Writer

CINCINNATI (AP) - Close to one in every three newly registered Ohio voters will end up on court-ordered lists being sent to county election boards because they have some discrepancy in their records, an elections spokesman said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that an initial review found that about 200,000 newly registered voters reported information that did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records, Brunner spokesman Kevin Kidder said. Some discrepancies could be as simple as a misspelling, while others could be more significant.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides those names to county elections boards. The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud.

"Things already are in motion to comply," Kidder said. "We're working to establish these processes on how we can make this work. The computer work actually began last week."

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January.

Brunner previously cross-checked new-voter registrations with databases run by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle and the Social Security Administration and made the results available online, but the 6th Circuit said the information was not accessible in a way that would help county election boards ferret out mismatches.

Brunner, a Democrat, told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Wednesday that she is concerned the court decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. Brunner said she'll urge counties not to force these people to use provisional ballots.

The court gave Brunner until Friday to get election boards the information but it was unclear whether that deadline would be met. The court set no penalty for missing the deadline.

County election officials were trying to determine Wednesday how they will respond once they get the information.

"I'm very concerned with these new requirements as we get closer to Election Day," said Steve Harsman, director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections in Dayton. He said his staff already is working 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's clearly going to have an impact in regard to resources we have to expend to resolve discrepancies," said Jeff Hastings, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland.

"We've had about 100,000 (registrations) since January and of those about 34,000 since the primary. We will do whatever is required of us."

Also Wednesday, the Ohio Republican Party said it has filed public records requests with all 88 counties for copies of forms submitted by newly registered voters, especially those who registered and cast an absentee ballot on the same day during a one-week window earlier this month.

Brunner has said that 13,141 Ohioans registered and voted immediately during the window.

"We've seen reports of fraudulent registrations, and we want to see those forms first-hand," said Jason Mauk, the state GOP's executive director.

[Webmaster]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93RN9IG0&show_article=1


Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud
Oct 16 01:03 PM US/Eastern
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.

A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday. A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because regulatons forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters—most of whom tend to be Democrats.

[Webmaster]

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/16/obama-denies-ties-acorn/


Obama and ACORN: Relationship May Be More Extensive Than Candidate Says

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama says he only had limited ties to ACORN, and they began in 1995. But other encounters with the group, plus a voter-registration drive he conducted called Project Vote three years earlier, calls his account into question.

FOXNews.com
Thursday, October 16, 2008

Twice in the last week, Barack Obama has said his relationship with ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- began and ended with legal work he did for the group in 1995.

The Democratic presidential candidate made his remarks in an effort to distance himself from the low-income advocacy group, which is under investigation for voter fraud in several states.

But that assertion is subject to debate. Obama conducted training sessions for ACORN workers a decade ago, and his campaign also recently paid an ACORN subsidiary for canvassing efforts.

Plus his work with a group called Project Vote back in 1992 raises questions about whether he was involved with ACORN back then.

Project Vote was one of Obama's earliest political successes. As director of Illinois Project Vote, Obama helped register 150,000 new voters in Chicago, and he was heralded for his efforts in local media.

ACORN was also registering voters at that time, and its relationship with Project Vote casts some doubt on Obama's statement that his involvement with ACORN didn't begin until three years later.

Obama's campaign Web site -- in a section called "Fight the Smears" that is devoted to shooting down harmful rumors about his candidacy -- states as "fact" that "ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992."

The site also states, "Barack Obama never organized with ACORN."

But accounts from the 1992 voter drive suggest the two groups were at least working alongside each other, if not together.

A blogger for Obama's campaign Web site in February wrote: "When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer ... Senator Obama said, 'I come out of a grassroots organizing background. ... Even before I was an elected official, when I ran (the) Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.'"

Also, Chicago ACORN organizer Toni Foulkes wrote in the 2003 edition of the journal Social Policy that the two groups were working to register voters when Obama led the effort in Illinois.

She wrote that Obama and Project Vote made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win her Senate seat in 1992, and that "Project Vote delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them)."

But ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg told FOXNews.com "there was no work done between Project Vote and ACORN" during the 1992 Chicago drive.

"There was no financial intermingling," he added.

Goldberg said the groups, rather, conducted "parallel" efforts to register voters.

Asked about the 1992 project, the Obama campaign referred FOXNews.com to a July letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal from Sanford Newman, who was director of Project Vote in 1992.

Newman wrote that Obama worked for his organization, not ACORN, and that "it wasn't until after Mr. Obama's tenure had ended that it began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations."

He wrote that Project Vote "remains a separate organization today."

Goldberg also told FOXNews.com the two organizations are still separate, even though they now work together on voter registration.

On that issue, the two organizations seem to have maintained a close and open relationship in recent years.

Project Vote announced last week that together with ACORN they registered over 1.3 million people to vote. Project Vote is listed on the ACORN Web site as one of many "allied organizations." The two organizations also share an office address in Arkansas and Washington, D.C. According to ACORN, the office-sharing is a cost-saving move done for "convenience."

But as to Obama's statement that his ties to ACORN are contained to his legal work, it has already been widely reported that his campaign paid more than $800,000 to a group called Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN subsidiary, to "augment" Obama's grassroots organizing efforts in the Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania primaries.

His campaign maintains those efforts were for getting voters to the polls and not for voter registration, which is the sticking point of ongoing ACORN probes.

Goldberg also confirmed to FOXNews.com that Obama gave two training sessions over the course of three years in the late '90s. He said each session lasted an hour or less.

Republicans say Obama can't deny his relationship with ACORN.

"[Obama's] relationship with ACORN is well-established," said Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz. "His comment is a fabrication."

But Obama's carefully worded statement regarding ACORN training on his "Fight the Smears" site appears to be true.

The statement says ACORN never "hired" Obama "as a trainer, organizer or any type of employee."

And Goldberg said that, in fact, "Barack was not paid."

Diaz noted that Obama changed his Web site to reflect the training sessions -- it previously said the Illinois senator was never an ACORN trainer. The word, "hired," was added later.

[jwinch2]

Mat,

US Code specifically states that during the pledge of allegiance you are to place place your and over your heart and face the flag if one is present. Senator Obama thinks he is above that sort of thing. I would not go so far to say that he is not an American, that is ridiculous. However, it is still shows a lack of respect that bothers me especially as a veteran. Secondly, the latter statement that Obama hung out with Muslim terrorists to my knowledge is a complete falsehood. However, he has hung out with a domestic terrorist whom the only reason he is not in jail is that some of the wiretaps that were used to obtain evidence against him were improperly placed. A story just broke where three former FBI agents, including at least one very senior one, still feel quite strongly that Ayers is a terrorist and should be behind bars.

Much of the rhetoric is way over the top. But that happens on both sides of the argument. A recent study demonstrates that attacks from television media are 7 - 1 against McCain. A glance of the names of several facebook groups shows that the rhetoric directed at McCain is at least as bad as that directed at Obama, if not worse. A few examples are as follows:

- The only reason to vote for McCain is if ur racist
- McCain a Racist, vote democrat!
- Cindy McCain is made of Plastic, a Stepford Wife and Racist

I have no doubt that you are not hearing any of that over there. It is hardly reported on here.

[David Craik]

I was under the impression it was the National Anthem, not the Pledge of Allegiance from a clip I saw of it. Regardless, the Flag Code states that persons not in uniform will place their hand over their heart. This disturbs me, not only because of the lack of protocol, but because here we have a Harvard-educated United States senator who has spent millions to present an image, and yet we are expected to believe that he is unaware of a convention known to first-graders and even the most dimwitted of Privates that he seeks to lead? One really starts to wonder if it was intentional.

When I watched the clip, I had my hand over my heart but this was due to arrhythmia caused by the absolutely horrible singing displayed, only slightly better that Rosie O'Donnell's rendition. So horrible, in fact, that were I Senator Obama I would plead total shock as the reason I did not place my hand over my heart.

[jwinch2]

Funny Dave... you may be right on the national anthem rather than the pledge. It has been a while since I looked at that clip.