ACORN Investigations Provide Rallying Cry for Republicans John McCain and congressional Republicans are railing against ACORN, which is under investigation for voter fraud.
FOXNews.com Thursday, October 09, 2008
The ongoing investigations into a controversial advocacy group that specializes in registering low-income voters are becoming a rallying cry for Republicans just weeks before Election Day.
John McCain said at a rally Thursday in Wisconsin that the voter-fraud allegations against The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, "must be investigated."
"No one should corrupt the most precious right we have. That is the right to vote," he said to applause.
His campaign later issued a statement highlighting Barack Obama's past legal work for the group, saying "he has a litany of concerning associations that should be fully examined."
Meanwhile, eight senators have demanded the Federal Housing Finance Agency cut off any funding that could wind up in ACORN's coffers. Late Thursday, House Republican Leader John Boehner demanded all federal funding to the group stop, saying the organization can't be trusted with one more taxpayer dollar.
"We're wasting way too much money in Washington, D.C., and this is just a perfect example of taxpayers' monies that are being flushed down the toilet and actually doing harm to our democracy," Republican Nevada Sen. John Ensign said.
But ACORN identifies itself as a non-partisan group that does not accept government funding. And Democrats say the accusations against ACORN amount to nothing more than election-year desperation.
"The idea that they are somehow doing some kind of an organized conspiracy to steal this campaign from John McCain is beyond silly. It's a waste of time and it's grasping at straws from a campaign that's not doing very well," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said.
ACORN is facing investigations in more than 10 states, including Nevada -- where authorities raided the group's Las Vegas office Tuesday following claims that workers tried to fill out voter forms using the names of several Dallas Cowboys players.
ACORN released a statement saying: "ACORN staff reviews every single application submitted by our canvassers. Special, dedicated staff makes up to three phone calls attempting to reach the voter listed on EVERY SINGLE CARD before they are turned in to verify the information."
FOX News' Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
Republicans are in an uproar over claims of vote fraud by the group ACORN.
Sen. John McCain said Thursday that the allegations are serious and "must be investigated, and no one should corrupt the most precious right we have -- and that is the right to vote."
The community group has been registering new voters in key swing states as voter fraud charges have surfaced.
Here are the latest developments:
# Eight U.S. senators are demanding that the Federal Housing Finance Agency cut off monies for the group.
# On Thursday, House Republican Leader John Boehner also demanded all federal funding to ACORN be stopped.
# In Allegheny County, Pa. (which includes Pittsburgh), District Attorney Stephen Zappala confirmed he is investigating potential voter fraud involving ACORN.
"ACORN is part of this, but there are other applications which have been filed which appear to have fraudulent signatures and fraudulent identifications of individuals," Zappala said.
# The FBI is probing vote fraud in New Mexico. The Bernalillo County Clerk's Office said Thursday it had turned over to the FBI 1,400 voter registration cards that are said to be suspicious.
# In Missouri's Jackson County (which includes Kansas City), officials claim ACORN is participating in vote fraud. Charlene Davis, co-director of the county's election board, said a flurry of fraudulent registration forms were filed by ACORN.
# Earlier this week, agents of the Nevada secretary of state and attorney general raided ACORN's Las Vegas office with a search warrant. Nevada authorities allege that ACORN had hired 59 felons through a work-release program as canvassers and submitted nearly 300 apparently fraudulent voter registration cards as part of the drive.
Sen. Barack Obama has denied any ties with the radical community group, but evidence suggests he is not telling the truth.
Obama had worked a lawyer with the group in Illinois. Later he paid an ACORN-affiliated group in Ohio more than $800,000 during the heated Democratic primary season against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.
Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.
Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they're still in prison.
Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.
Vote drives defended, despite fake names By Richard Danielson, Times Staff Writer Published Monday, October 13, 2008 10:39 PM
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."
Richard Danielson can be reached at danielson@sptimes.com or (813)269-5311.
Supreme Court backs Ohio officials in election dispute
STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: Secretary of state says high court "protected the voting rights of all Ohioans" High court backs Ohio Secretary of State in voter registration dispute Earlier ruling ordered list of newly registered Ohio voters with mismatched data Republican Party contends voter fraud could help swing state towards Obama Next Article in Politics »
From Bill Mears CNN Supreme Court Producer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court is backing Ohio elections officials in an ongoing dispute over allegations of voter registration fraud.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed the emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The justices in an unsigned opinion Friday blocked a lower court order directing the Ohio Secretary of State -- a Democrat -- to update the state's voter registration database after information provided by some newly registered voters did not match up with Social Security and driver registration numbers.
The state Republican party had asked for enforcement of a temporary restraining order, but the justices ultimately denied that request.
The appeal, from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and other elections officials, follows a Tuesday ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that sided with the state GOP.
It ordered Brunner to create a system by Friday to provide a list of newly registered voters whose Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers do not match their names.
By reversing the lower courts decision, Brunner said in a statement that the Supreme Court's had "protected the voting rights of all Ohioans, allowing our bipartisan elections officials to continue preparing for a successful November election.
"We filed this appeal to protect all Ohio voters from illegal challenges and barriers that unfairly silence the votes of some to the advantage of others," she said.
The state Republican Party contends that there is widespread voter fraud in Ohio -- a crucial battleground state for the 2008 presidential election -- and that Brunner "turned off" its process for verifying voter registrations while allowing Ohioans to cast ballots on the same day they registered.
In reaction to the high court's decision state GOP Chairman Bob Bennett said in a statement, "This decision was made on a technicality, not on the merits of the case."
"We are again calling on the Secretary of State to comply with federal law by providing clear instructions to election administrators on how to handle questionable voter registration forms," Bennett said.
Bennett had accused Brunner of concealing fraudulent voter registrations in hopes of swinging the state to Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Brunner's office has acknowledged that preliminary information provided by about 200,000 registered voters may not match up. Brunner said Tuesday she had prepared for the appeals court's "possible adverse decision" ahead of time by announcing plans to "further improve the statewide voter registration database."
The appeals court opinion called Ohio's current system "virtually useless" and said it does "nothing to address the anti-fraud objective."
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