The Badger Herald: Opinion: ACORN unintentionally fraudulent

Opinion

ACORN unintentionally fraudulent

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Also by Ryan Masse:

Count down to Keith Olbermann's irrelevant exit (November 12, 2008)
Health plan losing steam (October 29, 2008)
ACORN unintentionally fraudulent (October 16, 2008)
Biden versus Palin: debate to watch (October 2, 2008)
Anti-Palin talk emboldens GOP (September 18, 2008)

By Ryan Masse
Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:00 a.m.

13 Vote 0 Votes

It may be the case that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — a group that seeks to register new low-income voters — is not a corrupt outfit bent on perverting the electoral process. It did, after all, flag and self-report many of the falsified voter registration forms that have found their way from ACORN offices into the hands of elections officials throughout the country to much publicity in the last month.

But it is certainly the case that quality control has yet to be adopted as a best practice in the voter registration industry. Consider just some of the most egregious of ACORN’s alleged indiscretions:

The Nevada Secretary of State is investigating the group after noticing that most members of the Dallas Cowboys suddenly “registered” to vote via the organization in the Sagebrush State.

A man in Ohio filled out 72 separate voter registration cards over an 18-month period for the group. In return, ACORN canvassers gave the man cash and cigarettes.

Registration forms submitted by ACORN in Bridgeport, Conn., contained scores of duplicates and phony information, including one card for a 7-year-old girl and one for a man who later said he never saw the form because he was, in fact, in jail at the time.

In Lake County, Ind., ACORN submitted 5,000 registration forms. The Elections Board stopped processing them after the first 2,100 all turned out to be fraudulent, including one purporting to be signed by sandwich entrepreneur Jimmy Johns.

This is a mere sampling of the investigations underway against ACORN around the country. All reflect gross negligence and a complete failure on the part of ACORN’s managers to provide employees with even rudimentary training on the legalities of registration collecting.

Now, no doubt most of the 1.3 million registrations submitted by ACORN throughout the country are legitimate, just as most of the group’s workers are undoubtedly honest. ACORN’s apologists have seized upon this fact — an absence of “widespread” fraud — to stifle criticism of the group, while suggesting that anyone concerned about Mickey Mouse registering to vote — as he did on an ACORN-submitted form in Florida — is simply a partisan with designs on voter suppression.

ACORN defenders have further tried to downplay the controversy by drawing a distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud. The latter is a serious offense that subverts elections, the argument goes, while the former, absent any further fraud, isn’t harmful.

Overlooking the administrative costs a state incurs by having to filter out fraudulent registrations, they’re correct in a strictly pedantic sense. However, fraudulently registering to vote is a necessary precondition for fraudulently voting. And in the few states like Wisconsin with same-day registration, the line between the two is blurred, if not nonexistent.

A person who does wish to commit voter fraud certainly won’t do it under the guise of Mickey Mouse or Tony Romo. They’ll do it with wholly unremarkable, yet fake, information. Such was the case with Darnell Nash, who is alleged to have repeatedly registered to vote with an address other than his own in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Election officials told him to stop submitting registrations, but he nonetheless showed up to cast a ballot during the state’s early voting period using a new fake registration.

Ohio voters were lucky. Nash’s fraudulent vote was discovered and canceled. Were it not, one legitimate Buckeye State voter would have been disenfranchised and his ballot cancelled out.

It would be wrong to assume that most fraudulent registrations lead to fraudulent votes. The risk-to-reward ratio is such that most people would not contemplate committing voter fraud. But Nash’s case demonstrates what is universally true: play with fire and you’ll get burned. Don’t adequately check fraudulent voter registrations and some percentage of them, even if very small, will lead to fraudulent votes. And let’s not forget that it would not have taken very many Darnell Nashs to sway the state of Ohio — and hence the presidential election — in 2004.

ACORN does not have a monopoly on the bogus voter registration business. Here in Wisconsin, a paid employee of the Community Voters Project was charged Tuesday with electoral fraud after allegedly submitting 54 falsified registration forms in Milwaukee, including one for a man who died in 1992. Other workers for the project had previously been implicated for submitting fraudulent registrations.

Last month, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued the state Government Accountability Board to enforce the provisions of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, which requires states to check new voter registrations against a statewide database as of Jan. 1, 2006. The GAB did not get its database up and running until Aug. 6 of this year, at which point it started doing the checks, but only for registrations submitted after Aug. 6.

The Community Voters Project worker charged Tuesday “collected” his signatures from June 4 to June 17 of this year. Luckily, they were caught without the aid of the database check mandated by HAVA. That’s no guarantee that other fraudulent registrations were necessarily weeded out.

Enforcing voting laws isn’t about suppressing anybody’s legitimate vote. It’s about suppressing the votes of people like “Melissa H.” of 5186 N. 48th St. in Milwaukee, who was included on one of the Community Voters Project registration forms.

5186 N. 48th St. doesn’t exist. Voter registration fraud, sadly, does.

Ryan Masse (rmasse@badgerherald.com) is a second-year law student.

13 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 6:04 AM | Reply

Masse, think for a moment: isn’t this just the losing side’s sour grapes grasping at straws?

Remember 2000 and 2004 when the Democrats couldn’t be more convinced that Diebold was rigging the election?

Now, with an obviously inferior candidate, the Republicans are looking for a way to save face in this election. When they lose, ACORN will be the reason, not their out-of-touch policies or their hapless candidate.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 8:23 AM | Reply

Unintentionally fraudulent? Are you kidding me? How can you allow millions of illegal voters to be registered and not know it? You’d have to be totally stupid to pull that off!

I also hope you realize that ACORN is providing Bush and the GOP precisely the excuse they need to call off the election so Bush and his cronies can stay in office a little while longer. Or at least nullify the election results.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 9:52 AM | Reply

“the excuse they need to call off the election”

Are you sure that your tinfoil hat is on good and tight? I think some of the rays are leaking into your brain.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply

Bush call of the election or nullify? I think it is more likely that Mickey Mouse shows up to vote on November 4th. Regardless of whether or not ACORN is directly responsible for these fraudulant voter registrations, they clearly show a serious lack of control.

We should all be upset with ACORN, because we tax payors end up having to pay workers to verify that the submissions they put forth are actually valid. It is time for government issued ID’s for voting purposes, if we had them then this would be mostly a non-issue.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 1:08 PM | Reply

“How can you allow millions of illegal voters to be registered and not know it?”

MILLIONS? Please, this is a ridiculous over-estimate.

Ryan is generally correct in his assessment here. There are some problems with ACORN’s approach but they aren’t out to STEAL this election as a lot on the right are claiming. It is sour grapes for the GOP at this point since they don’t have much else to hold on to.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply

Yeah, unintentional. Right. Just keep believing that and let your naivete shine for all to see.

Unintentional must be why they are supposed to be a non-partisan group that has endorsed BHO.

Unintentional must be why they wait until the last minute to hand in all their registration forms, not that it might have something to do with overwhelming the people that are supposed to be verifying them.

Unintentional about the house in Columbus that was used for a mailing address for out of the country students to request absentee ballots. No matter than none of them are or were ever Ohio residents.

Unintentional that they are “suggesting” to their registrees that they vote for BHO, must be some of that non-partisan stuff again.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 2:27 PM | Reply

The governorship of the State of Washington was determined on voter fraud via the counting of suddenly discovered bogus ballots at the end of multiple recounts. Now we have 200,000 questionable voter registrants in the important swing state of Ohio that remains a close battleground in this presidential race. Further, we have ongoing investigations of the far left Acorn organization relative to fraudulent voter registrations in at least 13 states (and counting).

Two hundred thousand questionable registrations in one single state is so far beyond significant as to be seen as an organized effort to control the outcome of an election using illegal and fraudulent means.

Is voter fraud the only way the left thinks it can win?

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply

Ryan,

Saying that “Acorn (is) Unintentionally Fraudlulent” is equivalent to saying a “Rapist Unintentionally Impregnated the Victim”. This willful dissembling and minimizing of voter fraud cannot be tolerated. Even liberal democrats should decry it.

DemocRATS and their proxies like ACORN are turning our election process into a complete fraud and mugwumps like you are giving them cover. This is the kind of election fraud that North Korean, Venezuelan, and Nigerian dictators know and love so well. Obama will fit right in.

Of 660,000 new registered voters in Ohio, today more than 200,000 cannot be reconciled with the local precinct voter roles. ACORN is VERY active in OHIO. The margin of victory in the last presidential election in Ohio was about 150,000 votes. You do the math….

Thirteen states and the FBI have active investigations into voter registration fraud by ACORN. Is it just coincidence that these are the ‘swing states’, identified as the must win states by the Obama campaign? Is it just coincidence that Obama was a trainer of ACORN acolytes in his younger days? Is it just coincidence that the Obama campaign has given huge sums of money to ACORN, to ‘assist’ their get out the vote effort in Ohio and the other swing states?

No. It’s Collusion. It’s Fraud. It’s Aiding and Abetting Fraud.

Invictus Maneo

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply

Right, this is like the pork barrel spending that is bogging down our national budget. Overblown!

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 7:08 PM | Reply

I would be more concerned with their actions of forcing banks into MANY high risk mortgages and loans.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 7:53 PM | Reply

“Are you sure that your tinfoil hat is on good and tight? I think some of the rays are leaking into your brain.”

If ACORN’s illegal voter registration is a reason for us to wear a tin foil hat, then Obama is your excuse to stay on drugs.

Anonymous | October 16, 2008 9:26 PM | Reply

Thinking that Bush will call off the election indicates that you might be wearing a tinfoil hat.

Sorry you didn’t get the drift.

Andrew | November 3, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply

“It would be wrong to assume that most fraudulent registrations lead to fraudulent votes. The risk-to-reward ratio is such that most people would not contemplate committing voter fraud.”

Exactly. The amount of voter fraud convictions between 2003-2005? 24 - less than eight per year.

ACORN may be incompetent, but not corrupt, and definitely not “tearing apart the fabric of Democracy” as McCain has suggested. Saying so is just playing politics.