I have my own gripes relative to ACORN. They are frequently uninformed, generally disruptive rather than helpful, and often exploitative of the very people they purport to help.

In this matter, though, I suspect the old line about never blaming malice when incompetence will do fits nicely.

They can't win fairly, so they'll try to steal it with intimidation, fraud and disenfranchisement.

" ...when supporters began to chant the group's name in derision ..."

The season of Brooks Brothers riots has begun.

doesn't result in anyone ineligible casting a vote

Exactly.
This is not voter fraud, it's employee fraud against their employer.

ACORN managment surely did not instruct the workers to go get fake registrations.

.

Fair process, my ass. This is all about voter suppression, the only way McCain can steal this election.

Even if bogus names were on the ACORN lists, does McCain expect thousands of phoney voters to show up on election day with fake IDs? Give me a break.

OOPS, NO ONE IS FIGHTINGIN IRAQ TO PROTECT MY FREEDOM!

My freedom is not in Iraq.

Given the scale of this operation, I suspect we're also looking at the first draft of a myth titled "Why McCain/Palin Lost the Election".

It is voter suppression. I think this may be less about McCain stealing an election than impacting down ticket elections, especially Congressional districts and small state Senate seats. They are likely to be far closer than the national election or statewide elections in the larger states.

I think big chunks of the GOP are realistic at this point that the odds against McCain are massive, and stealing it isn't likely. The worry at this point is to prevent 1980 in reverse (when combining 2006 & 2008). And to prevent that, they're more than willing to steal a dozen elections down ticket.

John

John

Everyone needs to keep saying over and over again:

This is REGISTRATION fraud, not VOTER fraud.
This is REGISTRATION fraud, not VOTER fraud.
This is REGISTRATION fraud, not VOTER fraud.

So what if some yahoo trying to make a buck for a voter registration firm turns one in for "Mary Poppins" or "Darth Vader"? No one will ever try to vote under those names. People with multiple registrations under the same name will only be able to vote once. Those voting illegally will be prosecuted under current law.

Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.

"I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register," Barkley said. "They'd ask me if I was registered. I'd say yes, and they'd ask me to do it [register] again.

"Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it," he said.

Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.

"You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," said Lateala Goins, 21, who was subpoenaed.

"They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter," she told The Post.

She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.

A third subpoenaed voter, Freddie Johnson, 19, filled out registration cards 72 times over 18 months, officials said.

Yup. Get ready for the cries that the election was stolen when it turns out the massive Dem vote registration is a complete fraud and scam entitling strict monitoring at polling places and scrubbing of voter roles.

McWhine Squeelin '08

Regarding duplicates, it's worth noting that people often walk into the DMV or the County Clerk office and register when they are already on the rolls. Indeed, I would say 20-40% of the applications that states get from their own agencies are duplicates. (You can look this up in the reports on the EAC website.)

That's not the same as falsely re-registering somebody, but I would bet the lion share of the duplicates that states have from these groups are the same as duplicates that come in through government agencies. Human error and misunderstanding or ignorance of their current registration status. States used to purge agressively, people might still believe if they skipped a mid-term or general election that they need to register again.

Same with forms that are illegible or don't have a working phone number. Some are fake, some are people that screw up their forms. Check the percent of bad forms coming in from agencies and see how high it is. I bet ACORN is lower.

In case you’re interested, here’s a link to an update of successful legal actions the Democrats took against Republican attempts to remove voters from the rolls in Democrat-rich areas of Montana. Note the very pointed language the judge uses in his contemptuous slap-down of these goons. (In a PR disaster for the Republicans, one of those removed was a well-know, decorated WW ll hero. D’oh!!!)

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6489

Too bad the New York Times story that ran today on voter purging didn’t include details like this. Good that they finally ran a story on what’s happening (At a time when new voter registrations are running at a record rate in many states, in some cases for every new voter added to the rolls TWO voters were removed). They do, however, point out the widespread violation of voting laws and the removal a massive numbers of voters in key battleground states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Unfortunately, they make no connection to the long-running, overall Republican campaign against Democratic voters and make it sound as if these voter purges are just random acts of bureaucratic incompetence. This campaign has included blocking certain voters from registering through voter caging and voter challenges always aimed at Democratic precincts (as they attempted in the above example), wide-spread evidence of tampering with computer systems and disparity between exit polls and actual vote counts that experts have calculated would be statistically impossible (always in favor of Republicans), disinformation campaigns targeting African-American and college-age voters aimed at discouraging them from registering, use of the Justice Department and it’s U.S. attorneys to mount phony “voter fraud” cases while ignoring blatant violations of voter law by Republicans and then firing U.S. attorneys that didn’t cooperate, the upcoming shut down of the Social Security website for four days during the height of voter registration that will create havoc as states scramble against deadlines to check voter roles, Republican lawsuits aimed at making states cross-check new voter registrations against data bases with error rates so high that, in some cases, few of the new voters are deemed eligible, and a long-running propaganda campaign supported by their allies in talk radio and Fox News that has tried to convince people that there is an epidemic of “voter fraud” in this country. And, of course, don’t forget the U.S. Supreme Court that shut down the recount in Florida during the 2000 election in a 5-4 decision and, consequentially, appointed George Bush president.

Democrats are urging people to double-check their registration. In many cases, people don’t know that they have been removed until they arrive to vote. You can imagine the chaos that awaits when these voters arrive at the polls in a few weeks.

On election day...expect riots, protests, chaos..all signatures of the GOP..(remember Florida 2000?) Martial Law...? Election suspension, Supreme Court interference..? Any of this sound possible..? Likely...? How about voting absentee...? Check to make sure you have not been "purged" first...we can win and avoid Martial Law...go check your voter registration and then vote absentee...(I have heard they throw the provisional votes in the trash) Please we must win....Please follow up..go to "steal our votes back"....

Heaven forbid, if poor people should vote.

I have my suspicions about ACORN. This is not the first time this has come up. The biggest problem is, they don't have to do this. I mean, they may have to do it to get paid but they are not helping Obama. The polls that keep coming out are not fraudulent. I think he could win without ACORN's help. If I was Obama, I would come out and codemn ACORN or the employees of ACORN but I would also bring up the story that was in the NYT today about voter purging. I haven't heard Fox mention a word about that one. They had Ken Blackwell on this morning to talk about voter fraud. Ken Blackwell!

To all of the people that want to throw ACRON under the bus... go to hell. When ACORN's voter registration drives make the difference between winning and losing close races, no says "good job ACORN", but the second the rightwing puts together some bullshit sensationalist story, everyone starts to pile on. Why has noone brought up the fact that ACORN is a majority African-American organization, and attacking ACORN is simply another way to tacitly play the race card? Seriously, when all the people here spend their winters registering poor people to vote at a bus stop, come back, and talk about doing it all by volunteer. With enemies like you, I can't imagine why McCain needs friends.

This isn't about ACORN, it's about OBAMA and his association with ACORN.
That's why the GOP is attacking across the nation. So they can tie Obama to vote fraud in all fifty states. Look for the commercials this weekend or early next week.

An interesting strategy.

ACORN

1. Obama's pet organization
2. Encouraging unqualified buyer to take out subprime mortagage.
3. Engaged in voter fraud
4. Did I forget: Obama is associated with these criminals.

There's a connection here that has gone unremarked upon and that is deeply, deeply troubling.

At the same time that McCain and Palin are ginning up the fear and anger at Obama with their racially-tinged "otherness" attacks, the GOP is also firing people up with rage about ACORN and its efforts to help the poor and racial minorities.

To me, this spells danger -- literally, danger -- on Election Day. How many of McCain's supporters, appropriately fired-up, will gleefully participate in voter intimidation efforts (or worse) come Nov. 4? Especially, as now seems likely, Obama is heading to a comfortable victory. The anger and rage that is brewing -- economic collapse, a black guy taking over, minorities allegedly involved in "voter fraud" who help Obama win -- may find some very ugly outlets.

The lack of respect for the right to vote shown by the GOP is almost beyond comment. Voter "impersonation" (what they call "voter fraud") simply doesn't exist beyond a literal handful of instances each election. The real fraud is the behind-the-scenes machinations and systemic problems in our banana-republic-like election administration. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy to deny Obama the White House; our embarrassing election infrastructure, and hodge-podge of laws and rules, is a conspiracy by default.

Eventually, progressives will realize this and focus their efforts not only on impressive election-protection machinery for election day, but also on enacting the long-overdue reforms we need: National Popular Vote, election day registration (or universal registration), federal holiday on election day, and a Right to Vote Amendment to the Consitution -- where, many of you know, there is no affirmative right to vote for president (or even electors.)

Our efforts on the environment, racial/social/economic justics, and so many other issues will become far less of a fight if and when we have broad voter participation. Under the current election regime, our fights are that much harder.

So will the election officials in Nevada be keeping a look-out for the Dallas Cowboys come election day?

"We've seen reports from several states in recent days that the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, has submitted flawed or fraudulent voter registration forms -- though it's by no means clear how widespread the problem is."

Nor is it clear that the "reports" are true.

Is all the hysteria helping anything other than the Republican efforts to demonize ACORN?