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Originally posted by disgustedbyhumanity
BTW McCain is on tape singing the praises of ACORN as recently as 2004.
Originally posted by disgustedbyhumanity
And what really makes the issue a moot point is that these imaginary folks they sign up don't exist and thus do not ever cast a vote. It is simply a scam to get a paycheck from ACORN.
Originally posted by clay2 baraka
It is very disappointing that they are not verifying 100% of the registrations completed by their temps.
Fraud? I don't think so.
Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.
You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.
What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won't be voting this November.
The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up.
But in the bloody and desperate trenches of the Republican war on democracy, that's more than enough to kick in a last minute surge of lies ...
Key Facts:
1. In order to help 1.3 million people register to vote, we hired more than 13,000 registration assistance workers. As with any business or agency that operates at this scale, there are always some people who want to get paid without really doing the job, or who aim to defraud their employer. Any large department store will have some workers who shoplift.
2. Any large voter registration operation will have a small percentage of workers who turn in bogus registration forms, Their goal clearly is not to cast a fraudulent vote. It is simply to defraud their employer, ACORN, by getting a paycheck without earning it. ACORN is the victim of this fraud – not the perpetrator.
3. In nearly every case that has been reported , it was ACORN that discovered the bad forms, and called them to the attention of election authorities, putting the forms in a package that identified them in writing as suspicious, encouraging election officials to investigate, and offering to help with prosecutions. We are required by law to turn in all forms, but instead of just turning them in and figuring that it is the responsibility of the board of elections to figure out which are valid, we spend millions of dollars verifying that forms are valid, and then separate out those that are suspicious.
4. This has nothing to do with “voter fraud” – nothing at all to do with anyone trying to cast an extra vote. There has never been a single reported instance in which bogus registration forms have led to anyone voting improperly. To do that, they would have to show up at the polls, prove their identity as all first-time registrants must, and risk jail. The people who turned in these forms did so not because they wanted an extra vote, but because they didn’t care enough to make sure eligible people got to vote at all.
5. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. But for some reason, when ACORN turns voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus forms, it gets accused of “voter fraud.” This is a classic case of blaming the victim; indeed, these charges are outrageous, libelous, and often politically motivated.
Originally posted by clay2 baraka
But they should be held accountable in a legal way for the disruption to the local authorities who are being burdened by this nonsense.
******SKIP******
I say there should be some form of recourse to prevent this garbage from happening in the future.
While the vast majority of our voter registration canvassers do a great job, there have been several times over the past ten months that our Las Vegas Quality Control program has identified a canvasser who appears to have knowingly submitted a fake or duplicate application in order to pad his or her hours.
Anytime ACORN quality control staff has identified a suspicious application, we have separated that application out and flagged it for election officials. We turn any suspicious applications to election officials separately, along with a cover sheet identifying the nature of the problem and an offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual. (Note that civic organizations are required by law to turn over ANY signed voter registration applications even when they are known to have problems). We immediately dismiss any employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.
n addition to the savvy guerrilla marketing, the Squirrels have their own blog. And, the GOP is bolstering the message with a new site, ObamaAcornTree.com, which illustrates Obama's many connections to the group, including an endorsement from ACORN's political arm, numerous grants he steered to them throughout his career, and the $800,000 his campaign paid ACORN for get-out-the-vote efforts (and then tried to conceal in FEC reports).
Originally posted by beforetime
there is where this problem is folk's.
obama's campaign gave 800k to acorn to get more voters ...
so technically they did pay for voter's in my book.
mcain didn't give them any money..nor did he get any of the thousands of thousand fake voters they got they was all democratic.
why is it hard to see my point?
The only actual crime here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up.
ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country.
******SKIP******
Voter participation: Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote.
Originally posted by beforetime
And you DON'T find it funny all the fake registration card's where democrat?
i sure as heck do.
obama for 80k got 1.3m fake voter's to give HYPE to his campaign..
Florida's governor says his fellow Republicans may be exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.
Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there's only been a scattering of isolated incidents.
Crist said in the closing days of any campaign "there are some who sort of enjoy chaos." There may be more of that going on than fraud, he said.
The Republican National Committee and GOP presidential candidate John McCain have accused an activist group of fraudulently registering people in Florida and other states. It has focused on young people, minorities and others seen as more likely to support Democrat Barack Obama.
Originally posted by BluegrassRevolutionary
After the crap the Republicans pulled in Florida in 2000 and Ohio & Florida in 2004, as far as I am concerned, anything the Democrats do, they are doing just to stay competitive with their fraudulent, Republican counterparts.