Acorn Voter Fraud, Again
How much more before this group is disbanded and made illegal?
Democrats are split on how to deal with Acorn, the liberal “community organizing” group that deployed thousands of get-out-the-vote workers last election. State and city Democratic officials — who’ve been contending with its many scandals — are moving against it. Washington Democrats are still sweeping Acorn abuses under a rug.
On Monday, Nevada officials charged Acorn, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms last year. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, says he believes 48% of Acorn’s forms “are clearly fraudulent.” On Thursday, prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven Acorn employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before last year’s general election.
Acorn spokesman Scott Levenson calls the Nevada criminal complaint “political grandstanding” and says that any problems were the actions of an unnamed “bad employee.” But Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada’s Democratic Attorney General, told the Las Vegas Sun that Acorn itself is named in the criminal complaint. She says that Acorn’s training manuals “clearly detail, condone and . . . require illegal acts,” such as requiring its workers to meet strict voter-registration targets to keep their jobs.
Other Democrats on the ground have complaints. Fred Voight, deputy election commissioner in Philadelphia, protested after Acorn (according to the registrar of voters and his own investigation) submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations last fall. “This has been going on for a number of years,” he told CNN in October. St. Louis Democrat Matthew Potter, the city’s deputy elections director, had similar complaints.
Elsewhere, Washington state prosecutors fined Acorn $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007. The group signed a consent decree with King County (Seattle), requiring it to beef up its oversight or face criminal prosecution. In the 2008 election, Acorn’s practices led to investigations, some ongoing, in 14 other states.
The stink is bad enough that some congressional Democrats have taken notice. At a March 19 hearing on election problems, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pressed New York Rep. Gerald Nadler, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, to hold a hearing on Acorn. He called the charges against it “serious.” Mr. Nadler agreed to consider the request.
Sure they won’t commit fraud against the census. Sure.
More over at Politico.
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