No matter who wins tonight, all of this needs a full audit and the full attention of the public. It is ridiculous and shameful that our election processes should be so fraught with ineptitude and/or corruption. America can do better.
ACORN
Don’t miss this story by John Fund in the WSJ.
Former ACORN employee Anita MonCrief says ACORN has long been aware of the issues with bogus registration cards. This morning on Lauara Ingraham she said ACORN considers a 40% validity rate acceptable. So much for the claims that ACORN’s upper management team was/is either unaware of the quality control problems or that problems occur only rarely and locally.
“There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” says Nate Toler, who worked until 2006 as the head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California. And Ms. MonCrief says it is longstanding practice to blame bogus registrations on lower-level employees who then often face criminal charges, a practice she says Acorn internally calls “throwing folks under the bus.”
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Yesterday the New York Times ran an interesting story on page A17. Excerpts and sum-up (it’s a pretty long piece):
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Apparently an internal report by an ACORN lawyer admits the possibility that there have been violations of federal law in re: to the relationships among ACORN’s partners and affiliates.
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The June 18 report, written by attorney Elizabeth Kingsley, lists concerns about the improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; questionable money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates. In addition to these problems and all the inquiries into its voter registration efforts, ACORN also faces demands for back taxes by the Internal Revenue Service and various state tax authorities.
Ms. Kingsley’s concerns about the way ACORN partners work together are sure to fire up critics already upset over ACORN’s voter registration efforts which, as it has been pointed out, are largely underwritten by an affiliated charity called ”Project Vote.” The group hires ACORN to do voter registration work, and the two groups claim to have registered 1.3 million voters this year.
The problem is that as a federally tax-exempt charity, Project Vote is subject to prohibitions on partisan political activity…but ACORN, a nonprofit membership corporation under Louisiana law, is not bound by the same restrictions. Ms. Kingsley says that the close ties between Project Vote and ACORN make it difficult to document and show that Project Vote’s money has been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner.
Ms. Kingsley’s report also raised concerns about which organization actually controlled all the strategic decisions. She said that the very same people were deciding which regions to focus on for both ACORN and Project Vote. “As a result, we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,” Ms. Kingsley said.
Kingsley also took issue with the governance of ACORN affiliates including Project Vote. “Board meetings are not held, or if they are, minutes are not kept, or if minutes are kept, they never make it into the files,” she wrote. Project Vote has had only one independent director and he worked for a short two year stint. Since then the board has consisted of ACORN staff members and two members who pay monthly dues.
But two people listed as board members for 7 and 8 years, respectively, say they were not aware they were on the Project Vote board. One of them, George Hampton, said he had never even heard of Project Vote. And even though Project Vote recently assembled a new board, five of the six new members have longstanding ties to ACORN.
See my post over at Voter Fraud Squad.
Today I am very glad to have the help of a concerned reader/friend with making a call to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office to get some ACORN answers.
We agreed that the amount and quality of information she/we will get will depend on who answers the phone – and that it would be helpful if other people could also call to see if they get the same or different answers.
If you want to Do Something, call the Sec. of State’s office at 775-684-5705, tell then you are a Nevada citizen, and ask one or more of the following questions:
How did the election board discover the allegedly invalid and/or fraudulent ACORN voter registration cards that are now in question?
Did ACORN bring the questionable voter registration cards to your attention? If not, who did?
What percentage of voter registration cards received from ACORN are invalid so far?
Are you aware of any one ACORN worker whose voter registration cards were at least 90% legitimate?
How much time has been spent so far weeding through every voter registration card? Is this normal? If not, how much more time was spent than usual?
Did this extra time cost your election board extra money? If so, how much more?
ACORN claims that they have to turn all voter registration cards over, even if they know they are not legitimate. Is this true? Is this requirement a state directive, a county directive, or an election board policy?
If you are able to get some answers, please email me ASAP (address on my Contact page).
For ongoing updates about election fraud in all 50 states, go to: http://www.voterfraudsquad.com
For text alerts about election fraud, text “voterfraud” to 69302
For Twitter alerts/threads about election fraud, use hash tag #voterfraud
To join the Voter Fraud Squad Facebook group, go to http://www.facebook.group.php?gid=43934732704
From last week’s Derb Radio on NRO:
Association of Committed Obama Radical Nuisances
Anarchists for Corrupting and Overthrowing Republican Nationhood
Alliance of Community Organizers for Registering the Non-Existent
Posted by E!!
on October 16, 2008
2008 Elections, ACORN, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Cold Hard Cash, Corruption and Greed, Corruption in Politics, Fleecing the Taxpayers, voter fraud / No Comments
2008 Elections, ACORN, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Cold Hard Cash, Corruption and Greed, Corruption in Politics, Fleecing the Taxpayers, voter fraud / No Comments
Here is a graphical depiction of the connection(s) – and dollar amounts that passed – between:
George Soros, MoveOn.org, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) project, the Woods Fund, Bill Ayers, ACORN (its housing division as well as voter registration group), Project Vote, Barack Obama, Fannie and Freddie, Johnson, Raines, and various senators and congressmen including Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, and others.
All of this information is on record and verifiable.
Even if you look at each connection in the most positive light possible, the thing as a whole is an eye opener. If you’ve never understood or believed in the the possibility of a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy – or, if you prefer a nicer couching of things: the possibility that activists on the Left have tremendous Power and wield it in ways that are often overlooked – now may be the time to reconsider.
If you want to Do Something, pass this on!
As Jay Nordlinger would say, some pointlets:
Joe the Plumber, forget owning your own business: you are now teed up for your own hit reality show.
Obama is now “Senator Government.” Brit Hume said he thought it was a slip. If so, what a great slip. If not, brilliant.
Schieffer asked a couple of pretty good, hardball questions tonight. And stayed quiet when he should have. He was way better than the other two moderators, I thought.
Loved McCain’s “I am not George Bush” bit. About time. But too little too late? Why has the McCain team been so poor at communicating? Ironically: they share that failure with the Bush administration.
On economics and taxes, why didn’t McCain mention his new thing this week: cutting the capital gains tax to 7.5% from 15% plus a bigger capital loss write-off – ? They are pro-growth policies and important.
Obama gave ONE example of something specific he would cut, and I can’t even remember what it was now. McCain listed at least half a dozen things. Brownie points there for having thought about it.
Loved it when McCain bashed the very bashable ethanol subsidies. He did well on energy, I thought. Liked the detail on nuclear energy and reprocessing plants. Liked that he called Obama out on “we’ll look at it” comment re: drilling (which in polspeak means we’ll do absolutely nothing).
McCain FINALLY hit Obama on all the false/negative ads on his health care plan. A $5,000 tax credit is more than anyone’s getting now, and the benefits tax would be nominal in comparison.
Why did Obama keep smiling and laughing when McCain was hitting him hardest? It seemed odd. A serious, indignant look would have been more effective. And normal.
McCain listed a few of Biden’s wrong judgments on foreign policy including the “cockamamie” idea of splitting Iraq into three parts; good.
McCain brought up ACORN, and that was good. But he should have given more specifics. ACORN has been investigated, and has had employees indicted and incarcerated, for the same kind of voter fraud they are perpetrating this year, yet Obama’s camp still gave them big bucks, and still defends them. There are other ACORN ties as well, and I bet most voters don’t know about them.
I wish McCain were better at narrative. There are connections that could be made, a story that could be told, of who Obama is and where he came from and where he will surely lead us. It’s clear to most of us who have been reading and doing our homework, but the average American probably does not have a cohesive picture of the whole thing. (I’ll try to find that flow chart thingie I saw the other day.)
Sum up: McCain did much better than in the other debates because he had some fire and said things we hadn’t heard umpteen times and went after Obama more on legit points; and Obama did a little worse than previously because he reverted to talking points when flustered and because of the weird laughing thing.
I think McCain won by a little, but not sure it’s enough.
From one of Steyn’s Corner posts today:
Senator Obama famously shrugged off William Ayers as just a guy in his neighborhood. In a way, that’s right. The Ayers/Obama connection isn’t about the Senator’s social life, it’s about where he lives, politically speaking. Ayers’ Weather Underground grew out of “Students For A Democratic Society”, as did ACORN. Today, Ayers and his fellow “educators” are engaged with considerable success in radicalizing the next generation of Americans. But, if that doesn’t work, ACORN has a fallback strategy.
What does ACORN do? It steals elections:
In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN turned in 5,000 new registrations. The authorities there started reviewing them, and quit after they found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent. The mind boggles: ACORN turns in thousands of new registrations, and not a single one represents a legitimate voter.
Who does ACORN steals elections for? Ah, well, that’s a little harder to figure out from the CNN report. But the Obama campaign gave 800 grand from its many illegal foreign contributions to ACORN.
There is something ridiculous about this country’s approach to elections. If a Swedish businessman flies in for a one-day meeting in New York, he’ll undergo a retinal scan at JFK. But, if that same businessman decides to stay on a day or two, he can wander into half the polling stations in America and cast an illegal vote more or less with impunity. We have retinal scans at the airport because it’s a national security issue, but in elections it’s ”racist” or “discriminatory” to require a driver’s license, passport or even proof of corporeal existence. The integrity of the ballot box is, ultimately, also a national security issue. ACORN has now registered approaching one and a half million “voters”, not in Utah or in Massachusetts, but in those key states where this election will be decided. They have more than enough to change the result.
E!! Note: If you live in Nevada, you should care about this. ACORN is under investigation here, too.
As John Fund of the WSJ is so fond of saying, it is very likely that Election Day is going to turn into election month. Fifteen thousand lawyers have laptops: will travel.
How long it will take all these attorneys to wade through the voter registration fraud problem in 10+ states is anybody’s guess. (There’s a punchline in there somewhere.)
As I wrote last week, ACORN’s Nevada offices were raided by federal law enforcement as part of a voter registration fraud investigation. Among other violations, ACORN-Las Vegas allegedly employed felons in their voter-registration projects not to mention filing gobs of bogus registrations.
Here and in other parts of the country, multiple voter-registration applications have been filed for single voters; voter registrations have been filed for dead, underage, imprisoned, or ineligible voters; identities have been manufactured and/or signatures have been forged and/or addresses have been faked on registration cards; and in some voting districts, registration now stands at more than 100% of the voting-age population.
And what else else would we expect from ACORN and similar groups, really, since they pressure their workers with aggressive registration quotas? Such tactics are bound to breed corruption.
We are already in a mess for this election, but for next time: why not simply pass a federal law that all voters must (1) register at least 90 days prior to the election and (2) show a valid photo ID at their voting location?
This would give election officials the time they need to weed through any fake registrations, and give election monitors the opportunity and means to verify who is standing in front of them.
Just before I was on KNPR with Steve Sebelius this morning, State of Nevada host Dave Berns had Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller on the air discussing yesterday’s raid on the Las Vegas ACORN offices.
After Sec. Miller summed up the situation, Dave mentioned some grousing about the timing of the raid by managers at ACORN. Apparently their offices were stormed just hours before a celebratory potluck dinner was planned in recognition of 80,000 new voter registrations.
The insinuation was that there had been a deliberate intent to interrupt the event. SOS Miller denied this in an eloquent statement that can pretty much be summed up as, “No, we did not try to wreck their little potluck.”
In response to ACORN regional director Matthew Henderson’s claims that the raid was a “politically motivated stunt,” Sec of State Miller reminded listeners that he is a registered Democrat and stated his commitment to “fair and honest elections in Nevada.”
Apparently submitted voter cards included addresses and names that do not exist, duplicates, and names gleaned from the Dallas Cowboys roster. It is also alleged that ACORN hired 59 felons through a work release program.
Miller says new registrations are serial coded on arrival, that he is committed to reviewing and systematically weeding out bogus forms, and that he is “very confident” all the bogus cards can be flagged and invalidated between now and November 4th.
Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin did us the favor of combing through the 20-page search warrant from yesterday’s Las Vegas raid. She flagged the section where ACORN employee Jason Anderson referred to some of their canvassers as “lazy crack-heads”.
Anderson said ACORN sets quotas of 20 registration forms per canvasser per shift and that slackers are put on probation or terminated if they do not produce.
An update on the ACORN story: Nevada senator John Ensign is calling for suspension of taxpayer dollars to that questionable organization. See here:
“ENSIGN URGES FEDS TO STOP PAYMENTS TO ACORN” posted by [Rich Lowry] @ The Corner
Washington, D.C. – In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Senator John Ensign today called for the suspension of taxpayer dollars that ultimately end up in the hands of such controversial groups as ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN, which is under investigation, is eligible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac affordable housing funds, which add up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
“With the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie, the government will be taxing itself to create a backdoor slush fund, and we must prevent these taxpayer dollars from going toward ACORN,” said Ensign. “With the recent news tying ACORN with voter fraud, suspending these funds is even more urgent.”
As part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Fannie and Freddie are required to provide funding for newly created affordable housing funds. This was signed into law prior to the government takeover of the two agencies. Now that the government owns Fannie and Freddie and may provide them with up to $200 billion, taxing these companies does not help create stability, which is the goal of FHFA.
A search warrant was served today on the ACORN Headquarters in Nevada as part of an ongoing investigation into whether employees used false addresses or false names as part of their voter registration operation.
The letter was sent to James Lockhart, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency today. As the regulatory agency overseeing Fannie and Freddie, FHFA has the authority to stop these contributions to the affordable housing funds. Senators Michael Enzi, Jon Kyl, David Vitter, Pat Roberts, Tom Coburn, John Thune and Jim DeMint signed the letter with Ensign.
See Rich’s post for the text of Ensign’s letter.
