ACORN voter registration effort “wildly exaggerated”
posted at 8:45 am on October 24, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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ACORN and its “affiliate”, Project Vote, claimed that they have registered over 1.3 million new voters in this election cycle. Even when counting Mickey Mouse and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Times found that ACORN lied about its efforts. Instead, the number comes to a third of their claims, at best:
On Oct. 6, the community organizing group Acorn and an affiliated charity called Project Vote announced with jubilation that they had registered 1.3 million new voters. But it turns out the claim was a wild exaggeration, and the real number of newly registered voters nationwide is closer to 450,000, Project Vote’s executive director, Michael Slater, said in an interview.
The remainder are registered voters who were changing their address and roughly 400,000 that were rejected by election officials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors, Mr. Slater acknowledged.
In registration drives, it is common for a percentage of newly registered voters to be disqualified for various reasons, although experts say the percentage is higher when groups pay workers to gather registrations. But the disclosure on Thursday that 30 percent of Acorn’s registrations were faulty was described by Republicans as further proof of what they said was Acorn’s effort to tilt the election unfairly.
“We were wondering how many were Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse,” said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “The group is really tainted, and any work they do is suspect.”
That 30% figure is what ACORN admits. The various county boards that have had to investigate ACORN’s work would probably have a higher estimate. ACORN’s work in more than a dozen states, with tens of thousands of registrations in some individual instances, has prompted criminal investigations into fraud and forgery.
On one hand, this should calm some fears about ACORN’s impact on the election. If they spent a year and only got 450,000 legitimate registrations, that’s a relatively low figure. Considering their goals, it’s a massive failure.
However, it still leaves some questions unanswered. People scoff at the notion that voter registration fraud leads to actual voter fraud, but voter fraud starts at the registration process. Who funded this massive effort through ACORN, and why? And do they have a Plan B?
Looking long-term, the fraud rate for ACORN and other third-party “community organizers” should prompt counties and states to put an end to their activities. Third-party registration efforts threaten the credibility of our elections. The registrars should have sole responsibility for registering voters, just the same way the DMV has the sole responsibility for licensing drivers. They can conduct outreach efforts themselves and supervise registrations a lot more effectively than partisan organizations do now. If we value the legitimacy of citizen-elected government, we need to put tighter controls on participation to ensure that only citizens vote, and only vote once.
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What I’d like to know, Ed, is how much money has been given to ACORN for its registration effort this year and what does that work out to per registered voter?
I wonder how much of that money went into ACORN leadership pockets.
ManlyRash on October 24, 2008 at 8:49 AM
Sounds like Acorn et al are aware that they are now the face of vote fraud and are attempting to minimize that profile lest they hurt the candidates they are trying to fraud into office.
snickelfritz on October 24, 2008 at 8:50 AM
ACORN: frauds, liars, & Obama allies.
jgapinoy on October 24, 2008 at 8:51 AM
Why are taxpayers funding ACORN?
ctmom on October 24, 2008 at 8:52 AM
Why are taxpayers funding NPR?
Bishop on October 24, 2008 at 8:53 AM
Why bother to post anything from CNN? They never get anything right.
anniekc on October 24, 2008 at 8:53 AM
Because the right people have not been voted into office. ACORN exist to try to prevent this from happening.
Tommy_G on October 24, 2008 at 8:54 AM
BHO’s friends:
1) domestic murderers/terrorists
2) racist preachers
3) crooked, convicted slumlord
4) race-baiting poverty pimps like Jessuh & Sharptongue
5) Follywood nut cases
6) Islamofascist Israel-haters
7) the fraudulent liars of ACORN
jgapinoy on October 24, 2008 at 8:55 AM
ACORN’s false registration activity *I*S* a genuine danger to America, and McCain can voice this as loudly as he does
“Joe The Plumber” to his advantage for November 4.
The value I see in accentuating the ACORN influence on/involvement by Obama is as follows:
By McCain pointing out John Fund’s (author, “Stealing Elections”) point – that ACORN’s voter registration fraud threatens ALL AMERICAN’S VOICE OF THE VOTE,
by “negating” our VALID vote with that of FRAUDULENT, non-eligible “voters” [sic] – McCain emphasizes that
THIS THREATENS THE FUNDAMENTAL FABRIC OF OUR REPUBLIC.
I believe Americans still value this – ahem - detail.
Lockstein13 on October 24, 2008 at 8:58 AM
This could be some serious fraud in its own right. Are they exaggerating numbers in order to justify grant money?
forest on October 24, 2008 at 8:59 AM
Ed, if you require identification (state-issued driver’s license or photo ID, which they have for non-drivers at a minimal cost) at the polling place, that can whack fraudulent registrations big-time.
For absentee ballots, you should have to send a second form of photo ID (not necessarily government-issued, but something that can be substantiated easily, like a work ID card, student ID card, etc.). You don’t get a ballot if you can’t prove who you say you are.
That is a bit draconian, but the election process is too important to let frauds like ACORN run rampant.
either orr on October 24, 2008 at 9:00 AM
ACORN and its “affiliate”, Project Vote, claimed that they have registered over 1.3 million new voters in this election cycle.
When you toss in members of Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Castro, Chavez and the Iranian Quds force, it is probably MORE than 1.3 million registered.
ACORN may actually be underestimating their numbers.
Bishop on October 24, 2008 at 9:02 AM
During and after the RNCC, Democrats expressed great outrage at how Palin and Rudy ridiculed Obama for his time spent as a “community organizer.” After observing the efforts of these Acorn lowlifes, it seems abundantly clear that Obama’s time spent as a fricking community organizer was time spent as a glorified race hustler. To say Christ was a community organizer is a joke because my reading of the Bible doesn’t uncover any instances in which Christ perpetrated and perpetuated fraud.
Obama is nothing more than a clean-up and better-educated version of Jesse Jackson and Ralph Sharpton. And good luck plugging the hole of funding if Obama’s elected. Hell, the moron Republicans in Congress now have allowed this to go on for years.
BuckeyeSam on October 24, 2008 at 9:03 AM
Of course with motor/voter the DMV has the responsiblity for both.
coondawg on October 24, 2008 at 9:06 AM
Acorn: The Dregs of society registering the Dregs of society.
They can’t count? Whodathunkit?
Geronimo on October 24, 2008 at 9:08 AM
What’s a Msrket Watch?
thedudesblog on October 24, 2008 at 9:08 AM
Two questions, in order of their importance to me:1) Why does Obama not dis-avow ACORN and their tactics?(this one ala Sarah last night on Hannity)2. Who put ACORN into the first bail out bill?(the one that failed in the House).
jeanie on October 24, 2008 at 9:11 AM
Perhaps ACORN’s propaganda is just to influence the turnout of McCain supporters?
The polls which show Barack Hussein Obama leading John McCain rely heavily on oversampling of Democrats. This is supposedly based on the conventional wisdom that Barack will magically turn out millions of new voters.
If poll sampling assumed that Barack would turn out fewer than 450,000 new voters nationally then it seems the race would be much closer than the media is claiming.
hewhoone on October 24, 2008 at 9:15 AM
Why do we not have a national voting data base that includes some sort of bio data on each voter? A fingerprint reader, for example, to allow one eligible person one vote at one voting location.
To vote one should be required to demonstrate identity and residency. Residency verification should be a local function subsequent to the registration process.
Now, before you Orwell fans go ape over the intrusion of fingerprints, we already demand prints under federal law from everyone 18 years of age or older in any home that welcomes foster children.
We’ve allowed too many unqualified participants into our election process. Illegals, convicted felons and transients are nullifying the votes of legitimate participants.
As Ed mentions above, eliminating 3rd Part registrations is a no brainer move.
T J Green on October 24, 2008 at 9:20 AM
Absolutely. I’ve tried to emphasize this point to some of the more brazen Obama shills I’ve argued with. One actually said that registration fraud doesn’t mean voter fraud. I told him, what purpose do you think the registration fraud was for? The ultimate goal of it all is to commit VOTER fraud.
Vyce on October 24, 2008 at 9:33 AM
I’d have to see how bad it is and what happens,” said Dorrie Cohen, an 82-year-old Democrat in Boynton Beach, Fla. “If it’s very organized fraud, I think that I would question the election. If it’s just a few people trying something, I don’t think I would. However, there’s so much on the newspapers and the TV about it, I imagine it will be organized.
This is from the NYTimes article. And it gets to the heart of the right-wing strategy on making ACORN an issue.
Let’s look at the facts.
John McCain went on prime-time TV and said ACORN is close to:
perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history… maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.
Now, let’s look at the facts.
The ONLY fraud connected with ACORN is voter-registration fraud in which paid workers have fraudulently filled out registration forms to pad their totals in an attempt to A) get out of work or B) earn more money.
People have signed up Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys. Now, any logical person looking at this knows this is not an attempt to sway the election, but an attempt to inflate the individual’s numbers.
In places like Indiana, ACORN has flagged these suspicious forms for state officials when they turned them over (as they are required to do by law). And they’ve fired workers guilty of falsifying forms.
Now obviously someone at ACORN overstated how many voters they registers by stating how many forms they received. And that’s not right, but it’s not fraud. And ACORN has now gone on record to correct the record.
Now, to my knowledge, that’s the extent of the voter registration fraud charges brought against ACORN. There’s zero evidence to show there’s an organized or unorganized effort by ACORN to falsely register voters so they can actually VOTE in the election and sway it for Obama. There’s zero evidence of that.
That’s exactly why you continue to see this kind of innuendo by the GOP and right-wing bloggers.
“We were wondering how many were Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse,” said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “The group is really tainted, and any work they do is suspect.”
And from Ed himself:
People scoff at the notion that voter registration fraud leads to actual voter fraud, but voter fraud starts at the registration process.
Yeah, and the act of stabbing someone starts with picking up a knife. But not everyone who picks up a knife stabs someone. You have NO EVIDENCE of actual voter fraud, Ed. If you do, please present it.
Now, here’s the irony. McCain-Palin has donated $175,000 of campaign money to a voter-registration group that is charged with telling workers to only register Republicans and to destroy any non-Republican registration forms. That’s much more serious voter registration fraud, one that shows an organized attempt to sway an election.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4992730.ece
If you’re so committed to exposing voter-registration fraud, start looking at McCain’s campaign for the real thing.
Tom_Shipley on October 24, 2008 at 9:36 AM
Who knew that the NYTimes was racist?
I still think that the ultimate aim of those running ACORN is not to register new voters, but rather to discredit the entire election process and democracy in general. Socialists don’t like elections, they don’t want the stupid, ignorant proletariat voting them out of office.
rbj on October 24, 2008 at 9:40 AM
ACORN is probably trying to downplay its apparent influence because they’ve gotten too much publicity about fraudulent and duplicate registrations, to avoid being blamed for “stealing the election” if Obama narrowly wins some states.
Exit question: They initially claimed 1.3 million registrations, and “roughly” 400,000 were rejected by election officials. That leaves “roughly” 900,000 which were NOT rejected by election officials, which is twice as many as Project VOTE now claims (450,000).
What happened to the “other” 450,000 registrations NOT rejected by election officials? Are they all previously registered voters who moved to another city or state? Will these people vote in both places? Are some of them fraudulent, but not rejected by election officials, either because they’re overwhelmed or deliberately look the other way?
And why DID Barack Obama give them $832K?
Steve Z on October 24, 2008 at 9:40 AM
They weren’t actually lying– they registered about 450,000 voters, but they anticipate that each ACORN voter will cast multiple votes for Obama, so the 1.3 million figure is actually realistic.
morganfrost on October 24, 2008 at 9:46 AM
You got that right, Brother!
TheSitRep on October 24, 2008 at 9:53 AM
They didn’t even have to move to another city. The people ACORN targets are generally not homeowners; they may be expected to change addresses within the same city fairly often.
If the local election officers are doing their jobs, those people would not be able to vote using an old address, so while they technically aren’t new voters, some of them probably would have otherwise allowed their registrations to lapse. We just don’t have a way of knowing how many those are.
The Monster on October 24, 2008 at 9:55 AM
Whoever the idiot(s) was that came up with this “third party” registration nonsense should be taken out back of the wood shed and and given a taste of a razor strop…ACORN being taken out back as well, and soon.
Voting is a right, and a privilege. If a person can’t find the time or take the time to register for themselves, then perhaps they are unworthy of exercising this fundamental right. Every four years for the past two decades we have been subject to all sorts of allegations about how unfair the voting process is. If you aren’t interested enough to register well before the four-year Presidential election, then what’s your problem? Too lazy? Too stupid?
Personal registration and photo ID at the time of registration and at the time of voting should be the law of the land. Anything less simply engenders fraud. Anything less simply makes a mockery of our Right to vote as American citizens.
What is so hard to understand?
coldwarrior on October 24, 2008 at 9:57 AM
Does anyone know if it’s been determined what percentage of the registration forms turned in by ACORN were “Democrat” versus “Republican”?
Slimm on October 24, 2008 at 10:33 AM
.
That’s an open question. At present, I tend to think that we don’t value the legitimacy of citizen-elected government at all. Hence the ACORNS of the world get to openly commit fraud and not one blessed thing will happen to them other than public “condemnation” when people need to be going to jail for their crimes.
highhopes on October 24, 2008 at 10:41 AM
That is a dumb idea.
The Republican and Democrat parties as well as the League of Women Voters have registration drives. They should continue.
Maybe there should be a Federal law or laws in each state that no one can be paid for collecting registrations.
slp on October 24, 2008 at 11:27 AM
When registering to vote is more trivial than signing up for a Kroger card, why are we surprised at the abysmal caliber of the electorate?
LimeyGeek on October 24, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Personally, I think this is attacking the wrong end of the problem. The emphasis shouldn’t be on where the registrations are coming from but whether or not they are valid in the first place. The registrars are in the best position to make that determination. And, yes, submitting a bogus voter registration should be a crime with jail time attached.
highhopes on October 24, 2008 at 11:32 AM
Absolutely. It is an assault on the very fabric of our nation. 2 years federal pound-me-in-the-ass jailtime and revocation of citizenship.
LimeyGeek on October 24, 2008 at 11:37 AM
09-14-08 Bad Voter Applications Found, Detroit Freep
10-13-2008 Judge Strikes Down Mich. Voter Registration Rule
Examiner.com Detroit
I heard on the radio yesterday that a judge ruled that undeliverables were not to be rejected, so I assume an appeal of the above had been denied
Michigan proof of residency any two documents that could be a letter from a landlord, utility bills, electronic copies of bank statements. Unless they collect the documnents at the polls (does anyone expect that will happen) any printed paper will get these votes certified
entagor on October 24, 2008 at 11:51 AM
ACORN has a longstanding practice of hiding entities with interlocking directorates — claiming each to be a charity, a 527, a PAC, or a debating society, as suits its purposes. To pretend that the disclosed number is in any sense reliable is just hooey.
cthulhu on October 24, 2008 at 12:09 PM
“Looking long-term, the fraud rate for ACORN and other third-party “community organizers” should prompt counties and states to put an end to their activities.”
Capital idea, Ed! Ya think it’ll happen?…What are the odds on that, anyone?
Christine on October 24, 2008 at 1:39 PM
I dunno. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but this is from the NY Times. Don’t they have a vested interest in reducing the attention paid to ACORN? Maybe they want to set a foundation for a post-election argument that there wasn’t THAT MUCH fraud and that, if Obama wins, there is no question of his legitimacy.
Put another way, why is this story any more credible than if it came from Axelrod’s own mouth?
Blaise on October 24, 2008 at 2:41 PM
Ed:
If we value the legitimacy of citizen-elected government, we need to put tighter controls on participation to ensure that only citizens vote, and only vote once.
Damn straight. And require legitimate IDs at the polling place in order to cast a ballot. And no more same-day register and vote schemes.
irishspy on October 24, 2008 at 2:56 PM
Anyone have numbers on the breakdown of Democrat and Republican registrations from ACORN? I think this data would be very enlightening.
Snidely Whiplash on October 24, 2008 at 2:56 PM
Maybe the 450,000 is the number of legitimate registrations, and the remaining 850,000 are the fraudulent ones.
malclave on October 24, 2008 at 3:35 PM
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