The little ACORN just keeps growing. Now Minnesota becomes the latest state to suspect that the organization has committed fraud in its voter-registration efforts. Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis, will consider whether to file criminal charges, although in this case the review sounds a bit puzzling:
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office said today it is investigating whether a voter registration processing lapse at the Minnesota ACORN office falls within guidelines for criminal prosecution.
A malfunctioning scanner at ACORN’s St. Paul offices in August created a backlog that caused a batch of cards to be submitted late to the Hennepin County Elections Board.
All of the registrations were processed in time to allow voters to participate in both the primary and general elections. None was discarded for fraud or ineligibility.
So what’s the problem? The backlog itself, apparently. It caused ACORN to dump its registrations on the county board after the deadline, perhaps as many as 1,000 or more. While the county didn’t disqualify any of the applications, one has to wonder why they delayed. Did they want to flood the office at the last moment and keep them from validating the registrations, or was it just a malfunction?
Normally, one would figure that this would result in nothing more than a civil fine if it was just a malfunction. Why, then, is Hennepin talking about criminal charges? Sounds like something more than a bad scanner is going on in Minnesota ACORN.
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