ACORN Investigation

McCain supported ACORN too...

Here's a photo from an ACORN rally just a couple years ago where he was the headline speaker.

http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/mccain-attended-acorn-rally

Said best by D•Kos: "We can speculate all day on why it never occurred to McCain that his own association with ACORN would come up, but there are two things we know for sure...first, that this video will really hack off the Republican base, and second, when it comes to undermining the McCain campaign, nobody does it better than John McCain."

Here is something from another blog...

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/voters_arent_votes/

Here’s the entire thing about registering to vote: it’s the act of trading in a set of information about your self which may or may not allow to subsequently register your choice for a series of offices and issues at a time and place of someone else’s choosing.

It is not, however, voting, a distinction which seems to elude many voter/vote fraud theorists. There’s a reason most of us aren’t too pressed about ACORN handing in bad voter registrations - while it’s certainly inconvenient and even potentially illegal to do so, a voter registration for a voter that doesn’t exist generally doesn’t result in an actual vote, making the entire thing more a comedy of errors than a grave threat to our democracy.

The problem is, however, that the right is using what mainly constitute bureaucratic snags and padded timesheets/registration targets to subsequently declare that all of those registrations are being turned into real votes, which makes no sense. The amount of coordination and deception to turn ten fake voter registrations into ten fake votes is so large and likely so inconsequential to the vote that anyone capable of doing it in a way that would alter a major election either A.) will and should win, because they’re the Illuminati or B.) will get easily discovered and put in jail, because it’s already hard enough to get real people with real names and addresses out to vote.

It’s the oddest obsession imaginable - even if you get Elmer Fudd’s registration through and they can show up and vote, the person who dumped Elmer Fudd’s name into the registration queue is now going to have to manufacture the vote. It’s really, really difficult, and you might as well just get a real voter to vote honestly.

All us wacky liberals are concerned with the machines and the workers and the tabulation because it’s far easier to alter votes after they exist than it is to manufacture voters who then manufacture votes. The only reason you’re concerned with registrations and not about tabulation is because you’re trying to reduce the pool of votes to fuck with in the first place.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/16762/

Here's who ACORN is. They are -- they and their associated groups lobby for a living wage, affordable housing, tax justice -- I love tax justice -- union causes and environmental goals. They are also against school choice and any kind of welfare reform. It's a major contributor to the sub prime meltdown. They pushed lenders into making home loans on easy terms. These are the groups that were saying that you're a racist if you don't go in and make these loans to people who can't afford them. They conducted strikes against the banks so they would lower their credit standards.

In 2006 a report from the EPI, the Employment Policies Institute said ACORN has been on the federal take since 1977. ACORN's American Institute for Social Justice -- code language -- claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003. Its environmental justice project received 100% of its revenue from government grants in the same years. Your tax dollars.

The EPI estimates that ACORN Housing Corporation received $16 million in federal dollars from '97 to 2007. Only recently Democrats tried and failed, thank goodness, to stuff the affordable housing provision into that $700 billion bill. ACORN is spending $16 million this year alone to register new voters. It is already boasting that it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question that Dave was alluding to is how many of them are real, you know, what kind of fraud are we looking at. Well, let me run down just some of it and this is what's currently going on. The Michigan Secretary of State told the press in September that ACORN had submitted, quote, a sizable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications.

Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller requested a raid on ACORN's offices following complaints of false names and fictitious addresses including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, ACORN responded, "I believe that this is racist." Nevada's Clark County registrar of voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications ACORN submitted weekly.

Officials in Ohio are investigating voter fraud connected with ACORN. Florida's Seminole County is withholding ACORN's registrations that appear fraudulent.

New Mexico, North Carolina and Missouri are now looking into hundreds of dubious ACORN registrations.

Wisconsin is investigating ACORN employees for, according to an election official, making people up, or registering people that are still in prison, end quote.

Then there's Lake County, Indiana which has already found more than 2100 bogus applications among the 5,000 ACORN dumped right before the deadline. Almost half, they said, quote, all the signatures look exactly the same.

Connecticut estimates that 20% of ACORN's registrations are faulty.

As of July, the City of Houston has rejected or put on hold 40% of the 27,000 registration cards submitted by ACORN. That is just this year.

In 2004 four ACORN employees were indicted in Ohio for submitting false voter registrations.

2005, two Colorado ACORN workers found to have submitted false registrations.

Four ACORN Missouri employees were indicted in 2006.

Five were found guilty in Washington State in 2007 for filling out registration forms with the names from a phone book.

Barack Obama is now trying to distance himself from this. When will America wake up? He's now trying to distance himself from this.

In 1992 Barack Obama led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which includes ACORN.
Organizing people to get out and vote is very admirable - I'll give him that

This past November he lauded ACORN's leaders for being, quote, smack dab in the middle of Project Vote, end quote.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago Woods Funds, see if -- Chicago Woods Funds, why do I know Chicago Woods Funds? He was on the board. That body funneled more than $200,000 to ACORN.

Oh, Chicago Woods Funds, I remember. William Ayers is on that board.

More recently the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an ACORN affiliate, $832,000 to get out the vote. Well, maybe they didn't know. Okay, maybe they did know but maybe they really thought that that money, $832,000, quote, was going for staging sound and lighting, end quote, until they were caught lying about $832 going to staging, sound and lighting and then they later said, "Oh, yeah, that was going to an ACORN affiliate to get out the vote."

They now claim that Barack Obama never organized with ACORN, has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yeah, and by the way, that $832, it wasn't $832. It was $832,000 for the staging and the lights, which those are expensive lights. Bunting, have you seen the price of bunting? Isn't what it used to be. They are now saying that he has nothing to do with it. Let me give you this from a speech that he gave earlier this year. This is the end of a speech of a bunch of community organizers where ACORN played a big role. This is what Barack Obama said about the involvement of organizations like and including ACORN.

VOICE: Last question, yes or no, little embellishment if you would like: If elected President of the United States, would you agree in your first 100 days to meet with the delegation of representatives from these various community organizations that campaign for community values? Could they count on you in your first 100 days to sit down with them?

OBAMA: Yes, but let me even say before I get inaugurated. During the transition we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

GLENN: Stop. Good God, are you not frightened for the future of your country? He wants to meet with the community organizers so they can help shape the future of America. Who the hell are these community organizers? In your right mind why would you meet with people who have been responsible at a great degree for the housing crisis?

Let me ask you this. It's all about judgment with Barack Obama but at some point, America, it's not about his judgment. It's about your judgment. I mean, that's not the Barack Obama I know. It's going to come out of just stupid people's mouths at one point. "Oh, that's not the Barack Obama I know." It's the Barack Obama I know! You have to ask yourself, who is this guy? What does he really, truly believe? Give me the rope line comments from him. He's talking to a plumber. "Can I count on your vote?"

VOICE: Your new tax plan's going to tax me more.

OBAMA: It's not that I'm going to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they have got a chance at success, too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

GLENN: I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody. Can we stop with the nonsense that this guy's not a Marxist? Can we please look into his theology? His theology is Marxism.

These fraudulent registrations rarely lead to fraudulent votes. ACORN is the latest boogeyman

^^

I was just saying the same thing this morning to someone. These guys who fill out voter registrations for cigarettes probably won't show up to cast a vote under their real name, let alone Mr. Fudd's. If anything, organizations that are submitting false registrations are hurting the candidates whom they support by leading progressive candidates to believe there are thousands more new registered voters than there really are.

If FOX was as concerned about a fair vote as they purport to be, they would look into voter intimidation and voter caging, which is much more common, effective and easier to orchestrate than voter fraud. From npr.org, posted last week:

"Fliers warning that people with outstanding warrants or unpaid parking tickets could be arrested if they show up at the polls on election day appeared recently in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Zach Stalberg, the president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Committee of Seventy, suggests that a Republican Party supporter may have posted the fliers in an effort discourage voters."

But let's face it, Republicans only care if their party is disenfranchised, not poor, black (read "Democrat") voters.

ACORN is legally obligated to turn in every registration it collects.

If someone filled it out fraudulently, ACORN still has to turn it in.

ACORN can, and has been, cutting out the suspicious ones and handing them to the officials and saying "we think these are fraudulent, please check".

But don't let the facts get in the way of the KKKarl Rovian tactics of shooting the messenger.