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With so much about ACORN right now, lets give it it's own thread.....

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STEAL THE VOTE
November results 'already tainted' by ACORN
Former senators warn problem worse than Florida election nightmare of 2000

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Posted: October 14, 2008
8:21 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A former senator today said the November results already have been "tainted" by actions of ACORN, and the 2008 election could be a nightmare worse than the 2000 dispute in Florida.

John Danforth, a former Missouri senator and ambassador to the United Nations, said the actions of the organization, which has been accused in more than a dozen states of submitting fraudulent voter registrations, are "just plain wrong."

Cited were problems that included a voter registration for Mickey Mouse in Florida, voter cards in Indiana with the name of the Jimmy John restaurant chain, one man's 73 registrations in Ohio – for which he testified on a video he was offered money and cigarettes, and 10 registrations for a dead Missouri woman.

Those violations are just the tip of the iceberg of the controversy that is putting officials for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, on the defensive. The group held its own news conference to suggest Republicans were raising the issue of fake voter registrations to divert attention away from other issues.

But at a Washington news conference, Danforth worried over the potential for a 2008 disaster on Nov. 4.

"The issue could be whether it is fair at all and whether the losing side believes it has been fairly defeated or it has been cheated. … We believe that this is a potential nightmare," he said.

Danforth said this year's election could be "even worse than 2000," when literally hundreds of attorneys and others disputed for days over the Florida recount, which escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court before it was resolved in favor of then-Gov. George W. Bush over ex-Vice President Al Gore.

Danforth and former New Hampshire Sen. Warren Rudman, both supporters of GOP candidate Sen. John McCain, suggested both his and Sen. Barack Obama's campaigns identify potential trouble spots and assign volunteers to monitor voting there.

Rudman noted that many of the problems have been blamed on people paid by ACORN to register new voters.

But officials for the Employment Policies Institute, who have monitored ACORN's activities over the years and have published a RottenAcorn.com website to publicize its problems, say the organization has a long history of exactly the same types of disputes.

Spokeswoman Sarah Longwell told WND while most people now are just becoming familiar with ACORN, the organization has been around for years and almost invariably pops up at election time facing accusations of rampant voter fraud.

"I think why people are paying attention now is because Obama used to work for them, and according to the Wall Street Journal, has given them $800,000."

She told WND the organization typically blames "rogue" local organizers for the fraudulent names and addresses submitted to election officials.

"This is a pattern and practice these guys have every election cycle," she said.

So will there be problems with the 2008 election?

"I do think there will be a higher level of scrutiny of the organization during the national election," she said. "There absolutely needs to be. You don't put in false registrations if there is not an effort afoot to do something."

She disputes the group's description of itself as non-partisan.

"They are absolutely partisan. They only try to register Democrats. We as a nation need to scrutinize everything that ACORN does. They simply cannot be trusted," Longwell said.

"Even if we take their leadership at their word, that they've got [some] rogue leaders, it happens so often and is so rampant that the organization is not effectively policing their workers."

Jake Tapper on the ABC blog website noted that Obama campaign officials were forced to backtrack recently for a statement that said, "Barack was never an ACORN training and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity."

The report said Obama did, in fact, work as an unpaid leader for training sessions in Chicago in the 1990s. The report said Obama also represented ACORN then in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over voter registration issues.

Investor's Business Daily reported that not only has Obama worked with ACORN, he's promised to let its members have input into how he would shape an agenda for a presidency.

A YouTube video also reveals Obama making a commitment to involve ACORN in his policy-creating process:

Former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky told Fox News that fraudulent voter registrations disenfranchise legitimate voters by delaying the process run by election offices across the nation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, joined several dozen other House Republicans today in calling for an investigation into the funding that ACORN has received from the federal government to operate housing and other programs.

The Blue Collar Muse on Conservablogs described ACORN's work as a "strategy for voter fraud."

"Much has been made of the Democrats 50 state strategy to win the election. Who knew there was a fall back 15 state strategy to steal it if they couldn’t win it?" he wrote. "This year ACORN is under scrutiny in over a fourth of America's 50 states."

The posting cited pending cases in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, so far.

Suspicions include counts of falsifying and forging voter registration carts.

On the RottenAcorn website, numerous previous cases involving ACORN are cited from elections ranging back to 1998. In 2004 in Colorado, for example, an ACORN employee admitted forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.

In Florida's Orange County, elections officials rejected Mickey Mouse's application, which had been stamped with the ACORN logo.

"This is part of a widespread and systemic effort … to undermine the election process," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee.

The dispute has grown to the point that ACORN is addressing it on its own website.

"[ACORN] success in bringing people into the democratic process has been greeted with unfounded accusations to disparage our work," the organization said. In fact, it said, ACORN is the victim, because of those employees who would violate rules while on the organization's payroll.

"When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. But for some reason, when ACORN turns voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus forms, it gets accused of 'voter fraud.' This is a classic case of blaming the victim; indeed, these charges are outrageous, libelous, and often politically motivated," the group said.

WND previously has reported how Obama's own website was misleading the public regarding the presidential candidate's ties to ACORN.

My Grandma used to acorns on her feet. She always had to wear special protectors to keep them away. She said it was the worst thing that could happen to a person as it kept them from walking a straight and narrow line.

And since it applies, I'd say Grandma was wise.  ;D ;D

Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud 
 
Oct 16 01:25 PM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.
A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday. A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters—most of whom tend to be Democrats.

Republican accusations about the group were raised during Wednesday's presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and GOP candidate John McCain.

Some ACORN employees have been accused of submitting false voter registration forms—including some signed `Mickey Mouse' or other fictitious characters.

Those voter registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least five other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also recently questioned the group's voter forms.

ACORN has said the "vast majority" of its workers are conscientious, but some might have turned in duplicate applications or provided fake information to pad their pay. Workers caught submitting false information have been fired, ACORN officials say.

ACORN says laws in a number of states require it to submit all registration cards it collects even dubious ones, so its workers segregate applications with missing, suspicious or false information and flag them so state election officials can quickly check them further.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
 

About 200K Ohio voters have records discrepancies 
 
Oct 15 08:18 PM US/Eastern
 
  CINCINNATI (AP) - Close to one in every three newly registered Ohio voters will end up on court-ordered lists being sent to county election boards because they have some discrepancy in their records, an elections spokesman said Wednesday.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that an initial review found that about 200,000 newly registered voters reported information that did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records, Brunner spokesman Kevin Kidder said. Some discrepancies could be as simple as a misspelling, while others could be more significant.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides those names to county elections boards. The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud.

"Things already are in motion to comply," Kidder said. "We're working to establish these processes on how we can make this work. The computer work actually began last week."

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January.

Brunner previously cross-checked new-voter registrations with databases run by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle and the Social Security Administration and made the results available online, but the 6th Circuit said the information was not accessible in a way that would help county election boards ferret out mismatches.

Brunner, a Democrat, told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Wednesday that she is concerned the court decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. Brunner said she'll urge counties not to force these people to use provisional ballots.

The court gave Brunner until Friday to get election boards the information but it was unclear whether that deadline would be met. The court set no penalty for missing the deadline.

County election officials were trying to determine Wednesday how they will respond once they get the information.

"I'm very concerned with these new requirements as we get closer to Election Day," said Steve Harsman, director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections in Dayton. He said his staff already is working 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's clearly going to have an impact in regard to resources we have to expend to resolve discrepancies," said Jeff Hastings, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland.

"We've had about 100,000 (registrations) since January and of those about 34,000 since the primary. We will do whatever is required of us."

Also Wednesday, the Ohio Republican Party said it has filed public records requests with all 88 counties for copies of forms submitted by newly registered voters, especially those who registered and cast an absentee ballot on the same day during a one-week window earlier this month.

Brunner has said that 13,141 Ohioans registered and voted immediately during the window.

"We've seen reports of fraudulent registrations, and we want to see those forms first-hand," said Jason Mauk, the state GOP's executive director.
 

After Census Severs Ties, ACORN May Face Scrutiny of Housing Grants

ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million in federal money to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year

FOXNews.com

September 12, 2009

 Conservatives have cheered the Census Bureau's decision to sever ties with ACORN because it had lost confidence in the group, but the hidden-camera videos that prompted ACORN to fire four workers this week could raise more questions about the federal funding ACORN receives for housing outreach.

ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, according to USASpending.gov, a federal government Web site for tracking government grants.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants has given $8.2 million to ACORN in the years between 2003 and 2006, as well as $1.6million to ACORN affiliates.

HUD could not be reached for comment.

The hidden-camera videos, released this week, showed workers in two separate ACORN housing offices apparently helping a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan for a brothel. A 25-year-old independent filmmaker, James O'Keefe, posed as the pimp in the undercover expose, which was conceived by a friend, 20-year-old Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the offices shown in the videos had received any of ACORN's federal grant money for housing services.

The Census Bureau notified ACORN on Friday in a letter that it is severing all ties with the group for all work having to do with the 2010 census.

"Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN's affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts," read a letter from Census Director Robert M. Groves to the president of ACORN.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed through your many local offices. For the reasons stated, we therefore have decided to terminate the partnership," the letter said.

ACORN responded Saturday by blaming FOX News and conservatives for fueling the controversy.

"By its actions, Fox is not a news outlet but rather an advocacy organization for rightwing interests that seek to defeat healthcare reform and stymie solutions to the foreclosure crisis," the group said in a statement to FOXNews.com. "That said, with regard to the Census, ACORN has always said it would encourage full participation in the decennial count, and we will continue to do so."

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis claimed that the videos capturing her former workers were "doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist 'filmmaker' O'Keefe and his partner in crime."

Lewis said ACORN will take legal action against FOX News and those involved in the making for the videos. ACORN offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, among other places, were also targeted, she said.

"I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated," she said