It’s somewhat a sad testament to the world’s leading Democracy that there’s a profit to be made in registering people to vote. Which is why nonprofit groups like ACORN run into trouble. ACORN although itself a nonprofit, hires people to register new voters in primarily low income areas. They pay low income people per person registered, which is where the profit part comes in. It is personally profitable to just make stuff up. Which is how ACORN found itself in voter registration scandals across the country.
Seattle
ACORN President Maude Hurd said in a statement, “It appears that a handful of temporary workers were trying to get paid for work they hadn’t actually done. While we don’t think the intent or the result of their actions was to allow any ineligible person to vote, these employees defrauded ACORN and imposed a burden on the time and resources of registrars and law enforcement.”
The announcement of criminal charges came after the King County Canvassing Board revoked 1,762 allegedly fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN employees.
Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.
The four indicted — Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner — were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.Federal indictments allege the four turned in false voter registration applications. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.
Naturally, low income and voter registration, waved like a red flag in front of Republicans and a series of lawsuits were filed around the country alleging that ACORN itself was guilty of voter fraud. Starting with the 2004 presidential election and working its way through the current presidential drive, the subject of voter fraud comes up and in the end it ends up being something more about individuals hired to follow the voter registration rules and instead try and cheat the system. Which invariably leads them to be caught.
Like in Bridgeport.
State Republicans have asked Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz to investigate possible voter-registration irregularities by a community-activist organization in Bridgeport.
Joseph Borges, the city’s Republican Registrar of Voters, and GOP State Chairman Chris Healy, said Friday that ACORN, the nonprofit community organizing group, signed up many ineligible voters during its recent registration drive.
The Republicans do not allege that ineligible people may have cast illegal ballots during Tuesday’s Democratic primaries. But Healy alleged possible “fraud,” the way ACORN submitted many registration applications that were thrown out by city officials.
Borges said ACORN’s errors amount to about 20 percent of thousands of registrations it filed with the city this year. It has cost Bridgeport thousands of dollars in overtime to corroborate, he said.
But Bysiewicz said that the Republicans would have to file any complaints with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. Borges said late Friday afternoon that he will meet with his Democratic counterpart next week to determine whether a formal complaint will go to the SEEC.Registrations with errors are automatically invalidated, Borges said, adding that his employees “dread” it when ACORN deposits registrations. “We’ll decide what to do next week,” he said in a phone interview.
He said that ACORN officials asked to come in next week and review a couple of boxes full of applications that were thrown out by the registrars.
Nicholas Gaber-Grace, ACORN’s head Connecticut organizer, said Friday that there was a case in April where a newly hired field worker, who gathered information in a city housing complex and was found within days to have violated registration procedures, was fired.
Gaber-Grace, said the group is working with city registrars in good faith and that it filed about 8,000 applications out of a total of 20,000 new voters statewide.
“We are going to have a person specific pretty soon whose job is going though that list and try to get rid of the snags and get as many people on the rolls as possible,” Gaber-Grace said.
Borges said that his staff has had to disqualify “a ton” of applications submitted by ACORN staffers. Most problems include duplicate registrations, incorrectly completed forms, incorrect addresses and improper procedures in the field.
I particularly enjoy the Bridgeport Republican Registrar’s quote that “a ton” of registrations were disqualified. Considering that that it is a) the job of the registrar to verify registrations for accuracy and b) that an actual number would be an indication that that job was performed would lead me to suspect that the spin was in overdrive here.
The crux of voter registration issue should be why we have it in the first place. Any citizen, over the age of 18 should be automatically registered to vote. Instead of the vast energy and money consumed in voter registration drives, the effort should be placed in making it easier to make it automatic. State governments already have access to databases like tax rolls or DMV records that should be automatically added to the voter rolls. Granted it won’t catch everyone, but it would largely eliminate the need to hire people that can fall prey to cheating the system for personal gain.
source: Connecticut Post, ACORN voter signups questioned, BY KEN DIXON, August 16, 2008
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