ACORN, a little background. . .
September 15, 2009
Lots of you have asked me, “What is ACORN?” I assumed everyone knew about ACORN, but obviously I was wrong. I thought it might be helpful to write a little about the organization. The stated purpose of the organization is:
a community-based organization in the USA that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. ACORN has over 400,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States.
The organization claims to be nonpartisan, but only champions liberal and progressive causes; more troubling is that the group maintains a political action arm that has lobbied in every Democratic National Convention since 1980. ACORN’s political action arm endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. The main focus of the organization since the 1980s have been large scale voter drives. In 2008 ACORN registered more than 1.3 million voters in 21 states. These efforts were partially funded by federal dollars as well as private contributions. In 2008 the Obama campaign hired ACORN to conduct a ‘get-out-the-vote’ effort during the Democratic primary that cost $800,000.
Whats the big deal? ACORN is a nonprofit that support Democratic causes and candidates. Who cares? The problem for most conservatives is the federal funding. Why should we fund the opposition. ACORN argues that their voter drives are non-partisan. Of course this is hard for conservatives to believe given the close ties between ACORN and the Democratic party. Recently these concerns have proven to be valid. From 2004 to the present day more than 50 ACORN employees in nine states, including Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Florida, have been arrested for voter fraud.
For example, in the 2008 election ACORN registered 1.3 million voters in 21 states, but ACORN’s auditors determined that 400,000 of these were fraudulent. Despite the fact that ACORN’s purpose and funding is specifically to register new voters the organization claims it doesn’t have the resources to prevent fraud. The ACORN branch in Ohio allowed voters to register multiple times. In Indiana ACORN representatives turned in more than 5,000 voter registration forms that were taken directly from the phone book with forged signatures. In Washington seven ACORN employees were charged with submitting fraudulent voter registrations. In Las Vegas the director of ACORN plead guilty to voter fraud and agreed to testify against the regional director of ACORN and other employees. In Miami eleven ACORN employees were arrested for voter fraud.
The latest videos showing ACORN employees willingness to engage in illegal activity isn’t terribly surprising to conservatives. We have been frustrated by Congresses inaction and livid by the continued use of tax money to fund ACORN despite evidence of criminal activity. My friends on the Left suggest that the videos don’t prove anything – I agree. But they might just be what is needed to provide Congress a ‘teaching moment’ – they may be willing to overlook case after case of voter fraud – hopefully they can’t overlook human trafficking, tax fraud or prostitution. I know Acorn isn’t involved in this sort of thing, but that isn’t the point. The fact is: ACORN’s culture IS one of criminal activity. I know there are thousands of decent people who work for ACORN – the problem is that there are thousands who are obviously willing to break the law.
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A lot of this I already tweeted, I’ll try to be brief. As I said, I’ve done voter registration work, not for ACORN, but alongside them, once. I’m a little familiar with processes in ways most people maybe aren’t, as a result.
First of all, virtually all voter registration organizations are partisan. That’s who, as I said on Twitter, goes out and registers new voters: people who want new votes. They cover the political spectrum, and all of them, left to right, deal with the same kinds of low-level crimes being blown up in late conservative propaganda involving ACORN.
Second, to dismiss a misconception: it’s so difficult, these days, to run fake voters – and has been since modern ID’s been required at polling places, that it’s not cost-effective for major criminals and doesn’t happen very often. Stupid people try to do it, mostly, and mostly get caught.
Modern major voter fraud usually involves something like registering fake voters in huge numbers to effect redistricting or “slamming” voters in massive blocks – changing their party affiliations. This isn’t the kind of crime associated, generally, with the hundreds of community registration organizations like ACORN. It’s something big voter registration banks do – they’re more like telemarketing firms than feet on the ground companies – if they have to, they contract that out.
That happens – a big GOP operator in Orange County got busted last year during the election, actually, and will be going to prison for a long time.
The stuff being reported on about ACORN, if you follow it out, pretty much all turns out to be cases they referred, which these organizations do, on a regular basis. When you get suspect cards – like everybody in the neighborhood re-registered in the same handwriting, with the same pen, yeah, that happens – you flag them for the voter board to check and set them aside. The voter board decides on the course of action from there. If prosecution is called for, the organization participates. (The employee is, naturally, fired immediately.)
And all organizations have big groups of people, the ones who turn the lights out and leave last, that just sit around all night and check for this stuff.
And, of course, you get bad managers and whatnot. The Red Cross was a festival of management and executive-level corruption and malfeasance forever, and…remember how they misspent the 9/11 money? I still wouldn’t dicourage somebody from donating blood.
None of this is major fraud, and it happens to all voting registration organizations. Dealing with the odd employee fraud is just part of the cost of doing business.
This is a basic propaganda technique in action: play up the normal and expectable issues of one player/actor involved as though they were exceptional and alarming *to people who don’t know any better.* Most people don’t go out and do volunteer or paid voter registration, and thus can be expected to be unfamiliar with issues involved. So it’s a story that works.
It’s a story, though, and a pretty silly one, ultimately. It is, as I said earlier, like accusing the Salvation Army of being Al Qaeda.* The kind of fraud people envision when they picture the fictional ACORN is…way beyond the real ACORN’s reach and pay scale.
Those videos are just idiotic, and not worth commenting on. I suspect I could drive around town to church run shelters and find some volunteers and employees willing to say anything I wanted into a camera, too. (If I wanted to make church run shelters look bad, I mean, which I don’t.)
–Robert
*Hey, that might sound plausible to, say, some atheist leftie unfamilar with the SA. “Army?” That sounds militant.
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 15, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
If Rightwing groups are committing voter fraud I say we go after them as well. The first step, if ANY of them are getting federal dollars – cut them off now (I don’t care if there is any proof of illegal activity – we shouldn’t be funding partisan groups).
The idiot in Orange County that committed voter fraud was Mark Anthony Jacoby. He worked for the CA GOP as well as the Democratic Teachers Union. Would you be surprised he had ZERO employees? His company was called Young Political Majors and he operated from his apartment. He filled out hundreds of voter registrations and submitted proof of them to both the GOP and the Teachers Union for payment – i.e. he was scamming both the Democrats and the Republicans. The LA County DA prosecuted him.
ACORN’s fraud is much more troubling. Their fraud is rampant state-by-state, but their political clout means most law enforcement groups won’t pursue cases against them. The LA County DA would NEVER prosecute ACORN – this is a problem. I am not suggesting we force ACORN to close, but we should STOP using federal money to fund this group.
Do you agree? Why should we fund these guys?
Comment by Alexander Muse — September 15, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
BTW, you don’t have to take my word for any of this – anybody can volunteer for an organization like this during an election cycle, and one to your liking will be kicking up speed prety soon, here, for next year, and then way more so for 2012.
Also, just FYI, a lot of these cases aren’t even prosecuted – they boil down to some usual types in fast-hire, low-wage hiring ramp ups for campaign seasons. It’s usually a kid or a drunk with a bad attitude screwing up yet another job by sitting around getting high all day and filling out fake cards. Voter boards are not heartless, and no, everybody doesn’t go to prison or even jail for this.
There’s some question, actually, as to whether some ACORN prosecutions, lately, are warranted or politically motivated. The GOP certainly ramped up its official efforts, last year – they had phony investigation announcements from states attorneys and a full-on raid-like drama played out by a sheriff’s department in Nevada, even. (As I predicted the day that one happened, nothing happened. No results of any investigation have been announced, no tallying of evidence seized, or to what purpose. That’s because it was staged BS. And, I’m pretty sure, REALLY illegal.)
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 15, 2009 @ 8:17 pm
I think you’re missing my point: there is no problem, here. There is a system in place to catch these acts of fraud, and it works. What you’re seeing reported – solely about ACORN – as alarming crime surges is, in fact, the system working. People are being prosecuted for screwing around with voters’ registrations.
And as I also said earlier, voter boards and organizations tend to take cases in which people are clearly switching voters’ registrations with an agenda more seriously. That actually hurts voters – it prevents them from voting in primaries for their party in many states – and not keeping on top of it will lose a non-profit its ability to collect registrations in a state, just like not reporting your fraudulent cards will.
Ultimately, the few faked cards that likely do enter local voting pools every year, the ones that aren’t caught, cost nothing but some typing time and computer cycles. They aren’t used to cast fake votes – that wasn’t the intent of the fraud. They can’t be. Most of the time, some ass just wanted to get paid for a day’s work without working, that’s it.
Not a big deal, and why this is a pretty silly story.
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 15, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
I hear what you are saying. I don’t agree, but I did ask a VERY direct question. Do you think the federal government should be funding partisan voter registration companies/organizations? Specifically, should taxpayer money be used to fund ACORN?
Comment by Alexander Muse — September 15, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Yeah, absolutely. They have to abide by the same restrictions other non-profits in their class do – they can’t promote specific candidates. But yes, I heartily approve of taxpayer funds going to organizations that encourage people to vote, all around, never mind groups like ACORN that further provide other necessary services where they wouldn’t otherwise be available.
Those funds are pretty minimal and represent some of the best of what government can partly fund, and cheaply, and private groups can carry out. IMO.
BTW, another way to consider this might be: the issues voter reg groups face when they have to hire in waves at minimum wage are not unique. Many huge and profitable sectors face them – anybody who runs a fast food franchise or a gas station or convenience store knows what it is to hire from the bottom of the employment pool.
You get employees who think it’s funny to make a video wiping their butts with pizza and then it ends up on YouTube and damages your brand, globally. (In my day when people pissed in the friars and got caught, it just meant everybody standing around laughing got fired, not stock plummets, dang.)
And, sadly, voter registration organizations have to hire like this because volunteerism, as a civic, moral and even religious virtue, has largely disappeared from the US, over my lifetime. Which is sad, and not restricted to any party or viewpoint.
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 16, 2009 @ 1:17 am
Sorry, “fryers,” not “friars.” I didn’t work at a Trappist brewery or something as a teen.
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 16, 2009 @ 1:18 am
BTW, just so we’re clear, I’m a left atheist who has zero problem with federal and state funds going to religious charities. There’s a rich and long history of exactly that in most successful governments.
Whatever I don’t like about religion, the large and small religious bodies do undertake necessary help efforts other people just plain don’t in similarly large numbers. I appreciate that communal spirit in religion, and know the role religious groups play after every disaster, even the smallest. I, myself, was spirited away from my burning home when I was three by a very kind church group who made a very scary night much more bearable.
I think the government has a responsibility to fund groups like that, and…ACORN’s a group like that, just not religious.
Comment by Robert N. Lee — September 16, 2009 @ 1:28 am