Has a rotten ACORN landed in Boise

I’m bracing for the potential of massive voter fraud in Idaho’s next election 

A couple weeks ago, an earnest looking young guy came to my door. He was talking about ACORN. His first question, “Would you like to help eliminate the sales tax on food?”  When he mentioned he was from ACORN, alarm bells went off. I checked Wikipedia, searched through the article, found out it was affiliated with a Union (which generally means it’s going to be a liberal advocacy group.) and then as politely as possible sent the man off.  It was only when I read this piece at Right from Left where he highlighted an Opinion Journal article that pointed out a finding of of massive voter fraud including two from ACORN:

But the most interesting news came out of Seattle, where on Thursday local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the “worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history” of the state.

The list of “voters” registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn’t require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year’s Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. But just after four Acorn registration workers were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of fraud, the group reversed its position and said the registrations should be rejected. But by then, local election workers had had a reason to carefully scrutinize the forms and uncovered the fraud. Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest–over 97%–were fake.

In Kansas City, where two Acorn workers have pleaded guilty to committing registration fraud last year while two others await trial, only 40% of the 35,000 registrations submitted by the group turned out to be bogus. But Melody Powell, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Elections, says Acorn’s claim that it brought the fraud in her city to light is “seriously misleading.” She says her staff first took the evidence to the FBI, and only then Acorn helped identify the perpetrators. “It’s a potential recipe for fraud,” she says, noting that “anyone can find a voter card mailed to a false apartment building address lying around a lobby and use it to vote.” Ms. Powell also worries that legitimate voters who were registered a second time by someone else under a false address might find it difficult to vote.

Wikipedia mentions a couple other cases:

On September 7, 2004, a Columbus, Ohio grand jury indicted ACORN employee and felony parolee Kevin Eugene Dooley for election fraud. The indictment charges Dooley forged a signature to a voter registration form.^[19]

During the 2004 election, Mac Stuart was working as a coordinator for minority voter outreach for its voter registration effort in Miami-Dade County for ACORN. In the course of his job, Stuart saw ACORN workers copying voter registration form (which was illegal under Florida law) and segregating voter registration forms for Republicans that were not subsequently turned into the County. After Stuart reported these irregularities to the election officials, ACORN fired him. Stuart filed suit against ACORN in May, 2005 for wrongful termination. ACORN countersued for defamation.^[20] Stuart’s lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that he couldn’t prove in court that he was terminated for reporting the allegations of fraud to the authorities.^[21]

In August 2004 a lawsuit was filed in Albuquerque, New Mexico alleging that the policies of the New Mexico Secretary of State, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, improperly exempted individuals who registered to vote through canvassers from requirements that some new registrants submit ID at polling places. In a court case, ACORN director Matt Henderson invoked his Fifth Amendment rights regarding if his group made illegal copies of voter registration cards before submitting them though the Albuquerque Tribune claims he told them this was done.^[22][23].

In January 2005 two ex-ACORN workers were convicted in Denver, Colorado of perjury for submitting false voter registrations.^[24] Some other investigations responding to fraud allegations ended in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio after finding no evidence of pervasive voter fraud.

That a group with this type of record is active in our city is a huge concern. Folks with Idaho’s ACORN may not be engaged in this behavior, hopefully not planning on it. Still, with a record like this nationally, interested people need to keep watch and see what we can do to protect our voting system from tampering.

We can start by requiring photo IDs at the polls when voting. It’s a common sense anti-fraud measure and it’s about time we implemented it.