IAP Political Forum

CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.

Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot.

ACORN is under investigation in Ohio and at least eight other states - including Missouri, where the FBI said it's planning to look into potential voter fraud - for over-the-top efforts to get as many names as possible on the voter rolls regardless of whether a person is registered or eligible.

It's even under investigation in Bridgeport, Conn., for allegedly registering a 7-year-old girl to vote, according to the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered Ohio's Secretary of State to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The order was in response to a Republican lawsuit unrelated to the ACORN probe in Cuyahoga County, in which at least three people, including Johnson, have been subpoenaed.

Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it's a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay "compensation on a fee-per-registration" system when signing up someone to vote.

Johnson, who works at a cellphone kiosk in downtown Cleveland, said he was a sitting duck for the signature hunters, but was always happy to help them out in exchange for a smoke or a little scratch. He'd collected 10 to 20 cigarettes and anywhere from $10 to $15, he said.

The Cleveland voting probe, first reported by The Post yesterday, also focused on Lateala Goins, who said she put her name on multiple voter registrations. She guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them. "You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," she said.

ACORN spokesman Kris Harsh said the group does not tolerate its workers paying people to sign the voter-registration cards.

ACORN's political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, but Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign in Ohio, said ACORN has no role in its get-out-the-vote drive.

During the primary season, however, the Obama camp paid another group, Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. That group and ACORN share the same board of directors.

In Wisconsin yesterday, John McCain blasted ACORN.

"No one should be corrupting the most precious right we have, that is the right to vote," he said.

It's a right Johnson will exercise. "Yeah, I've registered enough - I might as well vote."

www.nypost.com/seven/10102008/news/politics/1_voter__72_registrations_132965.htm

Ohh its gets much worse...........

www.click2houston.com/investigates/17671375/detail.html

HOUSTON -- Note: The following story is a verbatim transcript of an Investigators story that aired on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2008, on KPRC Local 2 at 10 p.m.

Local 2 investigates dead voters.

The push to register voters for this year's presidential election is breaking records.

More than 1.9 million people are registered to vote in Harris County alone.

But how many of the people listed on the voter roll are actually eligible to cast a ballot?

Investigative reporter Amy Davis shows you how hundreds of voters could sway this year's election -- voters who are not even alive.

"All-in-all, a great person, a great woman, just a wonderful person" is how Alexis Guidry described her mother to Local 2 Investigates.

"As far back as I can remember, they've always voted in the election," Guidry said of her parents.

The March 2008 Primary was no exception. Voting records show Alexis' mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home.

"It was just very shocking, a little unsettling," said Alexis Guidry.

It's unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

"She'd be very upset," Guidry said when asked what her mom would think.

Trent Seibert, of Texas Watchdog, says you should be too.

"This is really disquieting. It's concerning. It's worrisome," said Seibert.

He heads up the non-partisan news group on the web.

Texas Watchdog compared Harris County's voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches -- registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.

Some of them, like Henderson Hill's late wife Linda, voted postmortem.

"I would like to know who did it, myself," Hill told Davis.

We don't know who used Linda Hill's or Gloria Guidry's IDs to vote, but we do know if their names had been purged from voter rolls after they died, using their IDs wouldn't have worked.

"This is a red flag. No matter where you are, this should set off alarm bells," Seibert said. "Someone needs to take a look at this."

Local 2 Investigates took the information to the Harris County Voter Registrar.

"We just kind of work with the systems that we're allowed to," explained George Hammerlein, the director of Harris County Voter Registration.

The county's system for culling deceased voters from the roll seems painfully primitive.

We watched employees clip obituaries from the newspaper and sort through probate records for names matching those on the roll. But, Hammerlein says while fraud is a concern, for his office, disenfranchising voters is a bigger one.

"We do all we can, but you know we'd rather err on the side of leaving people on the roll instead of taking them off inadvertently," he said.

But could that cautious "better safe than sorry" standard sway an election some say will be a close one?

Texas Watchdog found 4,462 registered voters who appear to be deceased.

In 2000, George Bush won the presidential election by a mere 537 votes in Florida.

"We've never had any evidence there's a concerted attempt at fraud," Hammerlein told Local 2.

But there is evidence the state agency in charge of ensuring only eligible voters can vote is not.

The State Auditor's Office conducted an audit of the voter registration system at the Secretary of State's Office last November.

Auditors identified 49,049 registered voters state-wide who may have been ineligible to vote. Approximately 23,576 may have been deceased and another 23,114 were possible felons. And they found more than 2,359 duplicate records.

The auditor did not find any instances in which potentially ineligible voters actually voted, but they wrote, "Although the Secretary of State's office has processes to identify many ineligible voters and remove them from the State's voter registration list, improvements can be made."

Almost a year after this audit, we wanted to know if the Secretary of State has made any improvements. Have they added any safeguards to the process?

No one from that office would talk to us on camera, but the Director of Elections told us, "We'd rather err in leaving someone on the roll than taking someone off."

"If there's something wrong here, if there's something amiss, this is the worst election to have that happen, "Seibert warned.

And Guidry agrees.

"I don't think it's a matter that she would take lightly," she said of her mom.

In what she calls an historic election, Guidry says her mother wouldn't want anyone speaking for her.

"I think she would definitely do all that she could just to make sure things were on the up and up."

We sent the information we showed you to the Director of Elections in Austin. She said her office refers any credible allegation of election fraud to the Attorney General for investigation.

She said the cases we presented would be felony violations.

Visit www.texaswatchdog.org for more information about how Texas Watchdog found dead voters on the rolls.

More Information:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081009/ap_on_el_ge/voter_fraud

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

ADVERTISEMENT
 
Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."

The nonpartisan group works to recruit low-income voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Most polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain with an edge in bellwether Missouri, but Democrat Barack Obama continues to put up a strong fight.

Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn't done any registrations in Kansas City since late August. He said he was told three weeks ago by election officials that there were only about 135 questionable cards — 85 of them duplicates.

"They keep telling different people different things," he said. "They gave us a list of 130, then told someone else it was 1,000."

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency has been in contact with elections officials about potential voter fraud and plans to investigate.

"It's a matter we take very seriously," Patton said. "It is against the law to register someone to vote who does not fall within the parameters to vote, or to put someone on there falsely."

On Tuesday, authorities in Nevada seized records from ACORN after finding fraudulent registration forms that included the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

In April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said they submitted cards with false addresses and names, and forged signatures.

Ordower said Wednesday that ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some politicians don't want that many low-income people having a voice.

"It's par for the course," he said. "When you're doing more registrations than anyone else in the country, some don't want low-income people being empowered to vote. There are pretty targeted attacks on us, but we're proud to be out there doing the patriotic thing getting people registered to vote."

Republicans are among ACORN's loudest critics. At a campaign stop in Bethlehem, Pa., supporters of John McCain interrupted his remarks Wednesday by shouting, "No more ACORN."

Debbie Mesloh, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Missouri, said in an e-mailed statement that the campaign supported any investigation of possible fraud.

According to its national Web site, the group has registered 1.3 million people nationwide for the Nov. 4 election. It also has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, where new voter registrations have favored Democrats nearly 4 to 1 since the beginning of this year.

Missouri offers 11 electoral votes; the presidential candidates need at least 270 to win the election.

Where is your normal post about the polls?  Is it missing because your boy is getting his ass kicked all over every poll?  Lol...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html#chart

Where is your normal post about the polls?  Is it missing because your boy is getting his ass kicked all over every poll?  Lol...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html#chart

Oct. 11 

Obama 343   McCain 184   Ties 11 
 Senate Dem 59   GOP 41   
 House Dem 247   GOP 186   Ties 2 
 

(http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Pngs/Oct11.png)
 Hey Bonzo...with electoral polls like this...who the hell needs voter fraud?? ;D
(http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:KUBOE_PD4IR1BM:http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17217486.jpg%3Fsize%3D572%26uid%3D%257B288E8F98-89A4-4251-8FE0-7189ED6E9D3D%257D)
 (might be time to amend your sig bonzo boy)

That's honestly a good question and one that begs to be answered.

Just because they don't need the votes anymore doesn't change the fact that voter fraud may of occurred.

 Ya know voter fraud can't really occur until election day... just like voter suppression.

This voter fraud issue is itself a fraud. It's been a right-wing fixation for years. It helps to excuse their move to make it harder and harder for low-income individuals to register and vote. The gist is that these claims of 'voter fraud' are themselves a fraud, a tool to aid in suppressing Democratic voter turnout. It's one more example of how the Republican Party purposely and systematically gives the shaft to the lower class.

Want to know about ACORN? Okay, let's find out about ACORN:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/223436.php

Dude, I love when you bold and use color to a make a point off a left wing web site. As if that proves something.

it would be interesting to know how this would practically effect the election though. Sounds to me more like a case of volunteers trying to find a shortcut to getting bigger commisions. How exactly was the guy that was registered 72 times supposed to turn those into votes?

Sounds like the huge number of black folk and poors on the voter roll was beginning to get up a few nostrils.

 Show me why I should care about this ...show me that the numbers of dead people who will cast votes this election is greater than the number of people who will be denied the right to vote because their name is the same or similar to a convicted felon often in another state that is on a list published by Karl and his scum to every minority dominated polling place in the country. Show me how ACORN errors will change the outcome of a State , a county ,a district or a precinct. SHOW ME THE NUMBERS! Voter supression is a MUCH larger and prevalent outrage as can be witnessed in the last several elections.
 The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy


 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A707-2004Oct26.html

He's not. That's the point, which Neue struggles valiantly to ignore by pointing to the source of my post, while ignoring the logic of the argument and the evidence it presents. Maybe Neue can explain why the Bush Justice Department, after years of efforts, was unable to find anything.

This is not a real issue. It's an excuse.

Once again it would seem that reality has a left-wing bias.

So no matter how many false names they put on the voter rolls, they're still fake names which people can't very well claim is theirs without propper identification? So those people can't vote?

Yes, this is disgusting, but like corpuscollossus said, it sounds like a problem of individuals just trying to inflate their  commission. Can't we find these individuals and deal with them specifically?

If ACORN refuses to cooperate with this solution THEN I would be worried... but to attack the orginization for the actions of individuals is ridiculous. I don't hate the workers at ENRON because what their CEOs did, so why should the orginization suffer for the people they choose to employ (as long as they agree to fire them once they are found)?

Dems, it seems, prefer to stuff the ballot boxes.

Repubs, is seems, prefer to alter the tallies.

Both are criminal and both are disgusting and enemies of freedom.

Toaster, either you aren't paying close attention to this issue, or it's a willful misunderstanding of the issue on your part. Acorn is about voter registration fraud. It's impact on actual voting is ZERO. Zip. Nada.

By the way, Acorn is not a "Democratic" organization, other than the fact that it works to advance the interests and lives of poor people. Helping these people get registered to vote is one tiny portion of Acorn's efforts. John McCain was the featured speaker for an Acorn event in 2006 and praised them lavishly.

The victim of voter registration fraud is Acorn. They end up paying registrars for fake sign-ups. It's Acorn which identified many of the perpetrators--perpetrators who falsely claimed compensation from Acorn for services they in fact did not provide.

I actually enjoy watching this story, because it's a perfect showcase of the ability of some people to convince themselves of something that only a little research proves is untrue.

If you are a conservative, you can:
1) Accept reality and admit that this is a manufactured firestorm over nothing, which means many of your favorite sources (Fox "News", the Wall Street Jounal editorial board, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc.) are either lying to you or incapable of distinguishing reality from fiction, or,
2) Drink the Acorn coolaid.

Watch the right wing hysteria, and marvel.

Wow. According to McCain in tonight's debate, ACORN is "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of American democracy."

Wow. Who knew!?! If you weren't watching Fox "News," you may not even know what Acorn is! (Fox "News" has mentioned Acorn over 500 times in less than a week!)

It's hard to sleep at night, knowing how badly Acorn is (maybe) destroying the fabric of America democracy!

Explain why someone would take the time to fraudulently register 'voters' if the intent later was not to take advantage of those false names?

It might also be helpful to explain why we, as tax payers, should fund this, as you admit, fraudulent behavior?

Neue I thought this has been explained already but let me try again.
 The ACORN registrars are not volunteers they are unemployed or homeless people themselves who ACORN pays on a commission basis to register as many voters as possible from lower income neighborhoods. Some of these people ACORN hire to do this job commit fraud ON ACORN filling out registrations from the phone book or multiple registrations for one individual. The fact that we know of these is that ACORN has been doing the checking themselves and reporting the fraud perpetrated on them. You can register a million dead people to vote ...but unless you dig them up, wheel them to the polls and fill in the ballot for them there can be  no voter fraud. Only registrar fraud.
 Now you know ...if you continue to misunderstand that is your choice to be wrong.
 If you wish to find a real threat to the democratic voting process google "voter suppression" and see what your republican poll workers do to cheat the system and stack the deck under the direction and leadership of Karl Rove.
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=voter+suppression

Unless someone goes to the polls under the duplicate or made up name and votes twice.

BTW, I've researched and not found WHO acorn employs to register people.

Have you ever voted before? If you have, you know that you have to sign in. The person checks their list of voters and checks off your name. They don't have any "made-up" names on the list, so someone with a made up name wouldn't be able to vote.
If you have a duplicate name, same problem.

People can't just show up at a voting place, vote, walk around the block, vote again, etc. etc.

Neue, this isn't that complicated. You'd understand it if so much didn't hang on your not understanding. As long as you continue to confuse yourself, you won't be forced to admit to yourself that all your favorite "news" sources are lying hacks, and John McCain and Sarah Pain are lying about this as well.

No wonder you're confused.

JPN's right...ACORN isn't committing voter fraud, but they sure know how to back up the system with some of the idiots they are registering.

Which brings me to neat question for all:

Do you feel a high voter turnout is inherently good?

Do you think we should strive to ensure turnout is strong?

How far should we strive? Compulsory voting?

I for one think our 33% voter turnout is just fine...the less ill informed people voting the better IMO.  I'd prefer the Billy Bobs, who think Obama is Muslim, and the Tyrone Biggums, who think McCain racist, stay at home.

If some one wants to vote, they need to take the initiative and self informed people will take that route. 

Good questions. The ideal would be everyone in a democracy was interested, well-informed, and rational. We'd have 100% turnout, because everyone would understand that elections have consequences that really do affect our everyday lives. Our politicians would be held to a high standard of honesty and competence.

But many people are uninterested, uninformed, and/or irrational. This makes us vulnerable to hacks and snake oil salesmen. I wish they didn't vote.

The whole ACORN "voter fraud" myth, remember, is what was behind the US Attorney firings:

It's time again to remember the backstory of the US Attorney Firing scandal. The firings were one thing. But the story behind the firings, what led to them, is key to understanding the current 'vote fraud' scam being played by the Republicans and the media outlets that are going along with the scam.

Remember, the US Attorneys in question were all either Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. In every case, they were appointed by George W. Bush. In most of the cases their firing was tied to 'vote fraud' claims stemming from the 2004 election.

[...]

After the election, there was a lot of pressure from Republicans in states like Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, etc. (not surprisingly, all key swing states) to have local US Attorneys prosecute these cases. The word came down from Washington, DC, particularly the political office at the White House that this was a top priority. And the local US Attorneys launched into it.

But there was a problem. Most of these were ethical prosecutors. And when they looked into it there just wasn't anything there. Most of the stories weren't even true. And those that were, were obviously isolated and in most cases not done with malice. The number of people who could actually be prosecuted could be counted on one hand. Local Republicans got angry; Karl Rove got angry. And the US Attorneys got fired.
[http://www.talkingpointsmemo.]com/archives/236958.php

It's important to remember history so we don't repeat it. Someone should tell the media...

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.

- Thomas Jefferson

Dreamy Tom strikes again. Hard to think of a more noble sentiment with regard to this issue...

Thus public schools.

Thus public libraries.

Absolutely.

Education is a national security issue.

ever hear of absentee ballots?

Reaganite, King of the non sequitur.

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud18-2008oct18,0,1216330.story


Oddly enough, nothing about this on Foxnews.com.

Apparently they're not as concerned about voter registration shenanigans as they seem at first glance.

illy,  thanks for putting this up.  The whole thing makes me sick.  What the hell is wrong with people?  Nothing can be done in a fair manner anymore.  Everything has to be manipulated and twisted.  Politics is ugly, we all knew that already and I was prepared for certain things to come up but I am stunned by this particular election and disgusted.  There have been problems with voter registration fraud, voter fraud and voter supression for a long time but nobody seems to think the problem is worth a hill of beans.  Again, it becomes a battle over who's fault it is.  Reps blame the Dems, Dems blame the Reps and all the while, they are ALL doing it.  It's like a bad nightmare I can't wake up from. 

Crystal this type of fraudulent behavior has been practiced practically since the inception of our democratic system...IMHO, I don't see this election being any better or worse than others in the past.  That doesn't make it acceptable, but....are you really surprised?

Looks like there's nothing to be done except to weigh the various policy differences between the parties and decide accordingly.

Maybe that's what we should all concentrate on.

What do you say?

I do not vote based on party policy...so i prolly won't be concentrating  on the difference b/t the two (which is very little IMHO, but they do a great job making the public think there is a difference)....I won't be voting at all this year.  I do not even know where I'm supposed to vote anymore.  I'm registered in two different places in IL, my place of residence has been in AZ for the past year and a half, and my drivers license is in VA...I couldn't even tell you were I'm supposed to vote or get an absentee ballot.