ACORN Needs to be Prosecuted

I'm no legal expert, but it's nice that the DC Examiner also thinks that ACORN needs to be prosecuted using the RICO statute:

It’s getting steadily more difficult to detect differences between an organized nationwide criminal conspiracy to commit voter fraud and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Thus far in the 2008 campaign, state election officials representing both major political parties in 15 states, including such key battlegrounds as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, have accused ACORN of various schemes involving widespread voter fraud. The pattern is so pervasive - and the danger to our electoral system so dire – that it demands federal intervention.

The Justice Department’s indictment in 2005 of the Milberg Weiss class-action securities law firm under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) did not involve charges of mob involvement. Ultimately, the firm plea bargained and several of its senior partners now reside in federal prisons. Likewise, ACORN’s repeated abuses don’t include mafia links, but the pattern matches the organized criminal conduct RICO was passed to combat.

ACORN likes to say all this uproar is about supressing the vote of poor and/or minority voters, but that's simply ridiculous. What these investigations across the country are about the fact that ACORN has no discernible quality controls in place for their voter registration process. It is well worth noting that the investigations are being conducted as often by Democrats as by Republicans.

Voter fraud is a felony offense, and it must be investigated thoroughly if we the people are to have any confidence in this rapidly approaching election's legitimacy.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

UPDATE: Even the Associated Press is noticing that 200,000 out of 600,000 new Ohio voter registrations have address and/or social security discrepancies. It doesn't mean all of those 200,000 registrations are fraudulent, but even a small number such as 5,000 could potentially swing the Presidential election.

UPDATE 2: Oh, and Hot Air reports that the FBI is now launching a nationwide investigation of ACORN. About time!

Yet More Alleged ACORN Fraud

This time, it's in Missouri:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — 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.

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."

Here's more from CNN:



To my fellow Democrats, I say this: imagine if the evil George W. Bush himself was involved with a "voter registration" organization not merely accused, but found repeatedly guilty, of voter registration fraud! Then imagine that the Bush campaign gave $800,000 to said organization! Then try to imagine putting your head back together after it explodes.

As CNN reports above, Obama's campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN for its primary registration drive, and the supposedly non-partisan ACORN has returned the favor by endorsing Obama. I'd love to see the list of non-Democrats endorsed by ACORN -- I'm sure it's very extensive.

The bottom line is this is yet another example of Obama's Chicago style of politics -- remember to vote early, vote often and don't let being deceased stop you!

Hat Tip: Hot Air

ACORN Offices Raided for Alleged Fraudulent Voter Registration (again)

From United Press International:

Nevada authorities said Tuesday they raided the Las Vegas offices of the controversial voter-registration activist group, ACORN.

The Secretary of State's Office confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that a search warrant was served at the ACORN office as part of a probe into suspected voter registration fraud.

[...]

The Review Journal reported that the Secretary of State's Office said ACORN employees were suspected of using false names or addresses in their registration efforts, including the names of some former members of the Dallas Cowboys.

And that's the reason why Obama's campaign is so keen to deny any link between him and ACORN.

Update: I've heard on TV that ACORN's office in Missouri was raided again on the basis of alleged fraudulent voter registrations, but there's no link to be found yet. When there is such a link, I'll add it.

Obama and ACORN, again

Who you gonna believe, Obama or your lying eyes?

Obama's campaign has the following at its Fight the Smears website:

Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

But, Sweetness and Light cites the following from Toni Foulkes, identified as being a Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN's national board:

As Sen. Obama puts it, how did a skinny kid with a funny name become the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, with 53% of the statewide Democratic vote in a seven-person field?

Obama started building the base years before. For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.

Interestingly, the link at the cited Social Policy journal for Toni Foulkes' article is non-existent, even though all other articles on that page and others have working links. So bear in mind I am taking Sweetness and Light at their word without independent verification. But it raises the question of why that article alone has no link in the journal, when all the others do have working links.

In any event, there is ever so slight wiggle room here for Obama to claim he never worked for ACORN. From the above, it looks like he didn't draw a paycheck from them. But come on! -- by this ACORN board member's own admission, Obama showed up from 1992 through 2003 at "our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office." By any reasonable definition, contrary to Fight the Smears, Obama was indeed an ACORN trainer, even if he was an unpaid one.