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I want popcorn!

Papoon for President!

NokX wrote:

i think people who mess with our freedoms and mess with our elections should be severely punished, even shot

in b4 black helicopters for threatening the current administration

Now you smurfed up.

JakeTheTall wrote:

NokX wrote:

i think people who mess with our freedoms and mess with our elections should be severely punished, even shot

How about our privacy ?

"privacy" kills babies. Terrists kill babies. Tell me there isn't a connection.

Daddyo wrote:

Nothing to see here, keep moving-
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10102008/ne … 132965.htm
No conspiracy, no plots-just a bunch of liberal scumbags that will do anything for their team.

Are you engaging your critical thinking skills here, Daddyo?  How in the world could anyone benefit at the polls from attempting to register the SAME PERSON 72 times?

ACORN highers low-income/no-income workers to collect these registrations.  At any point has it been demonstrated that instructions were given to sign up individuals multiple times, to make people up, or to in any way commit fraud upon the process?

No, because there's no way to benefit from doing this.  These are individuals who are avoiding actual work by falsifying registrations--and that's it.  They're not thinking beyond turning in those forms to their supervisors. 

Further, ACORN often catches the fakes--and turns in employees--itself.  From 2006:

According to Elyshya Miller, ACORN's head organizer for Kansas City, ACORN identified certain forms as potentially fraudulent and turned them over to prosecutors in late October; four organizers were responsible. A week later, all four organizers were indicted by a grand jury.

But in their evident haste to indict, the prosecutors made a mistake -- they indicted the wrong person. Three weeks after the election, Schlozman's office dropped the charges against one of the defendants, Stephanie Davis, admitting that her identity was used without her permission. It was not until January of this year that Schlozman's office finally indicted one Caren Davis, who was apparently the person they were really after. Caren Davis' lawyer Dana Altieri told me that Davis is currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she is competent to stand trial.

But let's look at the indicted crimes themselves. The four defendants were accused of forging the registration forms for a grand total of six voters (Caren Davis was responsible for three). In some cases, the defendants simply made people up; others forged the registrations for real people.

As The New York Times has noted, "the forms could likely never be used in voting." Other U.S. attorneys had declined to pursue similar cases -- in fact, despite Schlozman's "national investigation," these were the only charges filed against ACORN organizers nationwide in 2006.

Two of the fired U.S. attorneys provide an answer why.

The former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins told Salon that in cases like this, the fraud is perpetrated upon ACORN, not by them. The organizers forge registrations in order to justify their $8.00/hour wages. Elyshya Miller, the organizer from ACORN, explained to me that the group frequently hires people who are in "desperate situations," who "really need something at the time."

Schlozman's cases, the Times reported, were "similar to one that [former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David] Iglesias had declined to prosecute, saying he saw no intent to influence the outcome of an election."

Two of the four defendants have pled guilty -- neither have been sentenced.

Link.

How in the world is someone going to illegally vote by attempting to register "Jimmy John" to a restaurant address?  Surely you don't believe that there are NO safeguards to this?

According to Newt on Fox News - ACORN has received about 500 Million in tax payer dollars a year.

Glad to see we are getting our moneys worth.

Are they in the tank with blood and treasure?

Don't new voters generally have to show some form of ID, by the way?  I know that I did when I voted for the first time since returning to Texas earlier this year.

Tallgeese wrote:

Are they in the tank with blood and treasure?

We need to learn the facts on the ground !

bratboy wrote:

This is happening in 12 states because it is inevitable anywhere where you're paying people to fill out forms.

I've known people who have done this sort of work (volunteers, obviously).  It's hard work.  It's not fun to approach strangers and convince them to register. 

ACORN is obligated, in most cases, to turn in every card their workers come up with.  They self-identify suspicious cards.

If they self identify suspicious cards, then how is it that so many cards got through completely unidentified as suspicious?

If this is as inevitable as you say it is, then they should not be paying people to do it - and they certainly shouldn't be federally funded.

I don't want my tax dollar paying for inevitable voter registration fraud.

resedit wrote:

If they self identify suspicious cards, then how is it that so many cards got through completely unidentified as suspicious?

We don't even know how often that's actually happening.  The fact that they were flagged by ACORN initially is often unreported in these stories.  Regarding the latest story (from the link above):

In the report, Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican member of the Lake Co. Board of Elections, tells Griffin that ACORN submitted 5,000 new registrations in the past two weeks. But during the verification process, employees found that about half were fraudulent, including multiple forms turned in with the same handwriting, one signed "Johns, Jimmy" using the address of a Jimmy John's sandwich shop in Crown Point, and others with the name of registrants that are now dead. Nationwide, registrar's offices have come across similar problems in recent days.

What Griffin fails to note, however, is that ACORN made very clear that some registrations they gathered from canvassers in Lake County may have been faulty.

According to Regina Harris, the Director of Registrations for Lake County, this claim checks out. "It's certainly true. They did have three batches separated." she told me this morning. "There was a pile they knew were good, there was some they said had missing info -- like no voter ID number or a missing birthday -- and another batch they called 'suspicious.' "

If this is as inevitable as you say it is, then they should not be paying people to do it - and they certainly shouldn't be federally funded.

I don't want my tax dollar paying for inevitable voter registration fraud.

It doesn't matter who is collecting registrations, there will always be some that don't pan out for one reason or another (it could be something as simple as missing information).

Perhaps paying disinterested individuals to collect registrations isn't the right approach.  However, this really isn't the crime of the century.  For one, there really isn't any plausible way that these bad registrations could be used to cast fraudulent ballots--and for another, there's no evidence that this has happened.  In fact, U.S. Attorneys in the past have seen this as so unimportant that they've opted not to prosecute because the crime never went past submitting the fraudulent form. 

The fact remains that, no matter how careful they are selecting individuals to do this sort of work, they MUST turn in every registration collected--and often have only a short amount of time to attempt to identify bad forms.

Another thing is that the insane focus on this at this time is odd--as ACORN freely admits, they have been self-identifying suspicious registration forms all throughout the primary and general election registration processes.

Now, obviously the GOP is going to try and milk this for all it's worth because they're about out of options and most of their candidates have become quite vulnerable in recent weeks.

resedit wrote:

And obviously the Dems are going to downplay it because they enjoy accusing the Republicans of dirty tactics.

Hey, I think vote fraud is a serious offense.  I just think it pretty clear what's going on here, and I've already seen numerous GOP strategists making their rounds on the cable programs proclaiming this to be some sort of conspiracy.


Can you even explain to me how vote fraud can be committed by having some guy fill out a form 70+ times? 

This is not new--it has happened in previous elections.  On more than one occasion, U.S. Attorneys looked at the facts and decided that there wasn't an attempt to affect vote counts.  They saw ACORN as the victims of the fraud.

resedit wrote:

Sure.
It makes it easier for less suspicious looking fraudulent ballots to get through.

"Fraudulent ballots?"

Even if a registration were to "get through," new voters generally have to show some evidence of identification when they vote.  These things are tracked by computer.  Furthermore, do you honestly think that these low-wage workers are so dedicated to whatever con ACORN is supposedly trying to pull that they never implicate them when they're caught and charged with registration fraud?

And some guy filling out a form 70+ times isn't the only issue with Acorn. They are making registrations up using peoples names from phone books which could result in problems with those people being able to vote.

See the second link in the first post.

That's definitely a problem.  So what's the solution?  Not require these kinds of groups to turn in every form, no matter how suspicious?  Not allow them to pay people to collect cards?  Possibly.  Though I think it's safe to guess that ACORN's workers sign up a far greater number of legitimate voters than they create fraudulent cards to avoid doing any work.

I'm completely confident that there are enough safeguards in place to prevent the manual ballot box stuffing that would be required to pull off any sort of fraud here.