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June 4, 2012

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Predictable responses from both parties to the ACORN voter fraud controversy

By (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The Republicans, who have been running around for months like blind squirrels, believe they have found their ACORN. The Democrats, who have been trying to contain their enthusiasm, fret they have surrendered the moral high ground. And the light of substance, trying to peek through the massing political clouds a week before early voting begins, is being obscured.

The controversy surrounding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose offices were raided last week after allegations of voter fraud had surfaced, has exposed shoddy oversight by the group (“You’re alive? You’re hired!”) and the state (which later was forced to acknowledge inmates had been hired to do jobs they are ineligible by law to do), ignited GOP frothing here and elsewhere and induced Democrats to avoid the reality that one of their allies has real problems.

As the Republican National Committee media operation spews out anti-ACORN news releases almost by the hour (“Look what they’ve done now. And Barack Obama loves them!”) and GOP pols seek to capitalize on the group’s alleged misdeeds, the real story is that while fraudulent acts were committed, the process remains relatively impregnable.

“People, because of what they read, think that it will affect the integrity of the elections,” Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax said Friday on “Face to Face.” “I am telling you it’s not true.”

Lomax explained that the fraudulent registrations were flagged and the probe was started, thus preventing thousands of ineligible voters from swelling the rolls. The registrar was blisteringly critical of ACORN, which he said would “register the same people 10 times in 10 days” and utilized “a pathetic, sham effort at quality control.” Lomax said ACORN probably turned in 20,000 fraudulent forms out of 90,000 or so.

ACORN regional boss Matthew Henderson, who put the bad registrations at 3 percent, said on the program that even though authorities had found that 59 inmates had worked registering voters, some of them convicted of identity theft crimes, the organization had hired 700 workers in Nevada. But, Lomax countered, during a meeting in his office, the group acknowledged having fired 400 workers.

“They seemed perfectly satisfied to hire people to commit this kind of activity and explain it away by saying they fired (the bad ones),” Lomax said. “That doesn’t stop the problem (of fraudulent registrations).”

Henderson insisted ACORN warns its canvassers they will be prosecuted if they commit fraud and blames the authorities for not cracking down when they provided officials with evidence over the summer. But Secretary of State Ross Miller indicated the ACORN self-reporting led to a more wide-ranging investigation.

None of this is surprising if you consider that ACORN pays the canvassers a pittance and is registering those who ordinarily might not vote. Henderson said ACORN had led a “historic drive” that has brought “black, Latino, working class people to participate in greater numbers than ever.”

But ACORN, by the nature of what it does, anticipated these problems. In a letter to Lomax dated Feb. 15, the group’s lawyer wrote, in part, “To the extent your office finds problematic cards that were not detected by ACORN’s quality control procedures, ACORN requests you notify ACORN staff immediately. ACORN will terminate any canvassers who are subsequently determined to have collected improper or illegal applications, and will cooperate as needed in any further investigation.” That is, get ready for some fraud.

It makes no sense, even for the most blindly partisan, that ACORN would set out to sully the rolls because of safeguards that would prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots. He won’t guarantee a few won’t slip onto the rolls, but, Lomax pointed out, this is simply what happens when a group pays workers to get registrations; it is inevitable.

Henderson insists there was no coordination between ACORN and the state Democratic Party or the Obama campaign — and both entities are running from ACORN like it has the Bubonic plague. The Republicans are just as predictable — Gov. Jim Gibbons and Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert immediately called for a photo ID requirement and then demanded county registrars tell them their training procedures.

There are nasty undercurrents here — as Henderson put it about those ACORN registered, “These are not people who go to the country club.” That is, many of the registrants are poor, uneducated and, yes, black — the kind of voters some Republicans would be happy to suppress.

Democrats in Nevada and elsewhere believe Obama will win because of superior registration numbers and ground organization. But if the election is close and the Republicans can generate enough smoke about fraud, using the ACORN kindling, they will shout “fire” in many crowded polling places.

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