Josh Marshall deconstructs the biannual ACORN freak out:
ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What’s key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people — often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN’s own efforts to catch errors. (It’s important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it’s ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of ‘thousands’ of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.
I’ve always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here’s the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won’t count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there’s very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud.
The original article has links to supporting sources that didn’t come across with my cut & paste. But, I figured this was important to post about given that, when I’m not hearing the McCain/Palin froth about Obama’s mysterious and dangerous love of terrorists, I am hearing a lot of right wing muttering something about ACORN these days. (I’m waxing nostalgic for two or three weeks ago when they were complaining about the poor, brown conspiracy to make the powerless rich people lend them money — that was at least kind of substantive.)
We’re still looking for evidence of this menace of voter impersonation at the polling place. If it’s as rampant as the discussions about it seem to imply and is so extensive as to taint our electoral process, it shouldn’t be that tough to find. And, let’s be clear: voter registration does not equal voting. If a guy signs “Mickey Mouse” on his registration, he still has to show up and vote as Mr. Mouse. Presumably these demands for evidence will be met by a Rumsfeldian koan like “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
The GOP just needs to pre-orchestrate their monkeys’ hysteria and outrage so they can tap into it if the election is close.
Registering Mickey Mouse to vote 39 times doesn’t help any candidate, unless you can get all 39 Mickey Mouses to show up with valid ID and vote for your guy.
Doing real GOTV activities is much easier and more cost-effective. And it actually results in votes being cast, unlike this other “fraud” which nets zero votes.
Both sides engage in voter fraud hysteria, whereby they inflate the perceived offenses of the other side, and dismiss the charges of the offenses they are alleged to engage in.
I believe both sides cheat where they can. It’s the indignity that they display that is the not credible part of it.
Otoh, CNN reported the Lake County ACORN story, and not a partisan blog or Faux News.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/acorn.fraud.claims/index.html?iref=newssearch
Again, it seems that partisans are dismissive of their side’s transgressions, and vitriolic on the opposition side’s transgressions. What would be truly refreshing would be a leader who stands up to smack down bad actors within their own organizations or affiliations. We would call that ‘rooting out internal corruption’, something that would give me greater hope about the way we could expect them to govern.
Mike Kole: Sorry, but there’s a difference between “we have evidence that someone has contacted people in low-income neighborhoods and threatened them with arrest if they show up to vote while they have any unpaid tickets, rigged voting machines, had ballots thrown out for no reason, etc.”, and “ZOMGZORZORZ ACORN VOTER FRAUD HAPPENZ EVERYWEHREES ITS DEM EEELEGULZ”.
But you go right on ahead using your right-wing tactic of blaming both sides for one side’s mistakes. You know you can’t explain the right wing’s fraud away, so you have to equivocate. Why don’t you just vote Repelican and be done with it? That’s what you are – a fascist, hateful, bigoted, lying, greedy Republican in denial.
This is why Liartarians will never be anything more than teenagers and spoiled rich boys thinking they know better than everyone else.
You can always count on Damian to bring the voice of reason to any debate.
Common sense would dictate an isolated case of bogus registrations would be an oversight by ACORN senior management. The same procedures in 12 frickin’ States indicates a way of doing business from the top down.
On the one side, there are registrations which are bogus and can never become votes.
On the other hand, there are often legit provisional ballots not counted, legally cast votes not counted, and voter purges that sweep up lawful voters.
The Florida voter roll purges (the ones that got anyone whose name sounded like that of a former felon) stole the votes of real people. That mattered. Whether Mickey Mouse or your dog registers to vote has no bearing on the election because cartoon characters and dogs can’t vote. And since you need an ID to vote, and they cross you off the list once you have voted, registering more than once doesn’t do anyone any benefit.
So to me, ACORN doesn’t really fit into the “they all do it” category. It’s the electoral equivalent of masturbation. Someone can do it fifty times if they like, but it’s not going to produce anything of lasting consequence.
And you can always count on dim tank to be willfully ignorant of anything other than what he’s told to believe.
Keep lying, boys. Keep lying. It’s all you’ve got.
Uh…I think you meant “woefully”.
I find the tone and vitriol of Damian’s comments regarding Mike Kole really uncalled for and not the sort of comment I usually see on this blog. While I disagree with Mike on many points, his comments are always civil and often thought provoking.
Holy smokes, Damian. That’s an incredible attack. it doesn’t exactly speak to the confidence of your positions. But that proved exactly what I said in post #3- that partisans tend to be dismissive of their side’s transgressions, and vitriolic about the other side.
One who suggests their side doesn’t cheat is either expressing that they’ve never really been in the trenches of a political campaign, or that they don’t mind glossing over the sins of their team. Just win, baby!
I’ve witnessed voter fraud, live and in person. I know both sides engage in it. I’ve written about it at great length. It was one of the reasons I ran for Secretary of State.
http://kolehardfacts.blogspot.com/2003/11/boatload-of-impropriety-ever-since.html
The one thing I’ll cop to is that I think I have ideas that would be good for the country and the state- that which you called “knowing better than everybody else”. But then, you wouldn’t be here posting if you didn’t think you knew better, either. Nor would Doug, nor anybody else.
Oh, I’ll also cop to what you likely define greed to be: I prefer to keep the money I earn in my pocket. That’s where I believe it belongs. I vote for such policy accordingly. It’s why I haven’t ever voted for a Republican above township level- because they haven’t refuted the primacy of government’s claim on my earnings any more than the Democrats.
Further information about ACORN’s manual labor in the flood zone of New Orleans –
http://b.rox.com/2008/10/13/frustrated-with-acorn/