FBI Investigating ACORN
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in NewsToday, senior law enforcement officials confirmed to the Associated Press that the FBI is investigating ACORN for voter fraud. ACORN, as you all know by now, is the community activist group recently in hot water for submitting fraudulent voter registration forms. The FBI is apparently trying to figure out if these incidents were coordinated fraud or just a few inattentive/lazy/opportunistic ACORN workers mishandling their jobs.
The reason this is an issue is because 1 )ACORN targets lower-income, minority and young people for their registration drives. These groups tend to vote heavily Democratic. 2) The Barack Obama campaign has given around $800,000 to Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN subsidiary involved in get-out-the-vote efforts. That’s really all you need for the makings of a scandal in the era of partisan blogs and 24-hour news cycles.
Here’s the problem: there’s no proof that ACORN is coordinating fraud and certainly no proof that the Obama campaign is participating in such underhanded tactics. I, for one, think there might be some smoke, but there doesn’t appear to be a fire. If the FBI starts making arrests, then I’ll start believing this story might have significance.
As it is, I don’t think the rightwing attempts to accuse Obama of stealing the election will be any more effective than were the leftwing attempts to accuse Bush of stealing the election before the 2004 election. Accusing your opponent of fraud seems to be a rather popular tactic when you’re behind in the polls, no matter which side of the aisle you’re from.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
McCain’s totally over the top assault on ACORN last night did make my jaw drop.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
From other sources I read, by law ACORN and others must turn in every form filled out, regardless if they believe it is fraudulent. This is to protect them from throwing away voter registrations who registered with parties against their beliefs. They’re only responsibility it to flag them if they are aware of them.
Am I being to naive to believe this is normal business, things happen, and we have a system in place that weeds these things out? I assume ACORN canvassers are like Greenpeace canvassers and others who stop you on the street and make commission on the number of people they sign up. A hellish job only a college student could love.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
you are right on! community organizing and canvassing of any kind is hard work, and there will always be some bad apples. ACORN registered 1.3 million new (legit) voters and there were only a few thousand bad cards. None of those will result in actual votes. Several states (Colorado and Florida, for example) have dismissed all of the claims of ACORN voter fraud in their states. And the same organization that is suing in Ohio (RICO) filed the same exact suit in 2004 and withdrew it when they had to present evidence. This will turn out to be nothing but a political stunt.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
For the record, I listened to Bertha Lewis on C-Span’s podcats (http://podcast.rbn.com/cspan/cspan/download/podaudio/news_101208_lewis.mp3) and found her to be indirect, political and somewhat unpleasant to listen to.
But is there smoke really? What in the world is it? Even if there is, is there any reason to think the Obama campaign was involved? It seems like they would hardly need it.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
The smoke is the FBI investigation.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:46 am
the investigation and the leak itself are pretty shady. tpm has been all over this and the ways it relates to the doj attorney purge scandal.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/237716.php