ACORN and the rule of law
The buzz yesterday was an Associated Press story with the following headline:
Officials: FBI Investigates ACORN for Voter Fraud
The story reads:
The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.
A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday. A second senior law enforcement offical says the FBI was looking at reuslts of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.
This news, of course, proved irresistible to the McCain-Palin campaign (as it would Obama-Biden, had something similar appeared about right wing organizers).
How much credibility should the independent voter attach to this kind of report?
Assuming the report is true, we can’t draw any conclusions about what ACORN may have done. We don’t know the specific nature of any investigation. No one from the FBI or Justice Department will comment on what may be occurring. We only have a vague report law enforcement agents are looking into ACORN’s practices.
But we know this with absolute certainty:
- Someone has violated Justice Department ethics policies not just by anonymously revealing the existence of an investigation into “election fraud” but by doing so during an election season.
- The Justice Department already has a black eye for pushing politically motivated “voter fraud” cases in the run up to the 2006 elections.
- The FBI has a long, sorry not-too-distant history of engaging in political abuses, as chronicled by the Church Committee.
Anyone who engages in voter fraud should be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
So should any law enforcement official who violates department ethics rules and abuses power by bringing politically motivated investigations and prosecutions on the eve of a national election.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
The temporary ACORN employees who turn in false registrations are cheating only ACORN. ACORN has no interest submitting false registrations; ACORN wants to register real voters. In fact, ACORN is the primary whistle-blower on suspect registrations.
Even if knowingly submitting false registrations were rampant - something nobody has demonstrated despite the regular efforts to smear ACORN, false registrations do not translate into voter fraud. It would be virtually impossible for ACORN or any other group to line up individuals to impersonate false names on registration cards.
Here is something else we know, that you wont report. The Ohio SOS may be in violation of federal law by not linking up the databases to verify new registrations. Over 200K new registrations cannot be matched to DMV or SSN. The SOS is supposed to turn that list over to local officials so they can be prepared on election day. Her actions have opened the door for rampant voter fraud in a key swing state. We also know that a group, Vote from Home 08, has already engaged in voter fraud. By registering people from out of state (and out of the country) knowing they did not live in the state, these people cast ballots.
“Someone has violated Justice Department ethics policies not just by anonymously revealing the existence of an investigation into “election fraud” but by doing so during an election season.”
I find this statement to be absolutely hilarious. NOW you are concerned with “leaks”? You never complained when people were illegally leaking classified information about secret programs, but now you suddenly find a conscious about voter fraud.
Kuhns is right: The question ACORN’s critics haven’t answered is how, exactly, the organization possibly could benefit from fictitious registrations. There have been examples in other settings of voter fraud involving fictitious registrants — but they only work as inside jobs, where the entire election system was corrupt, with registrars, poll workers, and election officials forming a vast conspiracy.
Si Vis, on the other hand, seems selective in his outlook on the rule of law –applying it with a vengeance, even based on highly speculative hypotheticals, when it suits his ideological purpose; laughing off undisputed prosecutorial abuse, when adherence to the law would work against his political biases.
As to Ohio, the Supreme Court has decided that one. David Iglesias, who got fired as US Attorney for New Mexico because he wouldn’t countenance this kind of shenanigan, has some remarks on TPM Muckraker. And of course it’s all the usual fireworks to distract us: while we’re following with fascination the meaningless story about false registration forms (which pretty much never lead to fraudulent ballots), the real scandal of voter suppression proceeds apace. Example: literature being circulated in Philadelphia telling voters that if they have outstanding traffic tickets they will be arrested at the polls. (Four years ago it was flyers telling people if they couldn’t make it to vote on Tuesday, they could go on Wednesday.) Lists of foreclosed homes being assembled so the residents can be challenged at the polls. And so on. It stinks to high heaven.
Other things we know with absolute certainty: Voter registration fraud is not voter fraud. No one is going to turn up to vote claiming to be Mickey Mouse! We also know that the questionable registrations were flagged by ACORN itself and not dug up by some sleuth in a “raid.” And we also know that the GOP has been yelling “voter fraud” for many years and has never been able to show that there has been ANY voter fraud of consequence anywhere.
We should be much more concerned with voter suppression attempts and with the possibility (probability, even) of serious problems with voting machines cropping up all over the country.
ACORN self-regulates. One of many reasons the Supreme Court just denied the NRCC their request to toss hundreds of thousands registration out.
Another thing: Any invalid registrations will be caught at the polls. That’s part of the system.A system bolstered by the actions of the Supreme Court, thankfully.
McCain’s claims about voter fraud is a smoke screen, a distraction from what the NRCC is engaged in: VOTER SUPPRESSION. Suppression of the defining American right. Who now is Anti-American?
I, and many of my fellow Republican have changed parties out of pure shame. If you are a traditional Republican, you and I have been betrayed by the neo-cons. They have brought us to the brink. If you were brought up in the church, you were taught the difference between right and wrong. Bush was wrong. And John McCain is just plain old.
Christ taught us to love thy brother. The tenor of my party no longer embraces this belief. As a good Christian, I can no longer tolerate a team that incites followers to shout, “Kill.”
Thou Shalt Not. May God have mercy on all your souls. You have forgotten your Father.
Farewell Republicans.
A cartoon from IBD that you would never see from the telescopic vision of the PD cartoonist:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/CartoonPopUp.aspx?id=308857743182214
Wow. Nary a word we heard from the Post when the story broke about ACORN, but now that there is an investigation you run a story, not about anything ACORN has done mind you, but that the investigators have done something wrong. Priceless.
FYI: I heard it was Mickey Mouse that violated the department ethics rule, he was angry that ACORN forged his signature in Florida when he doesn’t even live there.
Here’s a project for Jmas:
Go to the Post-Dispatch archives:
http://www.stltoday.com/help/archives/simplesearch
Plug in the search term “ACORN” over the past 2 years. Cull out the items having to do with squash and feral hogs, and come back and tell us how many political articles have appeared in the paper during this period that refer to ACORN.
Then go to StlToday.com and do a site search with the same term and tell us how any hundreds of items have appeared in P-D blogs and on discussion forums.
I suspect Jmas will return with nary a word. Maybe next time will he/she keep his/her facts straight and bring his/her “A” game.
Yes, by all means, let’s let them steal the election before we investigate. Absolutely. I am also for letting bank robbers spend the money before we arrest them.