Michelle Malkin » ACORN Watch: When it rains, it pours

ACORN Watch: When it rains, it pours

By Michelle Malkin • October 8, 2008 11:09 PM

Photoshop: Blind Mule

I’ll be discussing my ACORN columns tomorrow on Fox and Friends at around 8:15am Eastern-ish. New voter fraud developments are breaking fast and furiously:

*MISSOURI:

Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

“I don’t even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy,” Davis said. “We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don’t exist, people who have driver’s license numbers that won’t verify or Social Security numbers that won’t verify. Some have no address at all.”

The nonpartisan group works to recruit low-income voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Most polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain with an edge in bellwether Missouri, but Democrat Barack Obama continues to put up a strong fight.

Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn’t done any registrations in Kansas City since late August. He said he was told three weeks ago by election officials that there were only about 135 questionable cards — 85 of them duplicates.

“They keep telling different people different things,” he said. “They gave us a list of 130, then told someone else it was 1,000.”

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency has been in contact with elections officials about potential voter fraud and plans to investigate.

CONNECTICUT:

The State Elections Enforcement Commission has opened an investigation into allegations that a community activist organization submitted at least 10 false voter-registration cards in Bridgeport.

One of the phony registrations was for a 7-year-old girl in the Marina Village housing complex, whose age was listed as 27 on the voter card.

Another registration came from a man who later said he couldn’t have completed the voter card purported to be his because he was in jail on the date of the document.

Joseph J. Borges, the city’s Republican registrar of voters, filed the complaint with state officials after months of local complaints on the tactics that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was regularly filing applications that were ruled ineligible.

In response, a Bridgeport leader of ACORN on Tuesday night called the charges “part of a concerted and coordinated campaign by conservatives and the GOP to attack and discredit ACORN.”

Actually, the “lazy crackheads” are doing the discrediting just fine all by themselves.

WISCONSIN:

Milwaukee County prosecutors Tuesday charged a convicted felon with illegally registering himself and others to vote between his conviction and his sentencing.

The complaint accuses Adam Mucklin, 22, of registering to vote in June, after he was convicted of battery in April, and after a judge told him he couldn’t vote as a convicted felon. Later in June, Mucklin signed up to work as a paid voter registrar for the Community Voters Project, something else he couldn’t do as a convicted felon, the complaint says.

A recent opinion from the staff of the state Government Accountability Board says no one convicted of a felony can ever serve as a registrar, a stricter standard than the previous interpretation that registrars only had to be eligible to vote.

Under Wisconsin law, felons can’t vote until after they have completed their sentences and are off probation or parole. For Mucklin, that would not be until Jan. 10, 2012, the complaint notes.

OHIO: ACORN admits it can’t stop fraud. Now, if they’ll only admit that they don’t want to stop it. It’s standard operating procedure:

The group blamed inefficiency and lack of resources for problems such as being unable to spot duplicate voter-registration cards or cards that may have been filled out by workers to make quotas.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has turned in at least 65,000 cards to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in the last year. The board has investigated potentially fraudulent cards since August.

The group has faced similar inquiries in other large Ohio counties. And Nevada state authorities recently raided ACORN’s Las Vegas headquarters searching for evidence of fraud, according to the Associated Press.

Local representatives of the organization told Cuyahoga board members that they don’t have the resources to identify fraudulent cards turned in by paid canvassers who are told to register low- and moderate-income voters.

Cuyahoga election workers flagged about 50 names on suspicious cards. The cards were to register the same names, raising the possibility that canvassers shared information when trying to make quotas.

“This is not something you can catch with your internal controls, apparently,” said board member Sandy McNair at the meeting.

“Not perfectly, no,” replied Mari Engelhardt, ACORN political director for Ohio.

INDIANA:

New voter registrations closed Monday in Lake County with possible record-breaking numbers and simmering allegations of fraud and racial discrimination.

Elections board Director Sally LaSota said more than 12,000 voter registration forms are waiting to be processed from recent days before the county knows how many potential voters are ready to cast ballots in the Nov. 4 general election.

“It may be a record,” she said.

Porter County has processed at least 3,500 voter applications since the spring primary in May, officials there said.

However, the large influx has brought new controversies.

LaSota said Monday representatives of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a grassroots activist group conducting registration drives, dropped off 2,000 new voter applications last week in Lake County.

“About 1,100 are no good,” she said.

And this: More Voter Registration Shenanigans: Indianapolis Has 105% Of Its Population Registered To Vote

I hope Sarah Palin will start talking about this.

You know John McCain won’t.

Wouldn’t want to be labeled a RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST.

Posted in: ACORN Watch, Voter fraud

Printer Friendly

comments (93)

trackbacks (62)

See what others have said

Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.

Trackbacks

Trackback URL

Comments

« Older Comments

#101

On October 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am, Dimsdale said:

Where are our resident liberals? Is this not a topic worth their input?
#106

On October 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am, Ed Mahmoud abu al-Kahoul said:

This is supposed to be a close election, and the fraud will probably tip it to the Obammunist.

Bob Dornan lost his seat to Loretta Sanchez via voter fraud, and Gregoire is governor of WA because of voter fraud.

The Dem Ohio SecState has no problems with Acorn.

BTW, my LLL brother honestly believes Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were GOP fraud. They project what they will actually do.

BTW, I hope Mr and Mrs. Malkin have been scrupulous on keeping the books and paying the taxes, because when Obama is in office, they’ll get audited a lot, if I had to guess.

Ditto Limbaugh. The ‘Fairness Doctrine’ (equal air time for Air America type ‘progressives’ who can’t get ratings or advertisers) will wipe out the lower rated hosts on poorer networks, like Mark Legin and Bill Bennett, but Limabugh and Hannity will survive that. Thus, they will be targetted.
#107

On October 9th, 2008 at 10:20 am, CO2 Producer said:

Dimsdale (#79): or at the very least, Robert “Unprecedented” Greenwald. Naw, he’s too busy going after FNC, McCain, and Giuliani.

In the interest of accuracy, I want to clarify parts of my last comment (#78). When I say that the MSM hasn’t been investigating the voter fraud, I should correct myself by saying that it’s the lack of stories in the major news outlets about it that I consider a problem. Have these and related allegations ever made the front page (above the fold) of the NYT or LAT? Opening story on any of the Big Three networks? That (among other reasons) is why they’re becoming relics.

The other thing I should clarify is my statement that this is a big deal. What I mean by that is this is a widespread problem, but how out of control it is is still unknown, though we’re starting to find out. More registered names than number of voters. In a major metropolitan area. Good grief.
#109

On October 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am, corona said:

Gee, wouldn’t it have been great if someone had pointed out the Missouri HERE.
#111

On October 9th, 2008 at 10:56 am, uhangtight said:

105% of the population registered in Indianapolis, isn’t that what happened in Pennsylvania back in 2000? I seem to remember a quick blurb, but they were so fired up about a hanging chad that everyone kind of let that one slide by, because after all it was in Gore’s favor…hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I have a way to solve this problem, any registrations from ACORN are now invalid. As an auditor, I see well over 10% of the states have found some fraud. The population of the audit has found that the controls are not working and the entire population of registration from ACORN is tainted. If there was enough time and adequate unbiased auditors larger amounts of registration fraud would be found, of that I am certain.
#113

On October 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am, AnotherBrian said:

Can someone please tell me why anyone would accept any voter registration cards from ACORN?

There is an obvious pattern of fraud going on here.
#114

On October 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am, Trae said:

Michelle you missed Nevada:

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=190503

KTNV: ACORN is accused of registering false and duplicate names, including using the names of Dallas Cowboys.

I’m in Dallas, and I wonder how our boys appreciate this?
#117

On October 9th, 2008 at 11:34 am, reshas1 said:

http://www.ofheo.gov/contact.aspx

“ENSIGN URGES FEDS TO STOP PAYMENTS TO ACORN” [Rich Lowry]

Washington, D.C. – In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Senator John Ensign today called for the suspension of taxpayer dollars that ultimately end up in the hands of such controversial groups as ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN, which is under investigation, is eligible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac affordable housing funds, which add up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

“With the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie, the government will be taxing itself to create a backdoor slush fund, and we must prevent these taxpayer dollars from going toward ACORN,” said Ensign. “With the recent news tying ACORN with voter fraud, suspending these funds is even more urgent.”

As part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Fannie and Freddie are required to provide funding for newly created affordable housing funds. This was signed into law prior to the government takeover of the two agencies. Now that the government owns Fannie and Freddie and may provide them with up to $200 billion, taxing these companies does not help create stability, which is the goal of FHFA.

A search warrant was served today on the ACORN Headquarters in Nevada as part of an ongoing investigation into whether employees used false addresses or false names as part of their voter registration operation.

The letter was sent to James Lockhart, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency today. As the regulatory agency overseeing Fannie and Freddie, FHFA has the authority to stop these contributions to the affordable housing funds. Senators Michael Enzi, Jon Kyl, David Vitter, Pat Roberts, Tom Coburn, John Thune and Jim DeMint signed the letter with Ensign.

Continue reading this post for the text of the letter.

October 7, 2008

The Honorable James B. Lockhart III

Director

Federal Housing Finance Agency

1700 G Street, NW

Fourth Floor

Washington, D.C. 20552

Dear Director Lockhart:

We write today to urge you to exercise your statutory authority to suspend any contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the newly created affordable housing funds, which could direct federal dollars to controversial groups like ACORN.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 requires that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set aside an amount equal to 4.2 basis points for each dollar of new business activity and transfer those funds to two newly created affordable housing funds. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that such assessments may equal hundreds of millions of dollars a year for each company. Sec. 1337(b) of 12 U.S.C. 1301, however, gives you the authority to suspend those contributions if the assessments would contribute to the financial instability or the undercapitalization of the enterprises.

Less than one month ago, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) placed the enterprises into conservatorship due to concerns over the soundness of the firms and their difficulty in raising sufficient capital to carry out their missions. You said in a Sept. 7, 2008, statement that the companies could not “continue to operate safely and soundly and fulfill their critical public mission” and that “FHFA will act as the conservator to operate the Enterprises until they are stabilized.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are clearly financially unstable and face significant capitalization problems. One does not need to wait for financial reports to understand that. We strongly believe that taxing the companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year weakens their financial health and is completely at odds with FHFA’s goal of stabilizing the companies and returning them to normal business operations. We urge you to suspend any contributions to the affordable housing funds until at a minimum the enterprises are no longer in conservatorship and to make such a decision without further delay. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

“ENSIGN URGES FEDS TO STOP PAYMENTS TO ACORN” [Rich Lowry]

Washington, D.C. – In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Senator John Ensign today called for the suspension of taxpayer dollars that ultimately end up in the hands of such controversial groups as ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN, which is under investigation, is eligible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac affordable housing funds, which add up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

“With the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie, the government will be taxing itself to create a backdoor slush fund, and we must prevent these taxpayer dollars from going toward ACORN,” said Ensign. “With the recent news tying ACORN with voter fraud, suspending these funds is even more urgent.”

As part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Fannie and Freddie are required to provide funding for newly created affordable housing funds. This was signed into law prior to the government takeover of the two agencies. Now that the government owns Fannie and Freddie and may provide them with up to $200 billion, taxing these companies does not help create stability, which is the goal of FHFA.

A search warrant was served today on the ACORN Headquarters in Nevada as part of an ongoing investigation into whether employees used false addresses or false names as part of their voter registration operation.

The letter was sent to James Lockhart, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency today. As the regulatory agency overseeing Fannie and Freddie, FHFA has the authority to stop these contributions to the affordable housing funds. Senators Michael Enzi, Jon Kyl, David Vitter, Pat Roberts, Tom Coburn, John Thune and Jim DeMint signed the letter with Ensign.

Continue reading this post for the text of the letter.

October 7, 2008

The Honorable James B. Lockhart III

Director

Federal Housing Finance Agency

1700 G Street, NW

Fourth Floor

Washington, D.C. 20552

Dear Director Lockhart:

We write today to urge you to exercise your statutory authority to suspend any contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the newly created affordable housing funds, which could direct federal dollars to controversial groups like ACORN.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 requires that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set aside an amount equal to 4.2 basis points for each dollar of new business activity and transfer those funds to two newly created affordable housing funds. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that such assessments may equal hundreds of millions of dollars a year for each company. Sec. 1337(b) of 12 U.S.C. 1301, however, gives you the authority to suspend those contributions if the assessments would contribute to the financial instability or the undercapitalization of the enterprises.

Less than one month ago, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) placed the enterprises into conservatorship due to concerns over the soundness of the firms and their difficulty in raising sufficient capital to carry out their missions. You said in a Sept. 7, 2008, statement that the companies could not “continue to operate safely and soundly and fulfill their critical public mission” and that “FHFA will act as the conservator to operate the Enterprises until they are stabilized.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are clearly financially unstable and face significant capitalization problems. One does not need to wait for financial reports to understand that. We strongly believe that taxing the companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year weakens their financial health and is completely at odds with FHFA’s goal of stabilizing the companies and returning them to normal business operations. We urge you to suspend any contributions to the affordable housing funds until at a minimum the enterprises are no longer in conservatorship and to make such a decision without further delay. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
#119

On October 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm, Salt said:

On October 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am, Trae said:

Michelle you missed Nevada:

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=190503

KTNV: ACORN is accused of registering false and duplicate names, including using the names of Dallas Cowboys.

I’m in Dallas, and I wonder how our boys appreciate this?

Hey Trae,

Michelle didn’t miss it. It’s in an earlier post: Acorn offices in Las Vegas Raided
#121

On October 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm, Dimsdale said:

There should be an injunction filed against ACORN, and all activities ceased until this can be cleared up. Allowing them to continue alleged illegal activities, particularly ones that interfere with a national election, is unacceptable.
#122

On October 9th, 2008 at 12:31 pm, Salt said:

On October 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am, Dimsdale said:

Where are our resident liberals? Is this not a topic worth their input?

The talking points to spin this aren’t out yet.

Future story: Senator Obama says, “Those weren’t the ACORN workers I knew. Let’s ensure they get more money in the next bailout to clean up their act.” /sarc
#136

On October 9th, 2008 at 8:44 pm, Dimsdale said:

I just find it amazing that the resident libs will go all out to criticize us for trivia like the Palin picture commentaries, but just seem to evaporate in the face of true Democrat corruption.

They call that “tacit approval.”
#146

On October 10th, 2008 at 5:15 pm, Dimsdale said:

tick, tick, tick, tick (sound of crickets chirping….)
#150

On October 12th, 2008 at 8:38 am, Dimsdale said:

tick, tick, tick (more crickets…)

Oh where oh where are our fine upstanding liberals on this topic?

Your silence is your agreement.