Scrutiny: Nevada secretary of state officials raided ACORN’s office in Las Vegas last week looking for evidence of voter registration fraud. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
Are voter fraud fears overblown?
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ October 19, 2008 edition
Reporter Ben Arnoldy talks with csmonitor.com's Pat Murphy about questionable voter registration practices.
Oakland, Calif.
Depending on whom you listen to, this election is either facing “the greatest fraud in voter history,” or a minor nuisance from lazy registration gatherers.
The more alarming interpretation comes from Republican presidential candidate John McCain. He leveled the charge against ACORN, a national activist group that’s the source of faulty registrations in about a dozen states and the target of a government raid in Las Vegas. Citing unnamed sources, the Associated Press reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the group.
But many elections experts consider Senator McCain’s assertion to be hyperbole. Fake voter registration applications, they say, tend to be an effort by individual low-wage workers to cheat on a day’s work, not cheat the vote on Election Day. Someone might register “Mickey Mouse,” but Mr. Mouse isn’t likely to show up to vote.
“It’s hyperbole because there’s no good evidence that voter registration fraud leads to election fraud that changes elections. And it’s irresponsible because it gins up worries that the election is going to be stolen,” says Richard L. Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Research into voting fraud by Lorraine Minnite at Barnard College in New York has turned up no contemporary cases of an election thrown out or overturned due to fraudulent registration. She found only two prosecutions for people faking others’ registrations between 2002 and 2005, involving a total of 13 false applications.
The anti-ACORN rhetoric, she says, is on the verge of “complete distortion.”
Founded in 1970, the Louisiana-based Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now says it advocates for poor people. This election, some 13,000 ACORN workers have registered an unprecedented 1.3 million people.
“When you hire 13,000 employees, you are going to have some who won’t do the job,” says ACORN spokesman Charles Jackson. The “rogue workers” who submitted phony registrations were fired immediately, he adds. The faked registrations were sent to election officials – as required by the law in many locales – but filed separately and flagged.
ACORN says it flagged 80 percent of the registrations that raised officials’ eyebrows.
Neither Mr. Hasen nor Ms. Minnite find the reported problems to be disproportionate to the size of ACORN’s operation.
Others disagree, particularly many Republicans who see the scope of reported problems indicative of systemic fraud. “In my opinion, it is now becoming racketeering,” says James Lacy, a lawyer who served in the Reagan administration and now leads conservative causes in California. “That we see it now involving a multitude of states and a multitude of voters, I think at some level ACORN is becoming a criminal enterprise in its engagement of voter registration activities.”
In Indiana, Lake County officials stopped processing about 5,000 applications after the first 2,100 looked bogus. ACORN registrations in Nevada included the names of Dallas Cowboys football stars. And the secretary of state’s office in Nevada raided ACORN’s Las Vegas branch last week.
In the affidavit, fired ACORN workers described fudging registrations out of laziness or because of the heat – not because of orders from above. ACORN leaders also appeared to be cooperating with Nevada officials.
The raid was undertaken because officials believed there were other phony registrations that workers weren’t catching, says Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state, a Democrat. But, he adds, “There’s a big difference – a quantum leap – between registration fraud and voter fraud.”
It’s difficult for one individual to cast many votes through fraudulent registration, and difficult to keep widespread collusion secret, say experts.
For one, federal law requires identification when signing up for absentee ballots by mail. Moreover, it’s risky to vote at the same polling station multiple times, and setting up fake registrations in different precincts is “an awful lot of effort,” says Doug Lewis, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors.
That said, tests comparing different statewide voter databases have found people registering – and more rarely voting – in two states simultaneously, he says.
Voter rolls can be buggy. As many as 200,000 new registrants in Ohio show mismatches with records in other government databases, but the secretary of state there has resisted GOP lawsuits to purge the rolls, arguing many mismatches are likely typographical errors.
What particularly frustrates Mr. Lewis about duplicate and fraudulent registration cards is how they tie up election workers from processing legitimate applications before elections.
ACORN isn’t a monolithic group, says Lewis, and some offices seem better than others at curbing junk applications.
Every local branch has separate staffs for canvassing and quality control, explains Brian Mellor, senior counsel for Project Vote. Canvassers are paid $8 an hour and must sign a statement that lays out what constitutes fraud. Completed cards head to quality control staff, who try calling each registrant three times. Suspicious cards are given to a manager who confronts the canvassers.
Republican suspicions of ACORN deepened when it emerged that Barack Obama’s campaign paid the group through an intermediary for getting-out-the-vote operations during the primaries – then falsely reported the expenditure. The campaign has called it a clerical error.
Such involvement with a partisan campaign has raised eyebrows in Washington as the group has received US government funds and is presumed by some to be tax-exempt. However, Mr. Jackson with ACORN says his group is nonprofit but not tax-exempt.
“By not being tax-exempt, they are hiding their activity from the public, so it is a misnomer to call themselves a nonprofit organization,” says Mr. Lacy.
Comments
2. Joost van der Lugt | 10.19.08
Aren’t the “broken” voting machines a larger problem? Sorry, but why is non of the larger sites bringing this up?
Paper ballots, please.
3. Gartrell Bibberts | 10.19.08
Just so you “got gullible” types understand that there MAY be another side to this story try this:
4. messdeupfacemccain | 10.19.08
Good old Joe is not a licenced plumber he should not be working by state law so that makes McCain in support of a law breaker and if you break the law you ar a criminal.
5. JD | 10.19.08
Not really a big deal as long as everyone named Mickey Mouse doesn’t show up to vote.
6. Atheist (UK) | 10.19.08
I’m so used to seeing Christian American groups (and other religious groups around the world) slinging unfounded hateful half truths at people because they don’t agree with their explicit view of the world. This article is both informed and excellently written. I stand corrected.
Obama is the only (potential) President that has kept his integrity, where Clinton and McCain have lost theirs.
Keep up the informed work based on facts!
7. Reverend SODDI | 10.19.08
McCain and Republicans like Saxby Chambliss cannot win a fair election - their party has nearly ruined America. The only way that the Republicans can take this election is by conducting voter suppression on a massive scale - more massive than the criminal acts they committed in 2000 and 2004. Given the rhetoric from Republicans - rhetoric that has been going on for a lot longer than the past two weeks - they do not just want the questionable registrations gathered by ACORN stricken from the rolls - they want ALL registrations gathered by ACORN declared ineligible. Republicans have been targeting ACORN because it has been registering African-Americans in large numbers. The Republicans have ALWAYS targeted African-Americans for vote suppression, from hiring armed thugs to “guard” polling places to sending threatening postcards warning African-Americans against voting. The Republicans have always run racist political campaigns, and by their silence, Republican candidates participate in this racism. They are racists. And the Republicans are going to steal this election too… whether in the the courts or by Electoral College shenanigans. The fix is already in. American democracy has been dead since 2000.
8. Beth | 10.19.08
There’s no such thing as voter fraud. It’s a republican myth started with the Nixon-Kennedy election. There is certainly voter REGISTRATION FRAUD. That’s always been the case. But, it has never been proven that fraudulently registered voters actually vote. It’s far more a voter supression tactic than a real issue of concern.
9. ivote | 10.19.08
Sounds like racketeering to me– bog down the system, so sooner or later you don’t know what’s legit or what isn’t… I’m a registered Democrat and I don’t want either side to get away with such trickery. Frankly, there were plenty of shenanigans going on during the primaries at the hands of ACORN just ask our friends in TX.
10. JLA | 10.19.08
Gartrell Roberts,
You do realize your link has nothing whatever to do with ACORN or voter registration fraud, don’t you?
11. jefflz | 10.19.08
Beth summed it up perfectly. So let’s get the record straight: yes, it needs to be stamped out but registration fraud is NOT voter fraud. Registration fraud is common because paid workers submit false records to get money. Voter fraud means phony people showing up at the polls - it is very rare according to the US Department of Justice.. Furthermore, McCain supports ACORN and was keynote speaker at an ACORN conference in March, 2006. He has had more recent and closer contact with them than Obama. He complimented ACORN on their important work and the President of ACORN considered McCain to be a friend. McCain knows that registration fraud happens whenever you pay people to register voters. He knows this is not the same as voter fraud. This is another example of McCain trying to throw sand in the face of the electorate, to confuse the less educated voter and to take this election further into the mud.
12. RB | 10.19.08
The GOP is so insecure that they feel they must intimidate, and even steal, this election. Oh wait! It worked for them the past 2 elections! Florida was given to Bush by their 2000 Sec. of State, and Ohio was the same in 2004. Now that Ohio actually has a Sec of State that cares about fair elections and election laws, they’re having a much tougher time. But Goddess bless them - they’re trying their darndest to screw it all up again.
It is reprehensible and deplorable that anyone would wish to do anything but give all Americans a chance to vote. The GOP doesn’t care what you have to say - unless you say what they want to hear.
VOTE OBAMA IF YOU CARE ABOUT AMERICA!
13. Mike | 10.19.08
Sorry JD–don’t believe everything you hear on the news.
Occupational licenses are required for many professions from electricians to private investigators in many states and the process and requirements vary by state. This is an effort to protect the public (or raise government revenue.)
Quite often a person will work only under their employer’s license–in fact, they may be required to do so…unless they are opening their own licensed company. This way, the employer and manager are responsible to the state to assure their operations meet state requirements–not the individual.
That does not mean the worker is regulated–even security guards are. Often they are only required to be registered as required by law in order to work , and usually, even then they have to only work for a licensed company, again, as required by law.
But, if Joe opens his own company as he mentioned, the company would likely be required to be licensed and maybe even have a licensed manager if Joe did not personally meet the qualifications. Again, that is quite common.
So, if you were so inclined, you could open a plumbing company–not knowing a single thing about plumbing…you are the owner. However, you would need to have a licensed manager that met education, experience, etc. requirements running the day to day operations for you.
Don’t believe every thing you hear.
14. TomD | 10.19.08
You know, if you wanted to create a ruckus, what better way then to place operatives in the ACORN registration process and knowingly create fraudulent forms.
The attack on ACORN has been rehearsed and coordinated from the very top
of the GOP. And the media are their willing accomplices by not reporting the
true impact of fraudulent registration to elections, none!
That’s right, NONE! A registration for Micky Mouse means nothing unless somehow there is a person named Mickey Mouse with a valid Driver’s License or Social Security number who can present valid ID at a polling place.
16. P.R. Finn | 10.20.08
More on the YPM that most of the media ain’t covering: specifically, they’re forging documents that ACTUALLY disfranchise voters — unlike mere fears of “voter fraud”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×4271374
(Unfortunately, underground sites gotta do the media’s work for them)
17. Concerned Citizen | 10.20.08
On October 9, 2008 a small grass roots group called Vote Blue Committee in Ventura County, California broke the story in an article http://politicalwatchcentralcoast.org/john-mccain/voter-fraud-democratic-registrations/ about how Democrats signing petitions circulated by YPM in the county to tighten sex offender controls were having their voter registrations changed to Republican with out their knowledge or permission. As we now know the organization has used this tactic in other cities in California and around the country, and the head of that organization has been arrested for registering to vote in multiple states.
We just heard last night that Steve Posner, the Silcon Valley millionaire, now Republican California State Insurance Commissioner, who plans to run for Governor, is the person behind the payment of the bounties to YPM. Posner is paying $5 per Republican registration to YPM. While there is nothing illegal about paying for registrations, involvement in “slamming” - the illegal changing of party affiliation - is.
The problem of fraud is real. Registrations of likely voters are being tampered with. That is a much more significant problem than is the submission of fake voter registration forms being submitted which are weeded out during the vetting process of actual registration. Republican candidates, like Tony Strickland in Ventura County, are getting money from the Republican Party for their campaigns based on fake registration data. And Imagine what it is like for loyal Democrats to start receiving fund raising calls and literature from far-right Republican groups.
People have real cause to fear the falsification of voter registration data, as serious problems are occurring. And we all should fear how our votes will be tallied by our Registrar Recorder offices. It isn’t the input into the machines that count the vote that is the entire problem either. It is also an issue of the final tallies where much of the falsification occurs. Contact your local Democratic Party Central Committee and offer to watch polls, photograph the lists of provisional ballots with your cell phone and hang around the Registrar Recorders office when the votes are being counted. The more people watching the counts, the less likely they are to be falsified.
18. DPaul | 10.20.08
The best way to eliminate voter and registration fraud is to have a Federal Government ID card that contains a photo as well as other pertinent information.
19. John Norton | 10.20.08
How about some reporting on voter/registration fraud on the other side of the campaign fence — potentially on a massive scale?
The new story “Block the Vote” by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast at Rolling Stone is particularly disturbing. I’m wondering if the “big press” will give this nearly the attention ACORN seems to be getting?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
20. gemini3 | 10.20.08
I have two concerns as I read and hear about ACORN’s efforts in fraudulent registration practices:
My first concern is about the burden that erroneous forms place on the elections’ departments. As a taxpayer I am concerned that in times of tight budgets that public dollars have to go to sort out the deliberately false registration forms from the the forms submitted by legal residents. In addition to the financial cost, employees working with so many potentially fraudulent registrations could view with doubt forms submitted by legal voters who made slight errors in filling out their registrations, thus preventing legal voters from voting.
My second concern is that this is a pattern, not a first time offense. For at least the last 3 elections charges of fraud have been brought against ACORN and here we are in a 4th election cycle and the same charges are being made. I saw a young former ACORN worker on one of the news shows wearing an ankle bracelet as she is being punished for her fraudulent work in the last election. It amazes me that the lowly paid workers take the fall and in the next cycle the same types of charges will be made against another lowly paid group of workers. How do the same fraudulent practices happen over and over and the top of the ACORN hierarchy are able to cry discrimination and not be held accountable?
We need to make voter registration open and available to all legal voters - one registration per voter. I don’t think that declaring that crooked workers are taking advantage of ACORN absolves them from responsibility when it has happened before. It’s unfortunate that these abuses weren’t given more coverage before we got into a highly publicized election year, but at some point we have to stop registration fraud, either now or in 4 years when the national press wakes up once again.
21. gemini3 | 10.20.08
I have two concerns as I read and hear about ACORN’s efforts in fraudulent registration practices:
My first concern is about the burden that erroneous forms place on the elections’ departments. As a taxpayer I am concerned that in times of tight budgets that public dollars have to go to sort out the deliberately false registration forms from the forms submitted by legal residents. In addition to the financial cost, employees working with so many potentially fraudulent registrations could view with doubt forms submitted by legal voters who made slight errors in filling out their registrations, thus preventing legal voters from voting.
My second concern is that this is a pattern, not a first time offense. For at least the last 3 elections charges of fraud have been brought against ACORN and here we are in a 4th election cycle and the same charges are being made. I saw a young former ACORN worker on one of the news shows wearing an ankle bracelet as she is being punished for her fraudulent work in the last election. It amazes me that the lowly paid workers take the fall and in the next cycle the same types of charges will be made against another lowly paid group of workers. How do the same fraudulent practices happen over and over and the top of the ACORN hierarchy are able to cry discrimination and not be held accountable?
We need to make voter registration open and available to all legal voters - one registration per voter. I don’t think that declaring that crooked workers are taking advantage of ACORN absolves them from responsibility when it has happened before. It’s unfortunate that these abuses weren’t given more coverage before we got into a highly publicized election year, but at some point we have to stop registration fraud, either now or in 4 years when the national press wakes up once again.
22. Mary Ann | 10.20.08
NO!
Voter fraud fears are absolutely NOT being overblown.
I would list evidence I have that is quite shocking that validates that point of view, but I learned long ago that once a liberal believes something not to try to share any differing perspective with them. Most Liberals only want to cram their beliefs down others throats no matter how irrational and baseless they are. and cll those will differing views nasty names. It appears that this blog is loaded with arrogant mindless Liberals. So I will be off to WORK - MY JOB - so I will have enough money to pay for their destructive social programs.
23. Trudy | 10.20.08
Aren’t you happy that Barack HUSSIEN Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate???? He is such a genius. Hahahahaha In case you didn’t know, he says that IF Obama is elected President, we will be targeted by terriorist. What is really scary is that Biden is next in line to be President. Now that is sad.
24. Robert | 10.20.08
Voter Fraud is running rampant, and Obama is responible for the mess. The squirrel (Obama) needs to rein in his nuts (Acorn).
To report voter Fraud Visit (http://www.blockbarack.com)
25. Ram | 10.21.08
What missing in these comments is that nobody has brought to light as to how ACORN is committing voter fraud! ACORN worker(s) merely get citizens who are eligibe to vote to fill in the voter registration forms. Once they are filled in they are supposed to turn in all the forms whether they are filled in correctly or incorrectly or with bogus names like Micky Mouse, etc. They cannot nor do they have access to a database to check whether the person is legit or not. That responsibility soley rests with the country officials. So where is ACRON committing the fraud?
26. redmatch13 | 10.21.08
A year or so ago, out in front of a Ralph’s Supermarket in LA there were people who were pushing a petition for lower gas prices. Their way of having people sign it was to fill out voter application forms. When I asked whether or not I should check the box for party affiliation, I was told to leave it blank. When I checked a box anyway, my form was destroyed. Voter fraud? Perhaps it’s more rampant than one would imagine. But after the last two elections were stolen by the Republicans all rules seem to have been discarded.
It is a shame that in this day and age, and in America no less, this kind of fraud is prepetuated on the people.
27. Pete | 10.21.08
any information about the purged list of over 50,000 black voters by Elizabeth Harris in Florida? She gave the US the Bush Administration we all so fondly love and cherish!!
28. Loopy | 10.25.08
Republicans can’t run on their record, and I don’t just mean the past 8 years, so fear, smear and misinform is all they have left. I don’t believe the Republican Party ever expected McCain or any other Republican to be President this time. Watching the Republicans expose themselves is my reward and watching Republicans that weren’t at risk of losing their seats endanger their own positions with their own ignorant mouths. Thank you Jesus:) From a long line of true American Democrats I say people already have freedom of religion but that is as far as it goes so be thankful and keep it out of our government.
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1. SFSister | 10.19.08
I can’t believe that although ACORN has come out basically unscathed from all this, they’re still getting death threats, courtesy of the McHate campaign. And I’ve seen nothing at all about the Republican group YPM, which really DOES dupe people into signing up as Republicans. The only story I’ve heard about it is from the L.A. Times, yet this group continues to operate all over the country, unchallenged, even as I write this. Why isn’t ANYONE in the press even mention these people? What is it with the so-called “liberal media”?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud18-2008oct18,0,1216330.story?track=ntothtml
It was also a Republican group(perhaps YPM, since it turns out they have a history of this) operating in California in 2004 that posed as real voter registrars, then tore up and dumped the Democrat registrations in the trash. A whistle-blower, after a struggle with the group, retrieved the wrecked Democratic forms and alerted the local press, and the local radio station sounded the alarm. Unfortunately, probably only a fraction of the duped voters heard about it til they got to the polls and found they couldn’t vote. I was infuriated and called the DNC in DC to report this. The Democrat lawyer was blase: “Oh yeah, the Republicans do that all the time.” Business as usual in the Republican Party. You can’t win by merit, so you cheat, lie, smear, bully and brutalize. Business as usual.
Was this reported in the press? Don’t hold your breath.