Posted on 04/02/2008 3:48:47 PM PDT by Recovering_Democrat
Eight workers for a get-out-the-vote effort in St. Louis city and county have pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election, authorities said Wednesday.
The workers were employed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), gathering voter registrations. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said they submitted cards with false addresses and names, and forged signatures.
They are Brian Bland, 23, Bobbie Jean Cheeks, 50, Cortez Cowan, 21, Golden Gibson, 21, Radonna Marie Smith, 24, Anthony Reliford, 21, Kenneth Williams, 21, and Tyaira Williams, 23, all of St. Louis. Williams was sentenced in March to 15 months in prison. The others are scheduled for sentencing in June. Each faces up to five years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.
New Orleans-based ACORN encourages low- and moderate-income residents to community activism.
The organization has said the former, temporary hourly workers were likely trying to increase their pay by turning in more, albeit, false applications.
ACORN has said it has improved its "quality control program."
St. Louis election officials have said they had problems with ACORN submissions in past years and worked with the organization to try and correct them, including asking them to put potentially fraudulent cards aside.
Hanaway said ACORN has agreed to a number of reforms to improve voter registration and quality control procedures, and report possible illegal activity.
Biggest crop of crap in the whole article:
ACORN has agreed to a number of reforms to improve voter registration and quality control procedures, and report possible illegal activity.
Should read "agreed to work harder to not get caught, and to grease more palms."
Is it just me or does it seem like that nearly every story lately about voter fraud involves ACORN?
Too bad they don’t qualify for prosecution under the RICO
Act, or do they?
15 months is not enough, unless it is 15 months with this guy.
That what happens when you use crack addicts for a voter registration drive.
I read the headline in your thread and without reading the article, I knew ACORN was involved.
How’d I do??
Them and thousands (millions?) of others.
The so-called “Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” (ACORN) is a criminal entity specializing in thug threats and voter fraud for years now. That is ALL it does.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/11/st_louisthe_democrats_paradise.html
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members. With a membership of over 350,000, ACORN is organized into more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States, as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. The organization was born out of the American Civil Rights Movement. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke, George Wiley, and Gary Delgado.[1] Maude Hurd has been National President of ACORN since 1990.
ACORN groups work through direct action, negotiations, and with public officials.
Wade Rathke is the founder and Chief Organizer of ACORN and SEIU Local 100. He began his career as an organizer for the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) in Springfield, Massachusetts. After working with the NWRO, he left for Little Rock, Arkansas, to found a new organizing effort designed to unite poor and working class families around a common agenda.
Wade Rathke is also founder and Chief Organizer of Local 100, Service Employees International Union, which is headquartered in New Orleans with operations in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. Founded in 1980 in New Orleans as an independent union of Hyatt employees, the union became part of SEIU in 1984. Local 100 organizes public sector public workers, including school employees, Head Start, and health care workers, as well as lower wage private sector workers in the hospitality, janitorial, and other service industries.
His work in the labor movement includes three terms as Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO. He is the president and co- founder of the SEIU Southern Conference, and a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU, and Chief Organizer of HOTROC (the Hotel and Restaurant Organizing Committee) a multi-union organizing project for hospitality workers in New Orleans sponsored by the AFL-CIO and its president, John Sweeney.
Wade Rathke is a longtime member of the Tides Foundation Board of Directors, and Board Chair of the Tides Center, which provides core management services to new and existing nonprofit organizations promoting social change. He is also the publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, a magazine that explores issues, campaigns, and challenges in labor and community organizing.
He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“The organization has said the former, temporary hourly workers were likely trying to increase their pay by turning in more, albeit, false applications.”
If they were paid hourly, what was the incentive to turning in as many cards as possible? We’re not as stupid as they look!
Grapes of Rathke
Acorn, a liberal activist group, comes under scrutiny. About time.
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The Democratic oak has grown, in part, from Acorn, a feisty, union-backed activist group. The organization says on its Web site that it “registered over 540,000 low-income and minority voters” and deployed over 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers for yesterday’s elections. But after years of scandal involving its election efforts and misuse of government grants, Acorn is finally coming under scrutiny, with four of its Kansas City, Mo., workers under indictment for submitting false voter registrations. (As of this writing, all are at large.) Other states—including Pennsylvania and Maryland—are also conducting probes. Notes the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City: “This national investigation is very much ongoing.”
Founded by union organizer Wade Rathke in 1970, Acorn boasts an annual budget of some $40 million and operates everything from “social justice” radio stations to an affordable-housing arm. Still run after 36 years by Mr. Rathke as “chief organizer,” it is best known for its campaigns against Wal-Mart, and for leading initiatives in six states to raise the minimum wage.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009214
On his blog Mr. Rathke dismisses criticism as “major league political harassment . . . crazy words.” Lashing out at critics, says Mr. Toler, is “just Wade being Wade, engaging in the politics of distraction.” Another former Acorn employee says the group has become a “cult” under Mr. Rathke, and must increasingly take bigger risks in order to grow. What risks it might take in pursuit of its agenda can only be surmised—though some clues may emerge from the ongoing federal investigations of Acorn’s electoral activities.
Wade Rathke has been an activist and organizer for more than 35 years. He founded ACORN, a national network of social justice groups representing low and middle-income people. He also helped unionize hotel workers in New Orleans, where he now lives.
Any morning of the week, for the price of a cup of coffee, Max Allison held court at the Walgreen's on Main Street in Little Rock. Allison, the political wizard behind a dozen Arkansas politicians, would lecture me on what he called "the equation" — how politics really worked. I listened. On long phone calls late at night, Mamie Ruth Williams taught me everything she had learned about dealing with the press from the 1957 school desegregation fights. I listened.
ACORN IS FUNDED BY CATHOLIC CHARITIES. THINK TWICE WHEN ASKED TO DONATE MONEY TO CATHOLIC CHARITIES!
Catholic Charities Office of Peace and Justice announced the recipients of $180,000 in grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the U.S. Catholic Church’s main effort to address the root causes of poverty. CCHD conducts a collection in parishes across the U.S. in November of every year, and distributes those funds in self-empowerment projects for the poor all across the country.
This is why Congress doesn’t care about voting against what the American people want - our vote apparently means nothing anymore. They are in complete control now, so why should they be concerned?
Hope these folks get a lesson in “ballot stuffing” while they are in prison. Time to gather up more rotten ACORNs.
Very astute observation. You would think a reporter would have caught that inconsistency and questioned him on it.
Claim to work 8 hours, turn in enough (fake) registrations to make it seem like you worked, but instead you smoke crack all day
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