Posted on 10/23/2008 3:47:10 AM PDT by southlake_hoosier
An ACORN official said its Lake County voter registration drive was one of the worst in the country for bad applications, but GOP efforts to smear the grassroots social action group are inaccurate and unfair.
"There was voter registration fraud but not vote fraud," said Jeff Ordower, Midwest director for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, during a visit Wednesday to The Times' Munster office.
Local Republicans castigated ACORN earlier this month for delivering hundreds of voter registration applications bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people in Lake County. One infamous application was made out in the name and address of Jimmy Johns, a Crown Point fast-food outlet.
Ordower said Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have made ACORN's voter registration program, which has experienced similar problems in other states, a national issue.
"In percentages of problematic cards versus total cards collected, (Lake County) was the highest in the country. It was a very weak drive," Ordower said.
ACORN is running a nationwide drive to register low-income residents of urban areas.
"We need to register our people -- low-income African-Americans and Latinos," Ordower said. "There is a large disparity on who has the right to vote and who is on the voter rolls."
He said it is a nonpartisan drive costing $16 million nationwide and funded by private contributions unaffiliated with either major party.
ACORN employed 126 canvassers in Gary who filled out about 7,900 new voter application forms, 687 of which were "problematic" because ACORN quality control workers couldn't verify phone numbers, driver's license numbers or other elements of the applications, Ordower said.
Lake County officials complained early this month that some ACORN vote canvassers apparently pulled names and addresses from telephone books and forged signatures.
Eric Weathersby, a local ACORN representative, said the Gary office was plagued by bad management and "12 really bad" canvassers. He said canvassers weren't given quotas but wouldn't be paid their $8 per hour salary if they underperformed on the goal of an average of 20 new registrations per day.
He said the office was shut down from Aug. 28 to Sept. 23 and reopened with a new staff that performed much better.
Lake County GOP Chairman John Curley said he doesn't believe ACORN's performance improved after the office reopened because there still were a large number of problematic applications.
Ordower said ACORN caught 98 percent of the problem applications but still had to turn the paperwork into county officials under state law.
He said Indiana's computerized voter registration database and voter identification law ensured none of the bogus registrations could have been used to commit voter impersonation.
"There is no scenario where those people on problematic cards would show up at the polls," he said.
http://www.nwi.com/extras/pdfs/Acorn_Document.pdf
Weak in the sense that this is just one very small link in the huge nation-wide fight to steal the election and the country.
If ACORN wants to be seen as a good example for society, they should put their efforts toward organizing people around issues that matter and less of getting people to lie.
as if voter registration fraud is better than voter fraud
we attempted to rob the bank, we didn’t actually rob the bank
we attempt to kill someone, we didn’t actually kill anyone
so these vicious attack from GOP are so unfair!
True, but it's the activist poll workers who will vote for them, or some of them, after the polls close. It has been witnessed to happen in the past.
By requiring zero knowledge of citizenship responsibilities in order to exercise your right to vote, we have opened Pandora's box. By flooding the precincts with voters that are beneficiaries of socialism, ACORN is setting the stage for voter fraud by having a set of "registered" voters ready to be injected into the system, especially with the motor voter laws on the books. It is becoming difficult if not impossible to validate votes. Like the union thugs and during Husseins Iraq, there will be one viable candidate (a Democrat of course) and one outcome in this country, like Kenya.
And that puts the lie to their argument, as if it were not vote fraud, because it surely is the front half of exactly that. The Obama and Jesse Jackson-types who are attempting to nuance our criminal laws are absolutely vote fraud kingpins and masterminds.
Is that even believable, that one of the major parties in the US has put up as their candidate one of the biggest proponents of voter fraud this country has ever seen??!?!?!
LBJ on steroids!!
HF
Our cities that have ACORN presence are going to be awash in voter fraud and the Colin Powell type "Republicans" (at the election poll-watcher posts) will be totally intimidated to let the Left have their way with them, lest they be called "names" and lose their "street cred."
HF
The really bad part of this is I’m not sure there is a Republican in Gary, IN to perform poll wathing duty. The place is completely run by Black Dems. It has one of the highest crime rates in the USA. Many parts look like bombed out Beruit...
Years back if you went to the med centers in Indy the only AA that were employed, were in house keeping etc. Now they are technicians, nurses, doctors. Many nice neighborhood with mixed housing. Even the historic district downtown now has YW Professionals living near work. BIG change.
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Born Hoosier here recalling that GARY was the first major city to elect a black mayor?????
The IN legislature took note and our new laws are a direct result of that information. IMO purposely taken to the SCOTUS so it can be the respected law of the land. ACORN’s worse enemy. They can faux register, but faux voting is next to impossible. The new laws have heavy penalties for any clerk, judge or inspectors at the polls who do not follow the letter of the law.
Last I saw the only viable part of town left was the lake front...
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