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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
 Posted - 10/12/2008 : 03:44:26
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is it crappy reporting" from the "liberal" media? From Acorn.org:
| 5. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. But for some reason, when ACORN turns voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus forms, it gets accused of “voter fraud.” This is a classic case of blaming the victim; indeed, these charges are outrageous, libelous, and often politically motivated. |
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Edited by - Gorgo on 10/12/2008 03:47:38
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 04:57:20 [Permalink]
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Most of it, I think, is crappy reporting; attempts to make the story more spectacular than is warrented, with maybe a little political bias thrown in.
Election fraud, to everyone's disgust, is common enough within both parties (although the Republicans seem to be more skillful at it). It should be rooted out vigorously, prosecuted, and punished severly if found guilty. These assholes are, in essence, stealing some of our freedoms.
Here's a piece on Obama's role in ACORN:
"Senator John McCain's presidential campaign on Friday stepped up its efforts to tie Senator Barack Obama to a community organizing group that has been accused of involvement in problematic voter registrations in several hotly contested states, including Colorado, Indiana, Nevada and North Carolina.
The group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, has long been a favorite target of conservatives. It made news this year when it was revealed that a brother of Acorn's founder had embezzled almost $1 million from the organization but that Acorn had failed to disclose the theft for eight years.
“Barack Obama has made very inconsistent remarks about what his relationship with this organization is,” Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's campaign manager, said in a conference call.
Mr. Davis said Mr. Obama had worked as Acorn's lawyer and conducted training events for its leaders. He also noted a payment the Obama campaign made in February to an Acorn affiliate, Citizens Services Inc.
While Mr. Obama did represent Acorn in a lawsuit in 1995, Acorn was on the same side as the Justice Department. The training events involved two hours of work. And the payment to the Acorn affiliate was reported in campaign filings, although they had to be revised because of an error.
The Obama campaign described the accusations as a spurious effort to tie Mr. Obama to potentially fraudulent voter registrations."
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 09:30:15 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
Most of it, I think, is crappy reporting; attempts to make the story more spectacular than is warrented, with maybe a little political bias thrown in.
Election fraud, to everyone's disgust, is common enough within both parties. |
Actually, Filthy, I'm not even sure that this is true-- at least as far as fraud at the polling place.
Think about what's involved. Suppose I want to get candidate X elected via the sort of fraud implied in the ACORN case. I would have to figure out which people registered at said place are dead or made-up or otherwise aren't going to vote. Then I'd have to pay people to go to this polling place, claim to be the dead (or made-up) person, and then hope that this person votes for the candidate I want to win (since there's no guarantee that she or he will).
Moreover, I'd have to do this enough times so as to have some sort of noticeable effect. How many state-wide elections are close enough that even 100 fraudulent votes would sway it?
If you're going to engage in voter fraud, this seems like a horribly inefficient way to go about it. Yet all these calls-- entirely from the right-- for things like voter IDs and such (which, of course tend to negatively affect the poor and minorities, who, not by chance, tend to be left-leaning in how they vote) are really just a canard.
Same with this ACORN thing. Essentially, what you have is a project to get low-income people registered to vote. And often, the people doing the registering are low income themselves. And if they're paid by the number of registrations they have, then some people looking to make a quick buck will register people fraudulently.
But so what? If I register Clark Kent to vote, so what? He's a comic book character. Superman isn't really going to swoop down and vote.
Is voter fraud a problem? Perhaps. But if so, it's pulled off by things like manipulating computer tallies or stuffing ballot boxes, and not by someone voting for Candidate X using a made-up ID. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 09:55:16 [Permalink]
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Yeah. The ACORN thing is so amateurish, if fraud was the plan, it's laughable. Look how long it took them to get caught. I think Cune is right. Some people tried to up their earnings by making up false registrations. On the other hand, ACORN does need to get a better system in place to guard against such things. Perhaps they should have gone through the registrations first before turning them in? Perhaps they should pay only for legitimate registrations, and not assume honesty on the part of their work force? They are not blameless.
But as a conspiracy to get Obama elected? That charge is lame... |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 10:37:23 [Permalink]
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Perhaps they should pay only for legitimate registrations, and not assume honesty on the part of their work force? They are not blameless.
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According to their web site, which seems to be down right now, it costs them a lot of money to check them out, which they do, and they let the election officials know that they suspect the registrations they catch, and these are the forms that the news is talking about. They have to turn the forms in, so they do it with the information that they gathered. They offer to help with prosecution of the people involved, and they usually fire the people involved.
They pay by the hour, not the registration, I assume so they don't encourage the practice of faking registrations.
Edited after I realized the acorn web site was down. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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| Edited by - Gorgo on 10/12/2008 10:41:17 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 10:42:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
They pay by the hour, not the registration, I assume so they don't encourage the practice. |
Ah, my mistake then.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that voter fraud at the polling place is just a non-issue. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 12:12:08 [Permalink]
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That's entirely true, at the polling place. There is some, no doubt, but it's inconsequential. What is not inconsequential is the sort of fraud we saw in FL in 2,000. And also the disenfranchising of voters, willy-nilly, by the various purges that caught as many qualified voters as otherwise, probably more. That we also saw in FL and are seeing now elesewhere. In my opinion, Jeb Bush and Kathern Harris, and many others including some from out of state, should have been jailed for it.
As far as I can see, this ACORN business is nonsense.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 13:50:45 [Permalink]
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It's back up. This is their claim:
| 3. In nearly every case that has been reported , it was ACORN that discovered the bad forms, and called them to the attention of election authorities, putting the forms in a package that identified them in writing as suspicious, encouraging election officials to investigate, and offering to help with prosecutions. We are required by law to turn in all forms, but instead of just turning them in and figuring that it is the responsibility of the board of elections to figure out which are valid, we spend millions of dollars verifying that forms are valid, and then separate out those that are suspicious. |
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 13:53:24 [Permalink]
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And from the Daily Kos:
| And the final fact: Republicans hate democracy. |
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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| Edited by - Gorgo on 10/12/2008 13:54:01 |
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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 18:47:10 [Permalink]
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As a Canadian this whole 'voter registration' business is alien to me. Here every adult citizen has the right to vote, and before every election enumerators go door to door making sure that the voter lists are up to date. If you miss them no sweat, you'll probably get a voter card delivered anyway. Then you take it to the polling place on election day, hand it over with another piece of identification, and you get your ballot. And note that I said every adult gets a vote, and that includes criminals serving a life sentence. We tend to believe that if you take away the right from groups you don't like, convicts for instance, it makes it easier to gradually remove it from others, like, say, women, unpopular ethnic groups, them goldanged coloreds, and anyone who ain't a decent white male Christian jew-hater who believes in bombing them filthy eyeracki ragheads back to the stone age!!!
Not that I'm hinting at anything mind you... |
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 19:14:07 [Permalink]
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Don't forget Diebold voting machine tampering...
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2008 : 00:22:22 [Permalink]
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From what I have read ACORN is the agency who reported the fraudulent registrations. Our law requires them to submit all registrations they get, but ACORN took it a step further and actually set the suspicious ones aside when they turned in the registrations to elections authorities.
Yeah, the group who reports the fraud is somehow guilty of committing it...
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2008 : 07:47:38 [Permalink]
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FactCheck.org has some comments on McCain's hyperbolic claim on ACORN's attempt to steal the election:
| McCain claimed the liberal group ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” In fact, a Republican prosecutor said of the first and biggest ACORN fraud case: “[T]his scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.” He said $8-an-hour workers turned in made-up voter registration forms rather than doing what ACORN paid them to do. |
The Republicans are hoping they can use smoke and mirrors to fool Americans into thinking this is a real issue and then once again vote for terrible government. The irony is that they likely stole the 2004 election via voter fraud. Too funny. Makes me wish God was real so these ass holes had a hell to burn in. |
-Chaloobi
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| Edited by - chaloobi on 10/16/2008 07:48:59 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/17/2008 : 03:30:47 [Permalink]
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The problem of voter registration workers faking forms to make money has been around for many years. It doesn't affect the elections themselves. As far as I've seen, ACORN has been a real leader in ferreting out suspicious forms submitted through them.
And here's another point that many seem to miss: Most of those fake registrations, since as humans they don't exist even as grave markers, cannot show up at the polls. ACORN's interest is getting as many voters in poor and working-class neighborhoods registered and voting as possible, which, I submit, is a noble goal.
Registration forms submitted on a cash-per-form basis is naturally a temptation for abuse by dishonest workers. The only reason that the GOP hasn't had irregularities in voting registration is that the Republican Party historically avoids registration of new voters like the plague. "Democracy" is not part of their name.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 10/17/2008 : 04:25:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
ACORN's interest is getting as many voters in poor and working-class neighborhoods registered and voting as possible, which, I submit, is a noble goal.
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This in particular is what the Republicans fear. If these folks vote and get around all the dummy issues like abortion and flag burning, the Republicans would have a more difficult time of it. |
-Chaloobi
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Acorn Fraud! or
