ACORN allegations
GOP diverting attention from voter repression
ACORN has just completed the largest, most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in U.S. history. We helped 1.3 million low-income, minority and young voters across the country register to vote, including more than 42,000 new voters in Minnesota. In order to complete such a massive project, we hired more than 13,000 registration assistance workers.
Any large voter registration operation will have a small percentage of workers who turn in bogus registration forms; their goal clearly is not to cast a fraudulent vote. It is simply to defraud their employer — in this case, ACORN — by getting a paycheck without earning it. In nearly every case, ACORN discovered the bad forms and called them to the attention of election authorities, put the forms in a package that identified them as suspicious, encouraged election officials to investigate, and offered 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.
The goals of the people orchestrating these attacks are to distract ACORN from helping people vote and to justify massive voter suppression. That's the real voter fraud. The noise about a small fraction of the forms ACORN has turned in is meant to get the press and public to take their eyes off the real threat.
Peter Molenaar, St. Paul; chair, Minnesota ACORN
Troopergate
