The GOP Escalates Its Nutty Attacks On ACORN

Thursday, 16 October 2008, 12:45 am
Opinion: Scoop Link

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The GOP Escalates Its Nutty Attacks on ACORN

In recent weeks, conservatives have escalated their attacks on ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Conservative lawmakers were able to remove a provision aimed at aiding low-income housing programs from the Bush administration's $700 billion economic bailout bill by calling it a "slush fund" for ACORN. Before that, conservatives blamed ACORN for "precipitating the subprime crisis." And last week, they alleged that the "purpose" of ACORN is to engage in voter fraud. However, as columnist Joel McNally correctly noted, the "underlying motive for attacking ACORN" seems to be that it is the "nation's largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people." "It is an organization that engages in that dreaded community organizing," McNally wrote. "It actually tries to give a voice to the poor and most vulnerable among us." Indeed, after years of enacting policies catering to the wealthy, the right-wing seems to be fearful of millions of new low-income voters registered by ACORN casting their ballots in favor of progressive policies.

VOTER 'FRAUD': In early October, ACORN announced that it had registered 1.3 million new voters for the November election. Seizing on reports of apparently fraudulent voter registrations in some states, conservatives began claiming that the "purpose" of ACORN is to commit "voter fraud." However, all that was found during a raid of ACORN's office in Nevada was apparently fraudulent voter registration forms, which do not constitute voter fraud. "It's not voter fraud unless someone shows up at the voting booth on election day and tries to pass himself off as 'Tony Romo.'" And who would try to do that?" wrote Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL). As New York University's Brennan Center for Justice noted, "[T]here are no reports that we have discovered of votes actually cast in the names of [false] registrants." Under most state laws, in fact, voter registration organizations like ACORN are required to turn in all the forms they receive, even the suspicious ones. Furthermore, as Brad Friedman pointed out in the Guardian, "[I]f [ACORN] can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ... In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers."

For Full Article See…
The GOP Escalates Its Nutty Attacks on ACORN

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