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THURSDAY OCTOBER 9 2008 6:00 AM

In what may be the most pathetic villain campaign since the War on Christmas, Republicans have picked a new bad guy: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. You may know them as ACORN. As you can see in the name, they are community organizers, those horrible people Sarah Palin mocks for trying to help the poor. Im sure Jesus would hate them, too. ACORN has been busy signing up new voters, which means they are largely poor, minority voters. That means Democrats. That means Republicans have to portray another group working to better our country via democracy as evil.

This recent hate barrage against ACORN started when the press began writing about the huge number of people the group was registering.

Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 voters in the same states.

So, what to do? Accept that your party is quickly becoming the second fiddle of American politics and adapt to the situation by changing your platform, or attack the people taking part in democracy? Well, if youre a Republican, the answer is obvious.

Yes, attack the community organizers! And tie in Obama, even though his connection is tenuous at best. So tenuous that it is not even worth discussing.

This isnt new; Republicans have been after ACORN for years. Its kind of like watching a CEO beat up a homeless woman. Expect the next month to be filled with attacks from sexual harasser Bill OReilly, drug addict Rush Limbaugh and anti-Semite Sean Hannity. Maybe when they are done, they can kick a nun in the face.

ACORN hires low-income people to register other low-income people. They get paid per registration, so you can see how the operation would be susceptible to scumbags looking to make a few bucks without doing any work. Its the nature of the beast. But, heres the exciting thing: Fraud such as this does not in anyway effect elections. Why? Because filling out a fake registration cards to make a few bucks does not mean that someone will be voting. It means that person does not exist and therefore cannot vote. You actually have to exist to vote. There have been zero instances of this type of voter fraud occurring. This is what the Attorney General scandal is about. The Bush Administration wanted US Attorneys to go after these people, but the prosecutors found zero evidence of fraud and those who refused to prosecute because of the lack of evidence were fired.

That being said, ACORN does everything it can to stop this type of criminal activity. The organization attempts to authenticate every registration submitted by workers but our laws force them to turn in every registration form, whether fraudulent or not. See a problem there? ACORN flags the registration forms they believe are fraudulent, but still, they must turn them in. Then Republicans scream their asses off like a bunch of douchebags, ACORN is committing voter fraud! They've turned in thousands of fraudulent registration forms!

Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley wants a federal investigation into hundreds of voter registrations bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people.

"Fraudulent applications are the workings of ACORN groups operating from Milwaukee and Chicago who are getting out the vote for Obama. I'm Republican, but I want everyone who should vote to vote. But I want a clean election," Curley said at a Wednesday news conference.

John Curley is a douchebag. Deep down he knows that and it causes him internal pain. Hopefully he works that out before he dies. Its really wretched stupidity and an affront to Democracy. Our system was set up to deal with these sorts of occurrences.

Curley acknowledges the work of the county elections board to weed out obviously invalid applications.

No shit? Who would have known? This is exactly what happened in Nevada this week. The Vegas chapter of ACORN was about to have a potluck dinner (elitists) to celebrate signing up 80,000 new voters, when they were raided.

Instead, their office was raided Tuesday morning by agents of the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General who alleged in an application for a search warrant that ACORN had hired 59 felons through a work release program as canvassers and submitted nearly 300 apparently fraudulent voter registration cards as part of the drive.

Lets see. Getting my calculator out here. 80,000, 300, uhthats .3%. Holy shit! Put them in jail! And ignore the fact that the system is set up to catch problems like this! And ignore the fact that 79,700 people were legally registered by this group. And ignore the fact that ACORN was forced to submit those forms BY LAW and flagged them as fraudulent!

ACORN's internal checks, Mellor said, included tracking forms assigned to canvassers using serial numbers and worker sign-offs on each form and following up with listed voters by phone to verify they had taken part in the registration drive. The search warrant mentions those procedures.

That cooperation and meetings with state officials also are mentioned in the search affidavit, as is a subpoena from the state that was delivered to ACORN in September asking the group to resubmit information on several employees it had previously turned over to county elections officials. The forms were resubmitted, Mellor said.

Yes, raid a community organization that is cooperating with you. Thats some quality law enforcement. And, hey, as a by-product, theres no good news in the papers about 80,000 new registrants. What a shock. But there are a few tidbits indicating law enforcement officials knew this was a case of individual fraud and not the entire organization.

The submitted voter cards included addresses and names that do not exist in Nevada, duplicate registrations, names culled from telephone books and names of Dallas Cowboys players, an investigator for the Secretary of State alleged in his affidavit for a search warrant.

One ex-employee of ACORN reached by the state investigator told him she began making up names for her forms on days when it was too hot to work outside. ACORN canvassers are paid by the hour.

Now, Republicans will explain this was not a partisan attack because the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General are Democrats. Uh huh.

In July, the two Nevada state agencies involved in the raid, along with the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office for Nevada, formed a task force to target voter registration and election fraud and complaints over voter registration practices, potential voter fraud, and enforcement of laws regarding voter intimidation.

The US Attorneys Office here we are, back at the Republican machine and the root cause of the Attorney General Scandal. The scandal in which employees of the White House still refuse to honor Congressional subpoenas.

This vilifying of community organizations has led to heinous voter ID laws in states like Indiana and massive Republican intimidation at the polls. Republicans will use ACORN to cause chaos at the polls and challenge voters when they show up. Because what ACORN has done is reprehensible, while Republicans around the country do what is right.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOPs effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people arent voting from those addresses, party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

Thank God they care, or those .003% of registration cards flagged by ACORN would have gotten through and people who lost their homes in Michigan would be able to vote.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for more from FearTheReaper and read his blog, Stop All Monsters.

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Comments

FearTheReaper

NEWSWIRE

I'm lost

OCT 09, 2008 10:36 PM

NewSpectre said:
These threads give me much lulz

SG's paranoia knows no bounds

hey look over there, on the grassy knoll.

I feel the same way about trolls.

SergeantPsycho

USA

January 2007

OCT 10, 2008 02:34 AM

80,000, 300, uhthat's .003%. Holy shit! Put them in jail! And ignore the fact that the system is set up to catch problems like this! And ignore the fact that 79,9700 people were

I know I'm a retarded racist asshole for pointing this out, but 80,000 - 300 equals 79,700 not 799,700.

bender47

Huntsville, AL

April 2005

OCT 10, 2008 07:07 AM

not that it's that important and at the risk of exposing myself as a geek, but 300/80,000 is 0.3%.

Katieesq

USA

June 2008

OCT 10, 2008 09:46 AM

SergeantPsycho said:

80,000, 300, uhthat's .003%. Holy shit! Put them in jail! And ignore the fact that the system is set up to catch problems like this! And ignore the fact that 79,9700 people were

I know I'm a retarded racist asshole for pointing this out, but 80,000 - 300 equals 79,700 not 799,700.

durbustweeb

Alpharetta, GA

December 2004

OCT 10, 2008 10:17 AM

Pay no attention to the bullshit ACORN has pulled. Pay no attention to their contribution to the housing fiasco. Pay no attention to Jimmy Carter and the democratic congress' MAJOR contribution to this clusterfuck through CRA, nor to Mr. Raines, a Carter advisor close to CRI, Clinton's U.S. Office of Management and Budget chief when the administration started aggressively enforcing compliance while Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought bundled mortgages they knew were bad then proceeded to sell them to other countries. Ignore that Raines is a very tight Obama insider who was in charge of the VP selection team, who walked way from the meltdown at Freddie Mac with a $91.1 million dollar wad of cash, many millions of which were gained through cooking the books. Forget that ACORN was in the thick of it, with Obama as their legal counsel.

What a moronic bunch of propaganda from FTR. But then that's all he knows.

Stiles

Oakland, CA

November 2002

OCT 10, 2008 10:25 AM

durbustweeb said:
Pay no attention to the bullshit ACORN has pulled. Pay no attention to their contribution to the housing fiasco. Pay no attention to Jimmy Carter and the democratic congress' MAJOR contribution to this clusterfuck through CRA, nor to Mr. Raines, a Carter advisor close to CRI, Clinton's U.S. Office of Management and Budget chief when the administration started aggressively enforcing compliance while Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought bundled mortgages they knew were bad then proceeded to sell them to other countries. Ignore that Raines is a very tight Obama insider who was in charge of the VP selection team, who walked way from the meltdown at Freddie Mac with a $91.1 million dollar wad of cash, many millions of which were gained through cooking the books. Forget that ACORN was in the thick of it, with Obama as their legal counsel.

What a moronic bunch of propaganda from FTR. But then that's all he knows.

Back that up with facts, please. Otherwise, it's just more ill-informed spew.

smithers_jones

I'm lost

November 2003

OCT 10, 2008 10:41 AM

Not surprisingly, you failed to address any of the substantive points raised in the article. Your trail of half-baked assertions and links by association would make a conspiracy theorist proud. Good job!