Seven ACORN workers from the Pittsburgh area have been arrested and charged with falsifying voter registration forms in the lead-up to the 2008 election.
These Pittsburg area arrests come on the heels of the 39 felony charges brought against the Acorn organization and two of its employees, Deputy Regional Director Amy Busefink and Las Vegas Field Director Christopher Edwards, in Las Vegas this past Monday. In that case, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal,
“There were 28,097 forms that were duplicates or changes of name, party or address, leaving 62,905 new voters. Of those, 23,186 actually voted in the 2008 general election, according to a report prepared by Lomax’s office. That means almost 40,000 of the new voters registered by ACORN didn’t vote, and of those, almost 19,000 had information on file that didn’t match what was turned in on the forms. “That’s 48 percent of those forms that I believe are clearly fraudulent,” [Clark County registrar of voters Larry] Lomax said.”
Allegations of various types of voting-related fraud involving ACORN have been swirling for years, with charges having been brought against ACORN employees on multiple occasions since at least 1998. Depending on who you’re talking to, there are anywhere between 12 and 14 states currently investigating ACORN for voter fraud. According to the Washington Times, ACORN voter fraud investigations took place in 12 states last year (2008): Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
From the same Washington Times article:
We could write a book on the false voter registrations submitted by ACORN. There are bizarre stories, such as one from Cleveland, where ACORN employees reregistered the same individual 77 times, even though the individual kept on telling the ACORN workers that he was already registered. But ACORN’s people kept offering to bribe him with cigarettes or money to get him to fill out another form. Similar examples from across the United States are too numerous to count.
King County (Seattle) election officials were forced to remove 1,762 voter registrations submitted by one group of ACORN employees. Five employees were sentenced to jail. The Delaware County Times noted that out of 2,000 fraudulent voter registration forms in that Pennsylvania county, nearly every single one was filed by ACORN. Chicago had 10,000 false registrations. Criminal indictments and convictions have been leveled in numerous states.
In the Pennsylvania case, the AP reports:
Six suspects forged a total of 51 cards, a felony that carries up to seven years in prison. The same six also were charged with illegally accepting payments to meet a quota of 20 registrations per day – a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.
The one defendant not charged with either of those crimes told police he filled out at least 100 voter registration cards in his own name, even though he was already registered and knew it was illegal. He’s charged with misdemeanor counts of obstructing and interfering with the elections process, as are several of the others.
Zappala said investigators targeted 100 local ACORN canvassers after county elections officials started noticing dozens of possibly forged registration forms in August. ACORN registered 38,000 new voters in southwestern Pennsylvania, including about 33,600 in the county last year…
The pattern is undeniable, and frankly I thinks it’s incredibly naive of anyone to think that none of these fraudulent registrations ever turned into actual votes. While I’m encouraged to see these arrests, there needs to be more. ACORN is a criminal organization which engages in voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, personal intimidation of bank/corporate executives and their families…nothing short of a full blown federal investigation at the national level is called for.
……
-Cnation
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