ACORN

There have been many stories circulating about a fraudulent voter registration program conducted by an organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc.). Like all stories there are at least 2 sides. The problem is that the media is reporting the story from those proposing that there has been significant fraud and that the fraud, since the program focuses on getting maximum registration, is somehow associated with and being promoted by the Obama campaign.

The following is a copy of a communication from ACORN to its member list. It tells another side of the story that you wont hear elsewhere. For anyone interested in being well informed about the presidential campaign, it is necessary reading:

ACORN UPDATE:

Dear friends and supporters of ACORN,

As you can imagine, our staff, leaders, and communications consultants have been hard at work all weekend on our “fightback” strategy. McCain, the RNC, Fox, and Lou Dobbs are continuing their attacks, but I think we are turning the corner as far as getting our message out, and getting ahead of the story. That isn’t to say that we won’t see more eruptions over the next couple of weeks: the RNC has been doing as many as three press calls a day trumpeting supposed ACORN “voter fraud”. But more and more observers are coming to the same conclusion that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. did in his Huffington Post piece late last week:

Meanwhile, I say thank you, ACORN. Thank you, Project Vote, for taking our democracy seriously enough to try to include 1.3 million more poor people in a more perfect union.

Or, as Talking Points Memo put it in order to provide some context:

What you're hearing right now from Fox News, the New York Post, John Fund and the rest of the right-wing bamboozlement chorus is a just another effort to exploit, confuse and lie in an effort to put more severe restrictions on legitimate voting and lay the groundwork to steal elections. It's that simple.

And then there was the a piece last week from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where the reporter went right to the source:

No problems in Colorado with ACORN

By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News
Published October 10, 2008

An advocacy group accused of election fraud elsewhere has maintained a cordial working relationship with Colorado's biggest counties, and that has kept its drive rolling smoothly here, election officials say. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has had some problems in past years. But its efforts haven't been an issue in this election, said Rich Coolidge, spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office.

Here are a few quick quick updates:

1. Our message:

A. As most objective observers have now realized, virtually all of the supposed cases of “voter fraud” are in fact situations where a percentage of the thousands of voter registration assistance workers we hired this year attempted to cheat us. In almost all cases we CAUGHT the suspect cards, and FIRED the offending workers. In most states, we are required to turn in ALL cards to election officials, no matter how problematic, so we segregated, bundled, and marked those cards as “suspicious”, and called them to the attention of election officials. Now, partisan politicians and the right-wing media are searching out those already marked and bundled cards, and claiming that they are evidence of “fraud”.

B. This has nothing to do with “voter fraud.” The fictitious or duplicate people on the forms will never make it onto the voter rolls, and even if they did, there would be no one showing up with the ID now required of all new registrants on election day. Risking jail to cast an extra vote isn’t how people steal elections these days. They do it by keeping people from voting.

C. The real goal of all this noise about the registrations we asked boards of elections to investigate is to serve as a smokescreen for voter intimidation efforts. It’s the same play they tried in 2006, when it turned out they had fired at least three US Attorneys primarily for failing to prosecute bogus charges of “voter fraud.” Already this year, they’ve been hard at work trying to keep people from voting.

2. Getting the word out:

Despite the relentless partisan assault on our program, we are getting out the word. In the last several days ACORN representatives have been on Larry King Live, the Tom Joyner show, CSPAN, MSNBC, CBS National News, and many other outlets — with more to come. And, a long list of columnists, reporters, and bloggers have written excellent pieces debunking the charges against us. I have assembled a few of them as links at the bottom of this email.

3. Going on the offensive:

We have developed an aggressive strategy over the next week to go on the offensive. We are still finalizing the exact schedule, but we will be a) calling on Secretaries of State to make sure that families who have been foreclosed on do not lose their opportunity to vote; b) opening up an “ACORN Voter Registration Library” that allows reporters to examine all our quality control procedures in detail; c) holding local press events with new registrants, to put a human face on those who we helped register to vote; and d) releasing a study which contrasts the steps ACORN took to demand regulation of predatory lending and the financial industry, versus the steps Senator McCain did (or more accurately did not) take.

4. Stephanie Strom:

I’m sure you all saw Stephanie Strom’s most recent article, in yesterday’s New York Times. This was actually a fair-minded piece that did a good job debunking the McCain campaign’s shrill charges about the close connections between ACORN, Project Vote, and Barack Obama.

5. McCain’s anti-ACORN advertisement:

And, of course, many of you may have seen the McCain campaign’s advertisement which attempted to make these links; as of a few minutes ago it was still on the McCain campaign website, at http://www.johnmccain.com/#tab1. We have put out statements repudiating it.

6. The situation in Indiana:

Our program in Gary, which has come under repeated attack on CNN, was by far our worst managed program, and one that we closed down early when we couldn’t correct the problems. However, even in Gary, the roughly 2000 problematic (mostly duplicate)registration applications (out of about 8000) were all cards that WE identified and clearly labeled as problematic when we gave them to election officials. Our quality control program did what it was supposed to do — a fact that CNN has neglected to report on.

7. Our team of consultants:

Thanks in part to suggestions from some of our funders, we have beefed up our communications team to handle the onslaught. We have brought Chris Lehane, a veteran of the Clinton, Gore, and Kerry campaigns, to help plot overall strategy. He is working closely with Scott Levenson, the founder of The Advance Group, which has an active political and communications practice in New York City, and Lewis Goldberg, of KCSA, who has worked with President Clinton and many other elected officials.

8. Fair and accurate reporting:

Finally, here is a sampling of some of the more balanced recent articles and blog posts about ACORN’s work.

http://donnabrazile.com/viewNews.cfm?id=306 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/10/09/2008-10-09_gop_in_push_to_erase_voters_purges_acorn.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-jesse-jackson-jr/attacks-on-acorn-based-no_b_133657.html http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/10/no-problems-in-colorado-with-acorn/ http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/10/75639/882/410/626072 http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/10/acorn-reaction/ http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/601 http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Two_kinds_of_fraud.html http://publicbroadcasting.net/kwmu/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1385887&sectionID=1 http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/10/1526687.aspx http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/voter-fraud-vot.html http://www.rooflines.org/1173/whos_afraid_of_acorn_and_why/ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/223436.php http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/308983 http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8987 http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/10/10/conservative-fraud/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-hasen/the-purge-surgewhy-the-go_b_133786.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/dems-roll-over-mainstream_b_133818.html http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6493 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/12/83238/044/321/628179 http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9028 http://firedoglake.com/2008/10/12/republican-operative-i-dont-want-everyone-to-vote/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-matzzie/how-mccain-will-steal-the_b_133989.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/53790.html

As always, thanks for your help. Please feel free contact me with questions, suggestions, or advice.
Steve
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Steven Kest
Executive Director
ACORN
2-4 Nevins Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718-246-7900 ext 201
917-855-3165 cell
skest@acorn.org www.acorn.org