WASHINGTON – An activist organization defended its voter registration practices Tuesday amid new allegations of voter fraud and a call from Republican lawmakers to investigate irregularities.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities, and poor and working-class voters, the group says. It also has a history of work – and trouble – in Pierce County.
Some of those registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least five other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also recently questioned the group’s voter forms.
More than 13,000 workers in 21 states recruited less-fortunate voters, who tend to be Democrats.
“The vast, vast majority were dedicated workers,” ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said at a news conference. “They did something remarkable in bringing all these new voters.”
On Monday, election officials in Ohio’s most populous county asked a prosecutor to investigate multiple registrations by four people who signed up through ACORN. One voter said he signed 73 voter registration forms during a five-month period.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections is reviewing suspect voter forms from at least two counties.
Meanwhile, House Republicans also have renewed their push for a Justice Department investigation of ACORN. On Friday, six GOP leaders wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey to urge him to make sure ballots by ineligible or fraudulent voters are not counted Nov. 4.
ACORN’s Whelan said staffers separate applications with missing or false information and flag them for election officials. All applications, including problematic cards, are handed in because some state laws require it, he said.
Whelan said he did not know how many registration cards had problems but believed it was a small percentage. He was unsure how many workers were fired for purposely turning in duplicate applications or those with fake information, he said.
In fall 2006, ACORN workers submitted about 1,400 registration forms in Pierce County. Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy has told The News Tribune that her employees became suspicious because of the large number of registrations for voters who supposedly lived at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.
In July 2007, prosecutors in King County charged seven ACORN employees with submitting false information on voter-registration cards. Five of the seven have since pleaded guilty. Two of the five ACORN employees admitted falsifying registrations in Pierce County.
Prosecutors said the ACORN workers weren’t scheming to permit illegal voting. They were trying to get paid for work they didn’t do.
Pierce County deputy prosecuting attorney Allen Rose said in February that the workers, paid $8 an hour by ACORN, were trying to meet quotas imposed by the advocacy group. When they couldn’t get enough legitimate registrations, they combed phone books for names or made them up, Rose said.
In February, Pierce County announced plans to purge 230 names from voter rolls as it completed an investigation of voter-registration fraud that centered on ACORN. None of the apparently fraudulent voters ever cast a ballot in the county.
McCarthy emphasized that the intent of the ACORN employees was to “make a buck,” not to inflate the voter rolls. And she said the office’s vetting process worked.
The News Tribune contributed to this report.
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