More on ACORN
Posted On Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at at 8:58 AM by Dan
This is a good article on the status of Republican attacks on ACORN. The piece is copied from the Mother Jones blog. There's also an Associated Press article about the ACORN's press conference. I'm still not a fan of the organization, but I can't take issue with registering hundreds of thousands of people. Personally, I don't see a pattern of voter fraud by ACORN. The idea doesn't even make sense to me. I have deep criticisms of the organization, but they are based on actually talking with people. Having an organization-wide system of making up voter information runs counter to what they do. The problems, in my opinion, most likely stem from having an underpaid and overworked staff pushed to meet ever-increasing goals. They don't have a pattern of voter fraud, they have a pattern of staff abuse.
The ACORN Controversy: A Tough Nut to Crack
For years, conservatives have grumbled about voter registration efforts aimed at low-income citizens, particularly those mounted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), claiming these campaigns are rampant with fraud and corruption that benefits Democrats. On Tuesday, this low-grade battle became a headline-making clash, as the McCain-Palin campaign blasted ACORN and the Obama-Biden campaign and ACORN responded in kind.
At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, the McCain campaign put the chairmen of its "Honest and Open Election Committee," former Republican Senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman, front and center before the national media. The pair asserted that the election is in danger of being compromised, accusing ACORN of submitting thousands of phony voter registrations nationwide. They noted that they had sent a letter to the Obama campaign, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, and top state election officials proposing the creation of joint election observation teams. "Each campaign would list every precinct where either fears there is a potential for voter intimidation, fraud, or mistrust of the tabulation process on Election Day," the letter reads. "Each campaign would be responsible for recruiting a volunteer for each named precinct. The Republican and Democratic volunteers would work jointly as an observation team." (It is already routine for campaigns and parties to send election observers, often trained lawyers, to polling locations on Election Day. Representatives of local media outlets are commonly on hand as well.)
Danforth and Rudman's letter ends, "Let's talk." The Obama campaign isn't interested. It points out that the campaigns already dealt with this issue in an exchange of letters in September that generated little media attention. At that time, the McCain folks notified the Obama campaign of its joint observation teams idea and a week later the Obama campaign responded harshly: "This seems a starkly political maneuver to deflect attention from the reality of the suppression strategies pursued by national, state and Republican party committees." Nothing further occurred.
At the press conference, Danforth and Rudman suggested that ACORN was engaging in fraudulent voter registration on a massive scale — they mentioned 5,700 rejected ACORN registrations in Philadelphia, 1,400 more in New Mexico, reports of individuals registering to vote dozens of times, and so on. Senator Rudman said that he does not know what ACORN, which works with low-income communities and is a known sympathizer with liberal causes, hopes to accomplish, but that their actions call the integrity of the election into question. They repeated the charges on the cable news networks after the press conference.
The Senators didn't quite accuse of Barack Obama of orchestrating massive voter fraud, but they came close. "Senator Obama has a special responsibility to reign in ACORN," said Danforth. The campaign pointed to Obama's connections to the group: Obama worked with ACORN briefly while a community organizer, did minor legal work for it after law school, and distributed funds to it while a board member of the Chicago-based Woods Fund. Further, the Obama campaign paid a subsidiary of ACORN over $800,000 to help with get-out-the-vote efforts (not voter registration) in the Democratic primary. ACORN takes pride in primarily registering low-income people, people of color, and young people. All three groups are major parts of Obama's coalition. Together, these facts are enough for many on the right to claim a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election. Practically every conservative group with a mailing list, from the Republican National Committee to the pro-life Family Research Council, has sent an email alerting its supporters to the grave threat ACORN supposedly represents.
Shortly after the McCain press conference ended, ACORN had an opportunity to defend itself. Renting a room just down the hall from the McCain campaign press conference, the group admitted to the press that in the process of registering 1.3 million new voters with the help of 13,000 mostly part-time canvassers, problems have occurred. Most commonly, its representatives said, workers seeking to make a quick buck have inflated their registration totals with duplicate or fictional registrations — thus the report that the Dallas Cowboys roster has allegedly been registered to vote in Nevada. But there is no institutionalized attempt to steal the election, they maintained. In fact, problematic registration forms are flagged by ACORN before they are sent to election officials, who frequently require all forms, legitimate or not, to be handed over to the state in which they were filed. In many of the cases where hundreds or thousands of problematic registration forms were found, ACORN was the first to identify the problem. And, the organization pointed out, those responsible for submitting phony registrations have been fired and in some cases, reported to authorities for possible criminal action.
ACORN officials also pointed out that fraudulent voter registrations do not equal fraudulent votes. Someone registered to vote 72 times can only cast one vote at the polls. (In response, the McCain campaign pointed to vulnerabilities in the absentee voting system, but offered few details.) On this front ACORN was echoed by Demos, a think tank, and Common Cause, a good government advocacy group. The heads of both groups cited studies indicating that very few people try to use a fake name to vote. Voter fraud at the polls, they said, is a minor problem compared to voter intimidation, intentional voter misinformation campaigns, and barriers to voting commonly set up in conservative states, such as Voter ID laws. The Obama campaign, in a conference call held hours after the dueling press conferences, reiterated these points. Campaign manager David Plouffe called the McCain campaign's focus on ACORN a "strategic and cynical ploy… to sow confusion in a deliberate attempt to decrease turnout."
ACORN's leadership has sent a letter to Senators Danforth and Rudman requesting a sit-down meeting to address the controversy. It mirrored the letter Danforth and Rudman sent to the Obama campaign. The McCain campaign has a political interest in declining the invitation. After all, why would it put to bed a controversy that has the ability to energize its base in the final weeks of the election?
Voter Suppression Strategy Targets ACORN
Posted On Wednesday, October 08, 2008 at at 8:29 AM by Dan
I've done my bit of hating on ACORN on this blog, and I'm unapologetic about it. However, the story below from CBS News is not about ACORN, it's about how the U.S. has a history of pushing poor people out of the political process. You can check out more information on that by getting a copy of Project South's It Ain't Just About A Vote: Defining Democracy for Movement Building (go to the store and find it under toolkits). What struck me, however, after reading the CBS story was the similarities to another event, also related to Project South, from the 1980s. I found the following two articles searching the New York Times archive:
Voter Fraud Convictions Overturned
Lawsuit Against the Justice Department
Non-Profit Raided In Voter Fraud Probe
Questions Raised About ACORN’s Voter Registration Drive
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/07/cbsnews_investigates/main4508170.shtml?source=mostpop_story
October 7, 2008
(CBS) CBS News Investigative Producers Pia Malbran and Wendy Krantz wrote this story for CBSNews.com.The Las Vegas headquarters of the nation’s largest grassroots community organization for low-income people was raided today by Nevada state authorities as part of a voter-fraud probe.
The raid was initiated by Nevada’s Secretary of State, Ross Miller, after a series of accusations that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN, was submitting voter registration lists to the state that contained false or duplicate names of voters.
“When we got [to the headquarters], no one was there so, there were no arrests,” Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh told CBS News. But, he added “agents did seize lots of records.”
CBS News has learned that the state’s investigation is focusing on the conduct of ACORN’s work force. Critics allege that ACORN hires workers “off the street” to sign up new voters, paying them by the number of voters registered - sometimes resulting in false and duplicate names. But an ACORN spokesman dismisses this allegation and told CBS News that workers are paid “by the hour” and “not by the number of people they sign up.”
In an official statement, ACORN Interim Chief Organizer, Bertha Lewis, called today’s raid “a stunt” and said it “serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls.” Lewis says any time ACORN “identified a potentially fraudulent application” they notified election officials. But, Lewis claims Nevada election officials “routinely ignored” ACORN’s concerns and “failed to act.”
The raid comes two months after state and federal officials formed a task force to go after election-fraud allegations. Earlier this year, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued a memo to all Justice Department employees telling them in no uncertain terms that “politics must play no role in our efforts.”
ACORN has been around since the 1970’s and has offices nationwide to assist low-income people with a number of issues. Part of the organization’s mission is to help low-income Americans, minorities, and youth, who are “historically disenfranchised” from voting register for elections. ACORN’s website says they “helped more than 1.68 million citizens register to vote” for the 2004 and 2006 elections. And just yesterday, ACORN announced it had conducted its “largest and most comprehensive” voter drive for the upcoming presidential election helping “over 1.3 million Americans register to vote.”
By Pia Malbran
What Could Happen If Georgia Votes are Counted?
Posted On Tuesday, October 07, 2008 at at 3:28 PM by Dan
Below is an article from Five Thirty Eight about Black voter registration in Georgia. If voter turnout among workers, African Americans, and others is high there's a chance the state could go for Obama. Of course, that would be if all the votes are counted. Georgia has electronic voting and no paper trail. I remember Purdue's 23 point swing and have a hard time trusting the voting process. Still, there's always a chance. As an aside, most polls show Martin and Chambliss in a statistical tie for the Senate. To see Senator Shameless go down would be a pleasure.
In Georgia, Small Improvements in Black Voter Participation May Make Big Difference
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/in-georgia-small-improvements-in-black.html
Perhaps the only happy consequence of the segregation era is that a number of Southern states like Georgia are required by the Voting Rights Act to keep statistics on registration and turnout by the race of the voter. Those statistics suggest that black voter registration is up materially from 2004.
Here are the numbers. In November 2004, black voters represented 27.4 percent of Georgia's active registered voter pool. As of October 1st, that figure has increased to 29.0 percent.
Now, that might not seem like all that big a difference. But suppose that the black vote is split 95/5 between Obama and McCain, and the nonblack vote is split 30/70. (Obama probably will not win 30 percent of the white vote. But since Georgia also contains material numbers of Hispanic and Asian voters, winning 30 percent of the nonblack vote is probably reasonable).
In 2004, also according to statistics from the Georgia Secretary of State, black voters made up 25.4 percent of election day turnout (this means that they participated at slightly lower rates than white voters). Applying those 95/5 and 30/70 voter splits to the 25.4 percent figure would work out to a 7.0-point win for John McCain, about where polls seem to have Georgia now.
Now suppose that black and nonblack voters each turn out at the same rates as they did in 2004, but that we account for the increase in black registration. According to our math, John McCain's 7.0-point lead is now cut to 4.9 points.
But that is probably too conservative an assumption. Newly-registered voters -- and nearly half of Georgia's newly-registered voters are black -- turn out at higher rates than previously registered voters. In addition, one would assume that the opportunity to vote for the first African-American nominee might be just a little bit of a motivating factor for black voters. Suppose that African-Americans represent 29.0 percent of Georgia's turnout, matching their share of active registrations. Using the splits we described above, McCain's lead is now cut to 2.3 points.
Even this, however, may be too conservative. For one thing, the registration window in Georgia is not yet over ... it concludes today. The statistics I cited above only reflected registrations through September 30. There is typically a surge of registrations in the final few days before the deadline. In 2004, Georgia's active voter rolls increased by about 150,000 persons in the first four days of October, before the registration deadline closed. That was more than they'd increased in the entire month of September.
So suppose that by tonight, black voters have increased to 30 percent of Georgia's registered voter pool. Plugging that 30 percent number in, McCain's advantage is a mere 1 point.
Think these numbers sound unreasonable? Early voting is underway in Georgia, and according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, black voters do not represent 30 percent of Georgia's early voter turnout. Instead, they represent almost 40 percent. Although early voting figures can be idiosyncratic , Barack Obama certainly seems to be having little trouble getting his vote out. Indeed, Barack Obama is winning Georgia right now.
A related question is whether the pollsters are underrepresenting the black vote in their turnout estimates in states like Georgia. I think they might be. In their past two surveys of Georgia, SurveyUSA pegged black voter turnout at 25-26 percent. This is a pretty safe assumption, since it exactly matches the Secretary of State's turnout estimate from 2004. But this isn't 2004. I would be surprised if black turnout wasn't at least 27-28 percent, and somewhere in the 29-31 percent range is entirely possible. If those numbers are achieved, Georgia is pretty close to being a toss-up. And if it is a toss-up for Barack Obama, it is probably also a toss-up for Jim Martin, who is attempting to unseat Saxby Chambliss from the Senate.
Georgia is not quite a tipping-point state. In order to win it, Barack Obama will have to have made at least some inroads with Southern whites, and if he's done so, that will mean that he's won states like Virginia and North Carolina and won't need Georgia's electoral votes. But I'd guess that it represents a more plausible pickup opportunity for Obama than states like West Virginia and Montana, which are nominally closer in the polling. And if these black voter registration numbers are replicated throughout the South, Elizabeth Dole, Saxby Chambliss and Roger Wicker could all face tough re-election battles, substantially increasing the Democrats' chances of winning 60 Senate seats.
Monday, Oct 6
Georgia Senate Polls
Electoral Vote
Pollster.com
Burkhalter: Idiot or Shill?
Posted On Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at at 10:11 AM by Dan
This is a letter I wrote to the AJC today. This version is the longer one with links since the AJC policy is to limit letters to 150 words. My letter is a response to Rep. Mark Burkhalter's idiotic op ed piece about restricting voting rights. If you want to send a letter to the AJC, you can access their letters page. You can also send the letter straight to Burkalter at mark.burkhalter@house.ga.gov.
Rep. Mark Burkhalter July 15 letter about alleged noncitizen voting was preposterous. His theory is so ridiculous I can only conclude that Rep. Burkhalter is a complete idiot or a shill for a republican strategy to restrict voting rights. Either possibility doesn't bode well for the representative.
Rep. Burkhalter should inform himself on a common argumentative fallacy called a non sequitur. A non sequitur is an argument where the conclusion doesn't follow the premise. Burkhalter commits this when he says noncitizens have declined to serve on juries in
It’s quite clear the national republican strategy for victory is based on emotional manipulation and voter suppression. It’s also clear Burkhalter has bought into this mess by presenting such an absurd argument. What is unclear is why Burkhalter has bought into this mess. He either has done it because he wants to suppress participation in the political process or because he's stupid and doesn't realize what he's said. Only Rep. Burkhalter can answer this question. Please, Rep. Burkhalter, can you tell us if you're evil or just stupid?
AJC Article: 300,000 More Georgia Voters
Posted On Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at at 9:52 PM by Dan
This is from today's AJC. Could be interesting for the presidential race, but it doesn't shed any light on anything beyond that.
300,000 more Georgians sign up to vote
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/01/08
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/07/01/voters_register.html
The number of Georgia voters has increased by 300,000 since the first of the year, with more than 4.7 million people on the active rolls for the July 15 primary, according to data released Tuesday.
Local registration officials have seen the number of people signing up to vote at a pace that picks up with each passing month.
The bump is significant, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. As a comparison, he pointed out that there were 500,000 names added to the active voting rolls in the three years between the presidential election in 2004 and Jan. 1 of this year. "That is more than a 20 percent increase, so more Georgians are getting themselves signed up to vote," Bullock.
In the July 15 primary, Georgia voters will select nominees for a U.S. Senate seat, several U.S. House seats, the state Legislature and various local elections.
Bullock believes, however, that some of the increase before the July voting can be attributed more to enthusiasm for the November presidential election and the presumptive nominees, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
"Obama is getting people to show up," Bullock said. "It may be people inspired by him or people who are scared of him. It could be any one of these. It could be both of these."
According to numbers released Tuesday, there were more than 4.7 million names on the state's active voter list as of June 16, the last day to register for this month's primary. That number is almost 39,000 more than it was two weeks earlier and almost 60,000 more than on May 31.
While Georgia was virtually ignored during the 2004 presidential race because the state was solidly Republican, both campaigns say it could be competitive this fall.
Obama is already running television ads, and the campaign said it has about 75 paid staffers and hundreds of volunteers in the state focusing just on voter registration and turnout. They are going door-to-door, often in their own neighborhoods, handing out mail-in voter registration applications. Their focus is on recruiting African-American and young voters.
The McCain campaign said it is working with the Georgia Republican Party to get people registered and voting. "The best way to encourage people to be involved is old-fashioned politics, friend-to-friend ... a common connection and shared values," said Ben Fry, executive director of the state GOP.
The racial makeup of the state's updated voter rolls is somewhat consistent with previous elections, and it also mirrors the state's population. More than 1.3 million African-Americans are on the active voting list; in November 2006 the number was almost 1.2 million. Then African-Americans accounted for 27 percent of the state's active voters, and now they represent 28 percent.
Both parties are predicting voter turnout in November that will top 90 percent in some counties because of enthusiasm for the presidential race.
Republican Policy of Voter Suppression Continues
Posted On Monday, April 28, 2008 at at 10:26 AM by Dan
This story originally comes from politico.com, but I got it off of Portside.
GOP Objects To Bill Allowing Recounts
Ben Adler
Politico
April 25, 2008
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7D294509-3048-5C12-00015B2FD7DE0D76
Voting rights activists who hoped the federal government would help local governments pay for paper trails and audits for electronic voting machines have gone from elation to frustration as they watched Republicans who supported such a proposal in committee vote against bringing it to the House floor.
The result: The elections in November will likely be marred by the same accusations of fraud and error involving voting machines that arose in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential race.
When New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rush Holt's Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act came up for a vote in the House Administration Committee on April 2, the Republicans on the committee gave it their unanimous support. But two weeks later, those same Republican members voted against moving the bill to the House floor. It would have taken a two-thirds vote to push the bill to the floor; with most House Republicans opposed, the bill didn't make it that far.
Larry Norden, director of the voting technology project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, called the vote "a sad statement on how little Congress has done on the issue of making sure elections are as secure and reliable as possible."
In May 2003, Holt proposed the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. That bill would have mandated a paper trail for voting machines so that voters could verify their vote and a recount could be performed, if necessary. The measure faced conservative objections on states' rights grounds and failed to make much headway.
So Holt introduced his new bill in January. Under the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act, the federal government would help localities switch to paper ballots or attach printers to their electronic voting machines in time for the November elections. To overcome states' rights objections, Holt crafted the bill as an
opt-in: Nobody would be required to switch technologies or conduct audits, but federal funding would be available to offset costs for those who did.
Without a mandate, Holt's bill drew more bipartisan support; Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) was one of the 92 co- sponsors. "We need standards to ensure that things are auditable, verifiable and give the voters confidence, and [Davis] doesn't think that what we have now does that," said Davis spokesman Brian McNicoll.
"The principle reason for the bipartisan consensus is that this was opt-in," Holt told Politico after the bill passed committee. "Everybody, Democrat and Republican, would prefer fewer disputed elections and better ways of resolving disputes. You can't resolve disputes without a paper trail."
But Holt's bill hit a snag on April 15 when the White House put out a statement of opposition on the grounds that it was unnecessary to spend the money appropriated in the bill when funding could come instead from the Help America Vote Act.
Republicans say it was the bill's cost, not the White House's opposition, that caused them to change their votes. "The version that passed committee on April 2 did not authorize a specific dollar amount," said Salley Collins, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the Administration Committee. "We didn't receive the [Congressional Budget Office] score until the 14th of April, one day before it went to the floor. . So we did not know that the proposed legislation would cost $685 million - $50 million more than Holt's first version."
Holt and his staff dismissed that objection. "There's no reason to expect it would actually cost $680 million,"
he said, arguing that the $680 million estimate assumes more local governments will opt in than he believes is likely.
Republicans also cited concerns regarding implementation. Collins said Holt's bill is "overly prescriptive with the hand recounts," and she suggested that it might not be realistic to expect local governments to adopt new technologies in such a short timeframe. "It could wreak havoc on a hotly contested election," she said.
Holt says these issues are red herrings: Because of the opt-in nature of the bill, any state worried that it could not complete the process in time could simply choose not to participate.
While some election reform activists would have preferred a mandatory bill, many saw it as the best they could hope to get in time for the next election. "On Election Day, if machines are breaking down and there are no paper ballots, the failure of this bill will be one place to look for explanations," said Norden.
Holt is predicting exactly that: Ultimately, he said, the bill's failure will mean that "millions of voters will leave the 2008 election questioning the process and whether their vote means anything."
Editor's note: This story was updated to clarify references to bills introduced by Rep. Holt.
