Project Vote

According to a report from Ohio today, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has asked the ACORN-tainted Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to investigation ACORN's voter registration work in the state.

“U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan has formally asked Ohio's secretary of state to look into allegations that ACORN had at least a preliminary plan to back Democrat candidates in key Ohio congressional races in 2008.”

The political plan was described in an October article as “having been scaled back,” and of course, ACORN denied any partisan activity.

“But to some, ACORN's early 13-page plan for the 2008 election reinforces what critics always assumed: The group's goal was never nonpartisan. The political plan and other ACORN documents show that the group was interested not just in helping presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom it urged its members to support, according to post-election Federal Election Commission reports. ACORN also was interested in Congress and the Ohio Statehouse.

"There's no question that ACORN strategized to figure out how its election efforts could maximize the benefit for selected Democratic candidates in the most competitive races," U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California told The Plain Dealer. “

An illuminating  fact not mentioned in either article is that ACORN prepared political plans for several key battleground states in 2006 and again during the 2007-08 election cycle. As evidenced by the draft plans developed in the Spring of 2006 by the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) of ACORN Political Operations, these plans were aimed at electing “progressives” and in some cases broke down the Congressional districts by race for maximum targeting. SWORD, which was staffed by Project Vote staff, including myself, worked with ACORN head organizers in FL, MD, MI, MN, OH, PA, and RI to create local documents for the ACORN field staff to implement and present to funders and/or various partner organizations.

A copy of the Maryland and Colorado draft plans from 2006 are available online. Key parts of the plans are the contact and Congressional district sections at the end. For example, in the Maryland plan, it calls for mailings and face to face contact. A screen shot of the type of mailing Marylanders received is shown below.

ACORN used Project Vote staff and computers to create the PowerPoint “Campaign for a New Congress." This PowerPoint was aimed at swaying the Congressional election in Maryland from Albert Wynn to ACORN ally Donna Edwards. Using the final political plan, ACORN canvassed voters and mailed pieces through its affiliate Communities Voting Together.

Campaign for a New Congress

Communities Voting Together has the same address as the Project Vote office in DC and its address on the screen shot above is the same Elysian Fields address where hundreds of other ACORN entities "reside.

As a 527 group, Communities Voting Together paid over 150,000 to Citizen's Services Inc, and contributed to Wade Rathke's Chief Organizer Fund. Jeff Robinson is listed as the contact for Communities Voting Together and some may remembered Robinson from the 2008 elections (emphasis mine):

"In fact, the Obama campaign paid an ACORN-run organization more than $800,000. In Federal Election Commission required filings, the Obama campaign reported that this money was paid for polling, advance work and event staging. After watchdog scrutiny called this claim into question, the Obama campaign revised its filing and acknowledged that CSI was paid for “get-out-the-vote” projects.

CSI Executive Vice President Jeff Robinson last August told Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter David M. Brown that CSI is a 'separate organization entirely' from ACORN. But as Brown reported, CSI has the same office address as ACORN’s national headquarters, ACORN itself described CSI in 2006 as its 'campaign services entity.' Coincidentally, the widely identified “national deputy political director for campaigns and elections” for ACORN is...Jeff Robinson."

ACORN's shell corporations make it easy for a political plan to become a partisan voter registration drive facilitated by thin veiled “partnerships.” The filing reports of Communities Voting Together raise a number of questions, including whether the misspelling of the name on the filing was intentional. The payments to various ACORN entities should give any astute lawmaker pause.

ACORN has been able to claim that it never worked in some recent elections including NY-23, but as this screen shoot illustrates, Communities Voting together was mailing and passing out door knockers in 2006 for Corzine in New Jersey (without a mention of ACORN).

Will ACORN backed officials like Jennifer Brunner (who has her eye on a Senate seat) and officials in Maryland and Colorado take notices of these obvious attempts to elect Democrats, or will they continue to turn a blind eye to ACORN in order to save themselves?

(Anita was the whistle-blower against ACORN and former ACORN employee. She speaks with authority -- Soren)

Last week there seemed to be some debate over the tax status of ACORN. The great thing for ACORN is that they want it to be that way. ACORN is a conglomeration of “social” organizations whose main goal seems to be keeping minorities marginalized and poor. After 38 years of the ACORN way, I would have to say that the communities that they “help” have hardly seen any of the estimated $120 million a year that the council of ACORN organizations brings in.

Often one entity will solicit money explicitly for ACORN but never mention ACORN in the application. For example, Project Vote did not have the field capacity to run half of the programs that it requested money for during the 2007-2008 cycle.

A quote from the Project Vote 2007-08 Voter Participation Program general support proposal reveals ambitious goals.

“Project Vote’s 2007 Voter Participation Program, made up of the five priority areas noted above, will meet the following goals:

• Assist 1.1 million voters in filling out voter registration applications (over 2007 and 2008) through our “traditional” program

• Assist 400,000 – 600,000 New Americans fill out voter registration applications

• Reach a minimum of 1.9 million voters for voter education and mobilization

The entire cost of this program is estimated at $28 million for 2007-08.

A quick query of the document shows that the word ACORN does not appear at all, but ACORN as everyone is aware, has run the voter registration program for years. Where the problem comes in is that Project Vote is using its tax exempt status to directly fund ACORN. In an email dated Monday, June 04, 2007 Nathan Henderson-James, who serves as both the Project Vote Research Director and the ACORN Political Strategic Writing and Research Director demonstrated this “wink, wink” approach to financial reporting.

Nathan Henderson-James [polnat15@acorn.org]

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 8:28 PM
To: David Lagstein
Cc: Anita Moncrief
Subject: Dotting i's and crossing t's

Dave,

In an effort to ensure that we are in compliance with government regs about these EAC grants and whatnot, I’m going to ask you to take the notes from February about the MI poll worker project (which I am attaching) on MI ACORN letterhead (I’d say include the part all the way down to the “notes” section) with a cover letter saying something like “Here’s the report of our activities for the Poll Worker Project.”

Actually here’s some suggested language:

Please find enclosed a summary of the work undertaken by MI ACORN-Saginaw for the Young Poll Worker Recruitment Project. As you can see we met or exceeded our numeric goals for numbers of workers recruited. We consider this project a success.

It was great to partner with Project Vote on this project and we look forward to working with you again when circumstances warrant it.

If you have any comments or questions do not hesitate to contact me at (number) or (e-mail).

Regards,

David Lagstein

Head Organizer

Michigan ACORN

Make it out to me (address below) and e-mail me a copy.

But also SNAIL MAIL a copy to the DC office for the paper files. Make it out to Anita MonCrief’s attention at 739 8^th St. SE, Washington, DC, 20003. I’m cc’ing her on the e-mail as well.

Thanks a lot!

Nathan

PS I am enclosing the two narrative reports so you can see how this worked out.

Nathan Henderson-James

Director, Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD)

3655 S. Grand Ave #250

Los Angeles, CA 90007

213-747-7202 phone, 213-747-4221 fax, 510-213-1970 cell

polnat15@acorn.org

The problem that exists with this “partnership” is that there is not separation between Project Vote activities and ACORN activities. In all fairness, in preparation for the intense scrutiny of the 2008 elections, the Project Vote national office in DC did build a door to separate it from ACORN National, DC ACORN and ACORN Housing who all occupy the building.

David's reply can be seen as an acknowledgment of what Nathan is suggesting 

---- Original Message -----

From:
David Lagstein

To:'Nathan Henderson-James'
Cc:'Anita Moncrief'

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:00 AM

Subject: RE: Dotting i's and crossing t's

I see – I am just sending the letter with the attached notes, not the stuff that project vote wrote.

David Lagstein

Head Organizer

Michigan ACORN

1249 Washington Blvd., Suite 1303

Detroit, MI 48226

313-963-1840

Fax 313-963-4268

miacorn@acorn.org

Web: www.acorn.org

It is equally disturbing that the grant in question is a government grant from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) relating to the Help America Vote Act. With ACORN's history of partisan and aggressive activity, I wonder if they would have qualified without Project Vote's tax status. On the ACORN side Nathan helps select the states that the voter registration programs are run, usually based on partisan considerations; and on the Project Vote side, he writes the proposals and the reports to fund ACORN's political agenda.

I think its time that the IRS took a look at this cozy relationship and at their compliance with tax exempt rules and regulations. I am sure that they would be interested to know that tax letters have not gone out to ALL donors since at least 2005, they are un-cashed checks from individual donors dating back to 2004 lying in boxes in the DC office and until late 2007 there was maybe $10 million dollars worth of unaccounted income that could not be tracked.

This house of cards has been shaky for years and hopefully it will fall before it squanders more government funds.

Yesterday, a very important piece of information popped. The fundraising consultant for the Ohio Secretary of State in her 2006 election, Jennifer Brunner, is the Director of Development for Project Vote, Karyn Gillette.

It is easy to see how Brunner's strategy of turning of HAVA checks (and then suing to keep them off) melds nicely with ACORN/Project Vote's strategy to flood the voter rolls with fake people.

This suggests that Brunner is probably a creature of ACORN in some form. One wonders how many more Democratic Secretaries of State were backed by ACORN.

UPDATE: Brunner's office contacted me with a correction. I didn't mean to suggest that Gillette was still a consultant and I have clarified that.