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.
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?
ARRA News Service -Dan Spencer reports that in Ohio, a state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit was against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The lawsuit alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN's dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities. According to the press release, Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN's actions deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process:
They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters. "The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right," Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said. "ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state's roles in the process," Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. "Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes," he added. In the complaint, Thompson cites an accumulation of evidence showing numerous instances of admitted fraud by ACORN employees, as well as individuals solicited by ACORN. "In light of its hiring, training and compensation practices, ACORN should have known its conduct would cause fraud," Thompson said. "It also should know that its conduct will cause fraud in the future." In addition, the complaint cites conduct by ACORN in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
TBlumer reports Obama’s name comes up at least three times in the complaint:
(Page 3) 18. Defendant is engaged in massive voter registration drives and political canvassing throughout the state of Ohio and the United States of America; some of this work is performed on behalf of current United States of America presidential candidate Barack Obama. (Page 3) 19. ACORN’s political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, and during the primary season, the Obama camp paid Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Citizen Services, Inc. and ACORN share the same board of directors. (Page 9) 69. In Texas, where ACORN’s affiliate, Citizens Services Inc., has provided contract work on behalf of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the Houston Chronicle reported on August 17, 2008 that “About 40 percent of the 27,000 registration cards gathered by ACORN from January through July have been rejected or placed in limbo pending the gathering of more information, according to the county” while “about 6,600 were filled out by people already registered, and many others contained insufficient information.” A full copy of the complaint is available here.
Did you register to vote recently near Albuquerque? If so, you might have given your Social Security number, indeed all the information necessary to commit identity theft, to a child rapist. In particular, this guy.
You see, New Mexico ACORN hired this guy, along with a bunch of other criminals to register voters. In New Mexico, according to the Bernallilo County Clerk, where this happened, this is the infromation needed:
Name, gender, birth date, social security number, residence address, mailing address (if different from your residence) party affiliation, telephone number (optional), date and signature.
Would you trust this information with a child rapist or any other kind of felon? No.
Then why does ACORN pay them? What the story on the evening news last night:
Note that one of these guys has actually been convicted on two counts of credit card fraud. Shouldn't there be some sort of background check for people who are paid to collect this information?
Warner Todd Huston just wrote about ACORN embezzling issues. Thankfully, we just gave a criminal organization another chunk of change in the Housing Bill. Allegedly, it was to push more people into subprime loans, which they have been doing for the last decade or so. Of course, that was a bad idea.
Another big project of theirs is voter registration. Like so many voter-reg groups, like the one below, they are premised on a business model that incentivizes illegality. Watch this:
If Barack Obama were to win Virginia by a handful of votes, this would be a fundamental part of how it happened. The Obama campaign, ACORN, and Congressional Democrats are planning for that.
People in the Kansas City area can move across the state line and re-register to vote, and unknowingly become registered voters in both Kansas and Missouri. Such folks vote in their “new” state and are likely not even aware they are still registered in their “old” state. Legally, a voter cannot vote twice in both states, but it’s unclear whether such a voter accidentally registered in both states could vote in either their “old” state or their “new” state. And who would know if they did?
A prominent member of the Kansas City Star’s staff moved across the state line from Kansas to Missouri and re-registered to vote in Missouri, but is still an “active” registered voter in Kansas — more than 10 years later. For some reason, the Kansas City, Missouri Board of Election Commissioners never notified Johnson County, Kansas the voter re-registered in Missouri.
Meanwhile, the Johnson County, Kansas Election Office mails out voter registration cards to Johnson County voters at least every two years. Likely because family members still lived at the old address, as many as five mailings of voter registration cards were likely never returned as “undeliverable” by the post office, so the Johnson County officials never learned the voter now lives and votes in Missouri.
Federal Law requires that an election office keep a voter on the rolls until they have missed two presidential elections. The Kansas City Star staff member missed the last two presidential elections in Kansas (and all other elections, too, for over 10 years). It’s unclear why Johnson County officials, and other election offices, in Kansas are not more pro-active in removing such names from the list of voters. A Meadowlark article from early this year showed that over 50,000 voters in Kansas have not cast ballots since 1999 and could be removed from the rolls without violating Federal Law.
Acording to voter history from the Missouri Secretary of State, the Star staff member did cast a ballot in the last two presidential elections in Missouri (and a number of of other elections). But there’s nothing stopping this Star staff member from returning and voting in Kansas, since this person is an “active” registered voter in Kansas according to the list of voters recently obtained from the Kansas Secretary of State.
Several weeks ago, Gov. Sebelius vetoed a bill that would require a photo ID to vote in Kansas. This bill may have disenfranchised the Star staff member from voting in Kansas, but that person can still vote in Missouri. Why is it unreasonable to expect a voter to have an ID to vote in Kansas? Why is a voter ID check-and-balance too unreasonable to vote, when one must have two IDs just to work in the U.S.?
In late April the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID Law. In Kansas, we should vote for legislators this year are willing to protect the integrity of our elections, especially with the large number of voters on the list of voters who likely should not be on the list. In the next legislative session, we need sufficient legislators to pass this bill again, and override any veto by Gov. Sebelius, if necessary.
[editor’s note: The Kansas City Star staff member has not returned two E-mails requesting information for this article. The person will not be identified by name, without permission, since the person has done nothing to warrant public scrutiny about voter registration. This Kansas-Missouri “connection” was discovered by accident while researching another project.]
Did you register to vote recently near Albuquerque? If so, you might have given your Social Security number, indeed all the information necessary to commit identity theft, to a child rapist. In particular, this guy.
People in the Kansas City area can move across the state line and re-register to vote, and unknowingly become registered voters in both Kansas and Missouri. Such folks vote in their “new” state and are likely not even aware they are still registered in their “old” state. Legally, a voter cannot vote twice in both states, but it’s unclear whether such a voter accidentally registered in both states could vote in either their “old” state or their “new” state. And who would know if they did?
