Fraud, Voter, Voter Registration and Acorn

Of course while this is a regular lie told by the right and it is getting a lot of attention this cycle, even getting repeated by Palin and McCain, it is just one of the many lies and smears getting a lot of play.


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Acorn, Election 2008, Lies

Voter Fraud Arrest In California

In light of the Acorn silliness, we have a real arrest for voter fraud.

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.

Now this is real voter fraud, trying to get a real person voting access in an area that they are not allowed to vote in. This is very very different that what Acorn is accused of doing. The funny thing is this guy was caught in this fraud in an effort to pull off a bigger fraud that is about as silly as what Acorn is being accused of.

He was accused of:

Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.

The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP

At it's base this is very like Acorn's work (person is paid per form filled out), except no one at Acorn has ever been arrested for Voter Fraud and there has yet to be any evidence of Acorn changed people party affiliation without their approval.

For our slightly slow folks on the right the only fraud that has been seen in the Acorn cases has been their employees trying to get paid when they have not done real work. This is fraud against Acorn, not fraud by Acorn. So, why does Acorn files these 'fake' forms? By law Acorn has no option but to submit the flawed forms even if they know they are fake (Mickey Mouse, Donald Trump, Al Coholic etc). They have even tried to work with the authorities by submitting suspect forms separately and looking at charging their staff members.

In addition, even if an bad employee some how gets Mickey Mouse registered to vote, Mickey still has to actually vote (or take other actions that having a voter registration is required for) for voter fraud to occur. Mickey being registered is not voter fraud. There is no evidence that this has or will be occurring.

It is a false flag, a lie, to distract from the real issues of the day.

But for those keeping score, the number of voter fraud cases this year, by political party:

Republicans 1
Democrats 0


Tags
Acorn, Election 2008, Fraud

Lying About Acorn

There have been a number of voices on the right lying about Acorn, voter fraud and other voter issues about the coming election.

Ed and Dispatches from the Culture Wars has some real information on the issue.

There are four really important facts here. First, that in the very few instances where actual fraud takes place (as opposed to duplicate voter registration applications or applications with portions that are illegible or have mistakes in them), ACORN is the victim of that fraud, not the perpetrator.

Second, that in almost every case where canvassers have turned in fraudulent applications, they were caught because ACORN turned in both the fraudulent card and the identity of the canvasser, and they do so separate from all the applications that they have no reason to believe are bad.

Third, that none of this has anything to do with anyone actually voting twice or anyone being registered to vote that is not a legal voter.

...

Fourth -- and this is very important -- the law requires ACORN to turn in every single registration card that they take, even if it's fraudulent. They cannot, by law, discard ANY voter registration application, they must turn them in to election officials. And bear in mind that they have little means of knowing if someone is turning in a duplicate application because they don't have access to the state's central voter file. If someone who is already registered fills out a card, either because they figure maybe their registration has lapsed and it won't hurt to make sure they're registered or because they feel sorry for a canvasser, by law those cards must be turned in to the county election officials.

So, when you hear the right whining and crying about this, it is based on a lie, a false issue that has nothing to do with actual votes case.
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Acorn