ACORN Las Vegas Office Raided on Charges of Voter Fraud (& Open Thread)
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on October 7, 2008 at 4:21 PM in ACORN, Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Open Thread, Voter Fraud
SusanUnPC’s NOTE: I’m sorry we haven’t had an open thread today. It’s been crazy busy, and we are working on a story that could bust this election wide open. Stay tuned!
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According to reports just filed by AP, FOX News, Washingtoin Post, CBS News, and several other local news sites, “ACORN’s Las Vegas headquarters has been raided by Nevada authorities looking for evidence of voter fraud”.
Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud.
Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state’s office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about “erroneous” registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN. The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote.
“Some of them used non-existent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications,” Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev. He said some registrations used the names of Dallas Cowboys football players.
And as we know…
It’s not the first time ACORN’s been under investigation for irregularities in registration records.
In 2006, ACORN committed what the Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the “worse case of election fraud” in the state’s history.
In [that] case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up — all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes.
Mary Pat Flaherty of The Washington Post reports:
Charles Jackson, a national spokesman for ACORN, said the group would have a response later Tuesday. ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
In July, the two Nevada state agencies involved in the raid, along with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Nevada, formed a task force to target voter registration and election fraud and complaints over voter registration practices, potential voter fraud, and enforcement of laws regarding voter intimidation. The federal agents were not part of Tuesday’s search, Walsh said.
ACORN’s Las Vegas office, Walsh said, registers voters mainly in Clark County.
Registration drives conducted by ACORN in several states are under scrutiny by local elections officials for the accuracy of cards gathered by its workers.
The group also has been the object of heated denunciations from the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign, which contend the group is attempting to overwhelm election officials with new registrations that are carelessly gathered and would enable unqualified voters to get on the rolls.
“It is very difficult to ascribe any other motive to the activities of ACORN other than to swamp the system with registrations cards” that range from illegible to being drawn from names from telephone listings or other public directories, said RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross. Cairncross spoke during a telephone press conference on another ACORN voter drive in northwest Indiana that local news accounts report is under review by elections officers.
The ACORN drives, he said, “point to a lack of control in this organization” and “a willingness to go out and do this relentlessly.”
Associated Press Writer Oskar Garcia reports
No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.
This is typical, I understand. Whenever anyone calls or shows up to question ACORN workers, the offices quickly become a ghost town.
Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.
The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.
For great reporting on the far reach of ACORN, please check out NancyA’s excellent stories: Consumer Rights League, Obama, ACORN and The SubPrime Mortgage and Senator Graham Mentions ACORN
Please also see Uppity Woman’s excellent report Acorn Nailed Registering Dead People in Indiana.
Since Senator Obama and ACORN seem to have such a symbiotic relationship, thought today’s development in Las Vegas should get a mention.
Interesting that I have not yet seen any mention of any of this on the all-Obama-all-the-time networks, MSNBC and CNN. Please let us know if you do.
Glad to see Nevada state authorities are on the job.
There are at least some people out there who still believe in one person, one vote.
by Ronald Scott
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