ACORN Fraud Suspicion Growing

I posted an article a few days ago about authorities raiding an ACORN office in Nevada over allegations of voter fraud. Since then, ACORN has come under increasing scrutiny in multiple states, with evidence of fraudulent registrations growing.

The New York Post online had an article that told of on Cleveland, Ohio man who claimed ACORN had paid him off in cash and cigarettes for multiple voter registrations. According to the guy in the Post story, he registered to vote more than 70 times in Ohio, and that was in just 18 months!

The Post writes that Freddie Johnson, the man at the center of the story, says "Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up. The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?'"

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is under suspicion of fraudulent voter registration activities in at least nine states, the Post says. ACORN is a left-leaning group that favors Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. And while fraudulent voter registration should be looked at in all states, it is the battleground states in this year's election that could tip the race to Obama. States like Ohio and Nevada.

The Post story reports that "Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it's a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay 'compensation on a fee-per-registration' system when signing up someone to vote." Of course, ACORN can easily avoid prosecution by saying they have no control over what individual volunteers do once out on the street to independently register voters.

Another citizen mentioned in the Post story was Lateala Goins. Goins said she also had registered to vote multiple times and "...guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them." Goins is reported to have said, "You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care."

Ben LaBolt of the Obama campaign said ACORN was not involved in the campaign's voter registration efforts, and that is no doubt true. The Post reports, though, that the Obama campaign has used Citizen Service Inc. for "various political services," and that Citizen Service and ACORN have the same board of directors. According to the Post report, citing Federal Elections Commission filings, the Obama campaign paid Citizen Service more than $800,000.