Voter Fraud? Officials Raise Concerns About Thousands of Suspicious Voter Registrations
Group Facing Probe in Nevada Has Had Past Problems
A nationwide voter registration drive that has registered some 1.3 million voters this year is facing new allegations of local canvasser fraud and complaints about its practices.
As citizens registered to vote in record-breaking numbers across the country this week, local election officials raised concerns about thousands of suspicious voter registration cards collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN. The group, along with its partner Project Vote, operates one of the nation's largest voter registration drives focusing mostly on low-income African-Americans and Latinos.
The most recent allegations emerged yesterday after Nevada authorities raided the group's Las Vegas offices. Authorities are investigating reports of fake or duplicate voter registrations submitted by ACORN, including some using the names of Dallas Cowboys football players.
Investigators have alleged that ACORN hired 59 inmates on work release as canvassers. One inmate who had worked as a "team leader" for ACORN told investigators that "some of the canvassers hired by ACORN were 'lazy crackheads' who were not interested in working and just wanted money," according to the search warrant affidavit.
ACORN and Project Vote say they have been fully cooperating with investigators and called yesterday's raid a "stunt" designed to discredit the groups' work in registering more than 80,000 Nevadans. Mike Slater, the executive director for Project Vote, says the group regularly reported concerns about potentially fraudulent applications to county election officials who ignored the information for months.
Since June, local election officials in at least nine other states have reported problems with thousands of registrations submitted by ACORN's this election year, according to media reports.
Earlier in the week, election officials in Lake County, IN reported that nearly half of the 2,040 registrations submitted by ACORN on county's final day of registration were deemed "suspicious" because of missing or incorrect information or other irregularities.
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