More Fraud
So what about those made-up names on voter registration forms? Well, it’s an inevitable consequence of ACORN paying people based on the number of names they bring in — it creates an incentive for people to pad their lists. But how terrible is this? Josh Marshall explains:
I’ve always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here’s the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for more registering people then they eventually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won’t count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there’s very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated casing of actual instances of vote fraud.
Right. To repeat what I wrote before, what’s always missing from these allegations of voter fraud is instances of fraudulent votes being cast. But if conservatives are really concerned about the integrity of the registration process, the thing to do would be to make registration much simpler and easier. With same-day voter registration, for example, there’s little need to mount registration drives at all. Everything just becomes standard get-out-the-vote.
41 Responses to “More Fraud”
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October 10th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
So ACORN says they pay based on hours worked, not number of registrations.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/acorn_rallies_its_troops.php
Are they lying? Are you stenographing from somewhere? Honest questions. My job isn’t reporting. I guess yours isn’t either, but do you know?
October 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Yep, it’s important to understand that ACORN pays by the hour, and the cheaters they hire are using fake cards to cheat on their timesheets to get paid for work they didn’t do. The fraud is against Acorn, and Acorn reports to the authorities — by separately bundling suspect cards.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Ambinder says, “ACORN is required by law to turn in every completed form — even if they’re obviously fraudulent. ACORN insists it has procedures in place to flag these forms, but you can’t blame supervisors of elections from throwing up their hands when they come in.”
I don’t understand what that “throwing up their hands” is supposed to mean.
It’s easy to see why a private group is required by law to turn in all forms. Otherwise the group could suppress the registrations of people who would be likely to vote for a certain party.
And given the high percentage of morons in our society, there are always going to be idiots who agree to register and then put “Bugs Bunny” or “Mister Clean” on the form. It’s silly, but there’s no harm in it. Obviously they’re not expecting to vote under those names.
So, okay, ACORN has to turn these forms in, but it flags them so that the supervisors can reject them.
This is an everyday part of their jobs. Why should they “throw up their hands” when it’s time to do it?
October 10th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Even when paid by the hour, people who are paid to get registrations are expected to get their numbers. It’s not cost effective for ACORN to have someone out in the field all day, pay them for the day, and only get 10 registrations. So fraud against the company will still happen by people afraid of getting fired if they don’t collect enough signatures.
I’ve worked for a company that does signature gathering for petition drives, and voter registration drives, and pays by the hour. There’s always fraud. People get lazy, take long lunches, or just sit down and don’t work for an hour in the middle of the day. Then they create false signatures/registrations to cover for it. It’s a cost of doing business.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Acorn does pay by the hour, but if you’re a guy who just slacks off and doesn’t get any forms filled out, they’re gonna notice at the end of the day that you’re not turning in any forms! So, duh, the slackers fill out forms with fake names, or just copy all the same forms they’d legitimately gotten filled out the day before, or have their idiot friends fill them out, or whatever.
I mean, Acorn is the one getting ripped off here. If you say you’re knocking on doors to get people to register on a certain block and you don’t actually do it, they’re kind of screwed when they or anybody else tries to get out the vote on that block on election day. Kind of a problem, dude.
Not to mention that to catch this crap, they have to find somebody competent to go through the registrations to flag the fake ones, and when they catch it they have to re-draw the maps to re-include the district they sent this guy to cover, and they lost a day, and they have to fire the guy…it’s all a huge pain in the ass.
And what’s more annoying is that the guys making these BS accusations are political professionals and they KNOW Acorn is getting ripped off. They have been in this situation where somebody lies to you about getting the job done, and they KNOW it sucks! They KNOW that’s a the worst kind of problem for any field operation trying to win elections. You wasted time, you wasted money, and you got bad information. That’s like the trifecta.
It’s really disgusting that they’ll go up and lie about this. They KNOW Acorn are the ones getting screwed. But they don’t care, because they get to say the word “fake” and pretend there’s some kind of vast conspiracy of poor people stealing elections.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
The right is always trying to supress the vote. The left shouldn’t unilaterally disarm. I don’t know anything about these acorn folks, and only heard about them a couple of days ago. But it sounds to me they’re doing the Lord’s work.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
OK, thanks for the input everyone. Matt, I think you should edit the line, “Well, it’s an inevitable consequence of ACORN paying people based on the number of names they bring in,” to something that isn’t false.
I’m afraid that the essential point–that registration fraud and vote fraud are very different in occurrence and degree of harm–is likely to be lost behind layers of race- and class-based innuendo.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
We need laws that make it illegal to hire people to register people to vote.
Either that, or we need to make sure that if you’re paying people to get citizens to register to vote, that they can only register real patriots, meaning white Republicans.
That is obviously to only fair way to stop this massive, massive registration fraud which has totally threatened this country with the possible victory of a black man.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I would compare this to the paid signature gatherers here in Washington State. When an initiative is put on the ballot the signatures are usually gathered by people being paid by the signature. There is an incentive for the gatherers to get as many signatures as possible. Some of them go so far as heckling people. I usually decline to sign, but if I was annoyed enough it might be tempting to put pen to paper and write “Mickey Mouse” or “Tim Eyman” or something. More often I think you’ll find duplicates, underage people, and people who live outside the relevant districts. None of this is “fraud” per se. In fact, all initiative sponsors plan on a certain percentage of signatures being declared invalid by the Secretary of State (or other election officials).
October 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
NIinNY posts perhaps the funniest thing I’ve read here: My job isn’t reporting. I guess yours isn’t either, but do you know?
MattY is about as far from a (real) reporter as anyone could get.
If anyone wants to do some real reporting, find out who started the “ACORN is a victim” charade. Did it start with an ACORN flack, or an MSM “reporter” or blogger?
As for MattY’s proposal, it’s akin to saying that if we just declared nothing to be cheating then there wouldn’t be cheating at all. Maybe he should be honest for once and admit that.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
With same-day voter registration, for example, there’s little need to mount registration drives at all. Everything just becomes standard get-out-the-vote.
******************
Not true. Registered people are much more likely to show up at the polls, and if no one preregisters the lines are going to be miles long and people won’t bother. Same day is awesome, but registration drives are still important.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The county officials are “throwing up their hands” because of the volume of registrations being submitted. There is a huge drive right now to get people to participate in our democracy and it is working. A great many people have registered to vote this year. Whether that is because of the candidacy of Barack Obama, because of dissatisfaction with George Bush, or because of enthusiasm about Sarah Palin is not really material. The voter particpation rates in this country should be national shame. Get out the vote drives are one of the most patriotic things you can do.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Why do we even let lower income black people register to vote? Isn’t that un-American? Shouldn’t Republicans be able to administer some sort of loyalty test before those people are allowed to try and vote for that one?
October 10th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I’m NIinNY (typo in the first post). 24AHead, my posts are to be used for good, not evil. Of course ACORN is the victim in this. Their name is being sullied and their funds depleted, with no benefit to their organization.
Or do you think they’re trying to pay people to register imaginary citizens who will never be able vote because of their imaginariness and then flagging dubious registrations for election officials with the intention of covering their own backs so that when they bring the handful imaginary people to the precinct to commit a felony they won’t be culpable, all in order to swing the election to their agenda?
If influencing the election was their goal, there are much more cost effective ways to do it. Like posting signs in Republican neighborhoods saying that Republicans will lose their loans if they vote. Or creating a massive party apparatus with the purpose of challenging legitimate votes.
Maybe they’re just trying to register as many poor people as they can. Do you see how much more sense that makes?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
The problem with difficult voter registration rules is not just poor low information voters. Its people like me who moved to Ohio for a job on October 1 and nearly missed the registration deadline had it not been for an Obama volunteer who gave me the form to fill out at a Bus station on the way to work. I was really busy doing all the other things associated with moving and didn’t have a chance to find out what the rules were. Plus if I got the job a week later I still should have been able to vote in Ohio because that is where I live.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I think matt’s point about same day registration is being missed. In Minnesota, I registered same day my first time to vote and when I moved to and around the Twin Cities. You either have someone vouch for you already in the precinct or bring two forms of proof that you live in the precinct. So an actual person has to show up, with proof or vouching – so fraud is minimal if existent. Minn. doesn’t have any of the problems in the news today. And Minnesota has very high voter turnout.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
If anyone wants to do some real reporting, could you find out where I put my bag of Cheetos? Questions need to be asked about whether the MexicanGovernment stole them, and hacks like MattY won’t ask them.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Alaska’s report on Palin’s abuse of power is out. Bottom line: Sarah Palin was very very naughty.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Maybe we all could reach some sort of reasonable compromise wherein Acorn-registered voters get three fifths of a vote.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Do they even have a soul?
October 10th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I’m not sure about this. As long as they are not registered under obviously fake names (I. P. Freely), wouldn’t it be easy for someone to register under a false name (say, James Leland) and then vote under that name?
Lots of places let you vote without showing any ID and in fact I think that some people are fighting to make it illegal to require ID for voting.
As for the idea that multiple or fraudulent registrations being removed by the registrar, how many states have really good registration tracking to make certain that invalid registrations are rejected?
Of course, a lot of this could be helped by improbing registration records, I will admit. But I am not entirely convinced that organizations are not tryig to slip fraudulent votes through the cracks.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
El Cid, the problem is that these people were born with too much Soul. The Compromise is among the ways of correcting for that.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
But I am not entirely convinced that organizations are not tryig to slip fraudulent votes through the cracks.
Why would they purposely try to do this? It likely wouldn’t affect the outcome of the election, and they’d face major felony charges if caught.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Glaivester, someone could presumably register to vote as someone else, then register again as himself, and vote twice (wait in line twice, vote in two different places so no one at the first precinct recognizes him). Or just vote once illegally if he’s a felon. But why would he want to, considering what the penalties are if he’s caught? I just don’t see what the attraction would be.
Obviously a candidate would potentially have an interest in paying lots of people to vote illegally. But that would be pretty crazy, too, since whatever the going price for a bought vote is, the going price for incontestable evidence of a conspiracy to commit voter fraud would be far higher. And it would only take one to drop a dime. Note also that past voting scandals generally involved ballot stuffing by officials, not fake voters actually showing up to cast fraudulent votes.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:35 am
I just don’t see what the attraction would be.
I’m sure there is an attraction: the thing is that even if you commit that crime, it doesn’t affect the electoral outcome. To engage in voter fraud to a degree that it would overturn an election, you would have to have thousands or tens of thousands of fraudulent voters and ensure not one of them exposed the scheme. A random audit of just a small portion of the registration forms would quickly expose a scheme like that. The cost/benefit analysis doesn’t pay off, unless you think that ACORN is engaging in voter fraud “for the sake of it.”
October 11th, 2008 at 2:10 am
What Tyro said. If you want to alter the outcome of an election conducted on any kind of scale, you suppress the vote, stuff the ballot boxes or tamper with the count: anywhere where there’s a multiplier effect.
I mean, seriously? Let’s take a hypothetical congressional district, with about 250,000 total votes cast. If polls report it 50-50 with a 3% MoE, to feel sure of changing the outcome entails getting perhaps 7-10,000 people to put their asses on the line. Alternatively, a few people can paste up flyers around key areas saying ‘if you have an unpaid parking ticket, you’ll get arrested when you vote’.
how many states have really good registration tracking to make certain that invalid registrations are rejected?
Is it something that you think state government should pay for, Glaivester? Doesn’t it make pragmatic sense to do the damn registration yourself, instead of spending money to screen third-party efforts and prosecute violations?
October 11th, 2008 at 2:16 am
The way elections get stolen is that someone fucks with the ballot boxes. Or the punch cards, or the computers, or whatever. Not by enlisting hordes of fraudulent double-voters to parade through the pollng places.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Or you just program the diebold voting machine to tabulate the votes however the owners of the voting machine want them to. That would depend, of course, on who owns the machines and keeps them from being secure and accountable.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Alas, the ACORN unit in Milwaukee was one of the first to have this problem become a legal issue, and Wisconsin has had same-day registration for years. Otherwise, I agree with the general point.
I’m willing to agree that getting people registered is eliminating one obstacle to voting for the low-passion voter, but I suspect that registering thousands of low-passion voters is a lot of work to get only a few people to the polls. And if it means ZOMG VOTE FRAUD shitstorms just before every election I’m not sure it’s worth it. It’s basically cemented the idea in every pea-sized Republican brain (the ones that are, mind you) that ACORN=votefraud=Democrats.
My analysis, in short, is that if you have to PAY people to strong-arm citizens into registering, you’re doing it wrong. Somehow.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:15 am
My analysis, in short, is that if you have to PAY people to strong-arm citizens into registering, you’re doing it wrong.
This sounds a little too much like the earnest “if it were really important you’d be willing to do it for free” liberal mindset. I can’t say I have any problem with sending out paid canvassers to register people. People who collect signatures to get candidates and initiatives on the ballot are sometimes paid, as well. Not everyone is willing to give up their time for free. It’s a fair point to wonder if these voter registration drives are going to pay off in the end and wonder if registering these low interest voters pays off in actual votes, but I don’t see why there’s an expectation that the people pounding the pavement to register voters should be working for free.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I’ve been reading a lot of the stuff on ACORN and I would find it really entertaining if it were not so serious. The rightwingnuts are becoming seriously unhinged over this and feel more than normally justified in their unhingement. On the surface it does seem to be a problem because most people just can’t fathom why people would go to the trouble of writing down all those names and addresses if someone didn’t really mean to use them for fraudulent reasons. The fact that writing down all those names means that they can collect a semi-decent paycheck without having to do a lot of the tedious work necessary doesn’t seem to register with most people. The fact that these types of allegations have been investigated over and over and found to amount to nothing more than a fraud against ACORN also doesn’t carry much weight. They have their own little proofs.
I just followed a link from pollster.com to an article in The American Spectator and found this little gem cited as proof positive that there was fraud:
Perhaps someone should tell the author that many of the aerial shots in Google are as much as four or five years old. Try plugging the address 20 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC into Google Maps, take a look at the aerial shot and notice the parking lot across Massachusetts Ave, with lots of cars parked there. Now do the same at Ask.com maps and notice that the parking lot is now a big new office building. A lot can happen in four years. But don’t let that get in the way of a good story.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Hey, does anybody remember that time that the people that prosecute vote fraud allegations were all fired and replaced with partisan hacks willing to investigate bogus vote fraud stories?
Maybe that has something to do with this.
Or maybe Bush filled the DoJ with loyalists just to prove that he could.
October 12th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I’m grateful to ACORN. Before, you’d go to a comments section and the nuttier comments would often look just like other comments – except if they were helpfully put in to all caps. Thus, you would find yourself annoyingly trapped in reading an obviously crazy person’s rant. Now, I can just scan to see if ACORN is included in the comment. If it is, we have a lunatic.
I guess I am grateful to the McCain campaign’s effort, too, without which the loonies would have had to content themselves with obsessions about IQ, statements about victory in Iraq and the like. The use of the most improbable theories ever propounded about the roots of the financial meltdown – ones that could not seriously be believed even by those feverishly jotting them down, as everybody and his sister knew about the hyperinflated housing market, the piggy bank use of home equity loans, etc., etc. – has definitely echoed with the population, causing McCain’s credibility to start looking like that of Bear Stearns. Excellent work, fellas!
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