ACORN: Another "Guilt by Association" Mantra

Except in this case the charges aren't even true. I'm posting this because the ACORN accusation -- that Obama is associated with a group that is engaged in vote fraud -- came up in a thread at EA Forums. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has this commentary,, which draws heavily on this article by Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent.

But voting experts say voter fraud of this type is extremely rare. “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls,” the Brennan Center for Justice concluded, after conducting a comprehensive study last year.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center’s studies show that rules like the one Wisconsin’s attorney general is advocating disenfranchise thousands of people – most often the poor, elderly and minorities.

In Florida, for example, where the Brennan Center sued the state on behalf of the state’s NAACP, studies showed that black voters made up 13 percent of all registration applicants, but were 26 percent of all matching problems. Similarly, Latinos were 15 percent of the total voting population, and 39 percent of those blocked; while white voters were 66 percent of the voter applicant pool, but only 17 percent of those whose applications didn’t match.

“The law inevitably leads to higher and heavier burdens being placed on less affluent voters and voters of color,” said Adam Skaggs, counsel for the Brennan Center. “So more of those voters will have their votes not counted in November. And as we saw in 2000, it can take only a couple hundred voters to make the difference in the election.”

In the case of ACORN, Eviatar notes this:

It all started with the GOP’s accusations that ACORN promotes voter fraud — a charge it’s been making for years but which it’s stepped up this campaign season with a vengeance.

Readers even cited the charges in commenting on my last story, which was about how actual voter fraud -– the kind that affects elections -– doesn’t really exist.

What the voter fraud fear-mongers neglect to mention, however, is that in most cases, the charges against ACORN have not been substantiated. Which means there’s no reason to believe they were ever true.

As we know from the U.S. attorney firing scandal under Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, chief prosecutors are not above pressuring their underlings to go after voter fraud that doesn’t exist.

But the most important reason why the unsubstantiated charges against ACORN are misleading is that even in the few cases where it turned out that people were wrongly registered, there is no evidence that anyone actually turned up on Election Day to vote on their behalf.

A voter registration may be invalid because someone signing up accidentally provided a wrong address or phone number; or because a worker provided false information.

But in the cases cited as evidence of voter fraud by ACORN -– most notably one cited as the worst case of voter fraud in the state of Washington, where seven people were convicted last year –- the prosecutor himself noted that it was a scheme by a few individuals to make money. No one was actually trying to influence the outcome of the election.

Given that the charges are all coming from the right, and in light of the U.S. Attorney scandal, which was essentially about prosecuting nonexistent voter fraud, is it fairly plain who's wanting to engage in fraud?

Update: Here's Digby's commentary on this story. Good one. Read it.

Ditto by dday:

Meanwhile, there's a very real story about thousands of voter registrations being blocked in swing states, mass purges of the voter rolls, and all kinds of fallout from the 2002 Help America Vote Act, passed by Republicans and signed by George W. Bush. But that doesn't get mentioned, because there's no group like ACORN to tar and feather.

If you're poor, if you're struggling, if you are a minority, Republicans don't want you to vote. And furthermore, they don't care if this backfires. They mean to call into question the election and the office of the Presidency itself under a Democratic Administration. They win either way.