Q&A #1: What is the deal with ACORN?

This is the first in hopefully a series of responses to election questions posted by readers.

What is the deal with this ACORN thing that Fox and Limbaugh are pushing? - Axel F

Let's start with answering, what is ACORN?
The Asssociation of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is an organization that performs voter registration drives in low income and minority communities. They have registered over 1.3 million voters nationwide for the upcoming election. However, In some cases, registrations obtained may contain false information provided by those being registered or false registrations provided by part-time employees trying to pad their hours with fake or duplicate cards.

What does ACORN do with false registrations?
ACORN has a Quality Control staff which calls the person listed on every card to verify information. ACORN alerts election officials whenever its Quality Control staff find a card that appears to be a duplicate or problematic. In most states, the law requires that every signed card be turned into election officials, even if it is fake or incomplete. ACORN flags those cards. In the relatively few cases where some canvassers have turned in bad voter registration cards, the employees are fired and the employee's name is turned over to state election officials for possible prosecution. These cases appear to be workers trying to get paid for doing work they didn’t do.

What is Obama's connection?
IN 1995, Obama was part of a team of lawyers seeking to force the State of Illinois to implement the National Voter Law of 1993. In the lawsuit, ACORN, the United States of America (the Department of Justice), the League of Women Voters of Illinois, and the League of United Latin American Citizens were named as plaintiffs, and the decision identifies Obama as counsel representing ACORN and others. The plaintiffs won the lawsuit. Additionally, the Obama campaign has hired Citizens Services Inc. in the past, a consulting firm that subcontracts some voter registration work to ACORN.

Why is Fox and Limbaugh trying to make a big deal out of this?
I am not fully certain as to why conservatives are trying to implicate Obama in some "scandal" with ACORN, but I will hazard a guess. Low income voters and minorities are believed to typically vote Democratic. Thus, the Republican party would like to purge the voter registrations obtained by ACORN. It is a form of voter suppression. If they can make Obama look guilty of misconduct in the process, all the better for them.

Is this voter fraud?
No. This is voter registration fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and in the few cases that it has been found, it involved people who were directly involved with the election and polling places. So, what is voter registration fraud? One example that I heard someone give on the radio was for a person who filled out a registration form as Mickey Mouse. If this person was to vote using that registration, they would have to show up at the polling place with a valid form of government identification with the name Mickey Mouse. For those of you in Colorado, here is a list of the forms of ID accepted for voting by mail or in person.

Axel F, I hope that provides the information you wanted about Acorn. Feel free to ask more questions.