11 accused of faking voter registration cards in Miami-Dade

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Miami Herald

By JENNIFER LEBOVICH
[e-mail]

Eleven people hired to register potential voters in Miami-Dade County before last year's presidential election were being sought Wednesday for falsifying hundreds of voter registration cards.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office issued arrest warrants for each of the 11 suspects, all of whom worked for the local chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, (ACORN).

By early Wednesday morning, six were in custody, authorities said.

ACORN came under fire during last year's presidential campaign when Republicans and other conservative groups accused the national organization of committing fraud in its aggressive voter registration efforts in various cities and counties nationwide, including Florida.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1224631.html

[Javaman]

1. What won't be reported by the right wing...

"But ACORN officials said they had alerted authorities about the alleged illegal activity among some canvassers in Miami-Dade after finding ``numerous discrepancies'' on voter cards collected from the Homestead area."

"But we would not have known about these workers unless ACORN brought it to us."

[think]

3. It's whole different read when those facts are inlcuded

From the article that started the thread:

ACORN came under fire during last year's presidential campaign when Republicans and other conservative groups accused the national organization of committing fraud in its aggressive voter registration efforts in various cities and counties nationwide, including Florida.

But ACORN officials said they had alerted authorities about the alleged illegal activity among some canvassers in Miami-Dade after finding ``numerous discrepancies'' on voter cards collected from the Homestead area.

The arrests are ``further evidence we've been policing our own folks and report people attempting to commit voter registration fraud,'' said ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring. ``This was really some individuals who were trying to defraud their employer.''

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle praised ACORN.

``We've been very aggressive about a lot of these cases,'' she said. ``But we would not have known about these workers unless ACORN brought it to us.

``It's really minor, ineffectual attempts to justify getting paid an hourly basis. It could not have impacted the voting process whatsoever. Nonetheless, we cannot turn a blind eye to this,'' Rundle added.

ACORN quality control workers found the discrepancies in the cards turned in by 10 canvassers and contacted authorities in June 2008, authorities said. The group turned in 1,400 cards, of which 888 were found to be fraudulent.

An analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement later reviewed a random group of cards, searching databases to find a record of the voter.

The majority of those sampled ``contained registrant information that was not able to be matched to a living person,'' the warrant said.

The workers, who were paid between $8 and $10 an hour, registered names of nonexistent people -- in one case, Paul Newman and James Taylor appeared on cards -- or simply filled out several cards for the same real voter, authorities said.

Those arrested are charged with several counts of false swearing in connection with voting or elections and submission of false voter registration information, both third-degree felonies.

[Soylent Brice]

5. EXACTLY.

[Kingofalldems]

7. Delete

I stand corrected. Sorry.

[Mika]

9. WTF are you talking about?

As per LBN rules, the OP title matches that of the posted article.

:shrug:

[Journeyman]

10. The rule is, put the same headline on LBN articles as is on the article. . .

the article itself has the headline used by the OP.

I believe you owe Freddie Stubbs an apology.

[Freddie Stubbs]

11. Did you hit the alert button to notify the mods about this blatant rule infraction?

:shrug:

[Soylent Brice]

16. what did i miss?

:popcorn:

all i see is a self-deleted post that was a reply to me. didn't think the word EXACTLY was so controversial...

[Freddie Stubbs]

20. Apparently some people have poor reading comprehension skills

[marshall]

13. Acorn reported illegal activities on its own people?

Could it have not been taken care of in-house?

[Ian David]

14. If your employees break the law, you prosecute them.

If you own a store, and your employees steal from you, you prosecute them.

If you own a store, and your employees steal from your customers, you prosecute them.

You don't deal with violations of federal laws "in-house."

[marshall]

17. But don't you fire them first?

I don't know, it just seems odd. Maybe there were so many that they couldn't really be sure who was finagling the records, and they just wanted the Feds to figure it out?

[Ian David]

18. Maybe. Like when Detective Monk goes undercover and works in the kitchen to find the killer. n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Falsifying registration cards does not equal voter fraud. Only when someone, like Ann Coulter, votes

after having made a false registration, is it fraud. Yet she was never charged.

[brendan120678]

6. Falsifying voter registration cards is not voter fraud...

but it is still fraud.

"Those arrested are charged with several counts of false swearing in connection with voting or elections and submission of false voter registration information, both third-degree felonies."

[Soylent Brice]

4. bookmarked,

because i know this shit is going to come up in an argument with fundie-in-laws eventually.

[Kingofalldems]

8. Epic fail

[Ian David]

12. ACORN Praised by Prosecutors for Fighting Voter Registration Fraud

ACORN Praised by Prosecutors for Fighting Voter Registration Fraud
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6501005&mesg_id=6501005


THERE is the REAL headline, fucking Miami Herald.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Funny how the truth is feared like the plague by the right-wing. Appreciate your thread, thanks. n/t

[Ian David]

19. ACORN Praised by Prosecutors for Fighting Voter Registration Fraud

Replying directly to the OP just so it gets better placement in the thread...


ACORN Praised by Prosecutors for Fighting Voter Registration Fraud
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6501005&mesg_id=6501005

Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office has issued arrest warrants for 11 suspects accused of falsifying hundreds of voter registration cards. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle praised ACORN for its work exposing the fraudulent acts by some former employees. ``We've been very aggressive about a lot of these cases,'' she said. ``But we would not have known about these workers unless ACORN brought it to us.

ACORN quality control staff had spotted the fake registration cards and contacted the authorities in June of 2008. "It could not have impacted the voting process whatsoever. Nonetheless, we cannot turn a blind eye to this,'' Rundle added.

Of course-- that's not how the rightwing will frame the story. Expect them to ignore the prosecutor praise of ACORN and the fact that the problems were identified by ACORN months before the November election. Instead-- expect things like this at Freerepublic.com-- Breaking FOX news banner 11 ACORN arrests for voter fraud. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335433/posts

<snip>

The reality is that ACORN registers lots of voters across the country and employs many people in doing so. Some fake registrations to justify their pay, a problem faced by everyone hiring anyone to register voters for elections or on initiative petitions. Precisely because they have been subject to malicious attacks by the rightwing, ACORN actually has a very aggressive anti-fraud operation internally, as evidenced by the story above.

More:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/09/acorn_praised_by_prosecutors_for_fighting_voter_re


ACORN Praised by Prosecutors for Fighting Voter Registration Fraud
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6501005&mesg_id=6501005