ACORN Calls on McCain Campaign to Get Out of the Gutter

[Joanne98]

By: ACORN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 2008 - "Enough is enough of these Nixon-style gutter politics being perpetrated by the Bush Administration and McCain campaign. The two of them are continuing to abuse federal law enforcement to intimidate their political opponents and suppress the vote," said ACORN spokesperson Brian Kettenring.

The various efforts of the Republican Party to abuse its power by misusing the Justice Department to pursue partisan politics has been seen before. In 2004, the Bush Administration sought to use the Justice Department to gin up partisan prosecutions of ACORN despite there being no evidence of wrong-doing. David Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney of New Mexico, made clear in the investigation of the Bush Administration's abuse of the Justice Department that he was fired in part because of his refusal to pursue a politically directed investigation of ACORN.

"We call on the McCain campaign to directly answer whether they, the Republican Party or their operatives have been conspiring with the Bush Administration to misuse the Justice Department in order to suppress voter turnout in 2008," ACORN President Maude Hurd said in a statement.

THE US ATTORNEY SCANDAL AND ACORN

Karl Rove and the Republicans Forced U.S. Attorneys To Pursue Voter Fraud Allegations, Despite Lack Of Evidence. According to the Washington Post, "a New Mexico lawyer who pushed to oust U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pressing for tougher voter identification laws." The article reports, "that strategy, which presidential advisor Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic."

The strategy relied on three efforts: "Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and the Lawyers Association were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities. The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem."

Reaction to the FBI investigation leak:

-- Iglesias yesterday called the leak "a scare tactic" and said "I am astounded"

-- House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-Mich.) has strongly criticized the leak

Background

David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney of New Mexico in a PBS Interview on July 7, 2007, http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/david-iglesias.html

-- "I was aware that the Justice Department was interested in having U.S. attorneys investigate and prosecute voter fraud going back to 2002...I set up a taskforce in September 2004 to investigate...We looked at well over 100 cases ... Upon reviewing the evidence and looking at the FBI reports, and actually talking to the FBI agent in charge of this, I concluded, as did the public integrity section at main Justice and at the local FBI office, that we didn't have any prosecutable cases."

-- "They singled out ACORN as an entity that they thought was engaging in this systemic election fraud."

-- "...putting pressure on the U.S. Attorneys to try to file indictments immediately before an election...is inappropriate. In fact, there's a longstanding policy in the Justice Department to not do that. And it appears, in some districts, there was pressure put on us to engage in unlawful activities. And that is not what the Justice Department stands for."

-- "You have to understand there are approximately 4,000 federal criminal laws and we're tasked to enforce them all ... it's impossible to enforce every possible law. So every administration has to come up with a list of priorities and this was a priority every two years during the election cycle for the Bush Administration."

-- "...there was a Republican attorney, Pat Rogers, who was a prominent local attorney who tried to pressure me to come up with cases...I did not know at the time that he belonged to an organization called the American Center for Voting Rights. He did not disclose to me that he was representing any other interest. And I've also found out that the Republican Party was very interested in stamping out what it believed to be instances of voter fraud."

-- "...I do understand there are some allegations that, in battleground states such as New Mexico, prosecuting even a few cases sends a very strong message and could actually result in suppressing minority voting.

-- "...I kept asking myself, 'How can they possibly criticize me when they don't know the evidence. They've not looked at the evidence. They've not looked at the FBI reports. I have.' Why would they think that a Bush appointee-who had run for public office-I had ran for state attorney general -would intentionally not prosecute a righteous case? That the one thing that I never understood. But I think in their zeal and their obsession for getting anything indicted, they let their theories get in the way of the facts and get in the way of the evidence, which they only knew a very small portion of."

-- They were clearly partisan . I can't reach into their minds and tell you what they were thinking but I am very disturbed to read accounts of what appears to be "voter caging" in Arkansas and other parts of the country. There appears to be a growing body of evidence that suggests that there's voter suppression going on throughout the country. I'm not sure if that happened in New Mexico. All I know is there was an attempted pressure put on me by local Republicans to indict voter fraud cases. I resisted that. I thought I was going to be protected by the Bush Justice Department and I was wrong in that assumption.

-- "I've maintained from day one for illicit, partisan political reasons. Specifically not coming up with voter fraud cases, number one. And number two not rushing forward indictments involving prominent Democrats during the election cycle..."

"The American people have the right to believe that 'prosecutive' decisions are made on the basis of evidence alone. And right now, that's called into question."

The Facts:

ACORN has helped 1.3 million citizens from all parties and all walks of life apply for voter registration.

-- In most states, ACORN is required by law or legal advice to turn in every voter registration card - even in cases where the cards are not valid.

-- It is ACORN that has reported almost all of the issues regarding voter registration cards.

-- Invalid voter registration cards do NOT constitute voter fraud. Even RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has recently acknowledged he is not aware of a single improper vote cast as a result of bad cards submitted in the course of an organized voter registration effort.


-- ACORN hired 13,000 workers to help register people to vote. In any endeavor of this size, some people will engaged in inappropriate conduct. ACORN has a zero tolerance policy and terminated any field workers caught engaging in questionable activity. At the end of the day, as ACORN is paying these people to register voters, it is ACORN that is defrauded.

ACORN is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with over 400,000 member families organized into neighborhood chapters in 100 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has taken action and won victories on issues of concern to our members. Our priorities include: better housing for first time homebuyers and tenants, living wages for low-wage workers, more investment in our communities from banks and governments, and better public schools. ACORN is an acronym, and each letter should be capitalized. ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

ACORN's website is at http://www.acorn.org/.

[IDemo]

1. kicking because this is well worth the read n/t