Guardian UK: McCain's fraud fantasia

[marmar]

McCain's fraud fantasia
There's a higher chance of Mickey Mouse himself being allowed to vote than of systemic voter fraud occurring undetected

Ken Gude
guardian.co.uk, Friday October 17 2008 20.30 BST


We know election day is approaching when Republicans start screaming about voter fraud, but the McCain campaign has reached a new low and the death rattle of the Republican party has entered its last violent spasm. At this week's debate John McCain accused the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (Acorn) of "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy". His running mate, Sarah Palin, warned that they were trying to "steal this election". These kinds of allegations are absurd and obviously false and the McCain campaign knows it. It is McCain himself that is damaging to our democracy because it calls into question the legitimacy of our election process in a deceitful way.

Voter fraud and voter registration fraud are two different things and they are being deliberately conflated for political purposes. Voter fraud is simply bogus. Study after study, and major nationwide enforcement efforts by the department of justice and other enforcement agencies in the states have never, ever produced any evidence of anything more than a handful of cases, and I mean two or three, of actual voter fraud. The failure of many US attorneys to actually find cases of voter fraud to prosecute was the motivation for Karl Rove to push a scheme to fire nine of them and the resulting scandal ultimately led to attorney general Alberto Gonzalez's resignation.

Voter registration fraud is real, but the kinds of allegations about Acorn are actually frauds perpetrated on Acorn and not the political process. Organisations that engage in voter registration drives are required by law to submit every registration form that they receive, no matter how obviously fraudulent the information. That law is in place as an extremely important protection for the process so that organisations are not able to go on a mass registration drive and then throw out all the Republican registrants or Democratic registrants before they submit the forms to the state government. They have a responsibility to flag those forms that they believe are fraudulent or invalid, but they cannot disqualify them on their own. For example, Acorn goes and registers 100,000 people in Ohio out of which they identify 5,000 registration forms that are clearly phony that they flag, but they have to turn them in anyway. Then Republicans go around spreading malicious stories about Acorn turning in thousands of fraudulent registrations, but they know Acorn is required by law to turn them in and they know that those registrants will never be added to the voter rolls.

Acorn is uniquely susceptible to these kinds of problems because it engages in the questionable practice of paying its organisers by the number of people they register. I can understand why they do this – to give unemployed or low-income people a paying job – but it opens them up to fraud perpetrated on them by paying for sham registrations. They believe that the multi-layered system of first flagging questionable registration forms and then having the voting agencies provide further checks is adequate protection against actual fraudulent registrants ending up on the voter rolls and the benefits of helping these people earn a living outweigh these risks. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/17/johnmccain-republicans

[droidamus2]

1. One mistake

I have heard and read more than once that the head of ACORN says they do NOT pay by the form but pay by the hour. From what I understand there is some pressure put on the workers to register a certain number of people and not turn in too many incomplete or questionable forms.

[madmax]

2. k & r

[machI]

3. Kick