ACORN has been at the center of the phony charges of "voter fraud" that were behind several of the US Attorney firings. The GOP is still trying to use claims about ACORN to disenfranchise minority voters -- but now there seems to be a second factor in terms of impeding attempts to count minority voters accurately in the 2010 census. This is much, much bigger than merely an attempt to smear Obama by association.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/mrs_panstreppon/2008/11/gop-election-day-hall-of-shame.phpNovember 1, 2008
Chairman Ney's hearing on voter fraud held at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus in March 2005 is prima facie evidence of absolute corruption in the Republican Party. In the preceding months, Republican operatives had spent millions of dollars to manufacture and fund bogus voter fraud claims with the express intent of creating public support for restrictive voter registration laws.
The American Center For Voting Rights, formed by Republican operatives in February 2005, was the only "voters rights group" to testify at the hearing. The ACVR's 28-page report on voter fraud submitted to the Department of Justice provides a framework of how the GOP orchestrated its efforts to suppress the Democratic votes. . . .
Based on a single incident, the Free Enterprise Coalition sponsored a RICO civil lawsuit filed by two Ohio citizens in December 2004 against ACORN, the NAACP and the AFL-CIO, claiming that ACORN was bribing people with crack cocaine to register to vote. The ACVR, of course, cited the lawsuit as irrefutable evidence of voter fraud in its report.
Three months later, the RICO suit was dropped and the GOP never mentioned it again.
http://www.iefd.org/articles/ohio_voter_suppresion.phpJune 18, 2007
The current scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys cannot be separated from the Bush administration's scheme to suppress black, poor and working class voters. In order to divert attention from its voter suppression tactics that won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, the Bush administration created the myth of "voter fraud." Using fake "voting rights" organizations, obscure groups to finance civil suits and pressure on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against voter registration organizations, Karl Rove and his political operatives like Mark F. "Thor" Hearne have succeeded in undermining the United States' democracy. . . .
Hearne's name recently surfaced in the scandal surrounding the White House's firing of U.S. attorneys causing the mainstream media to begin scrutinizing his past political activity. The National Journal has pointed out that Hearne is a "common denominator" in the firing of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins and western Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves. At the time of the firings, Cummins was investigating Republican Governor Matt Blunt's administration, and Graves had refused to indict when partisan charges were brought against the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) for a voter registration drive just prior to the 2006 election.
Hearne "believed that the U.S. attorney . . . Todd Graves was not taking seriously allegations that ACORN workers were registering people who did not qualify to vote," noted the National Journal. Also, Republican attorney William Mateja, "repeatedly contacted" Cummins during the Blunt investigation ". . . at the behest of Hearne, whose law firm
had retained Mateja on Blunt's behalf," wrote the Journal.
After Graves' dismissal, he was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, who issued an indictment against ACORN workers less than a week before the 2006 election. Cummins was also replaced by Karl Rove operative Timothy Griffin.
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