What is Obama's connection to ACORN?

A group known as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has recently been linked to several incidences of voter registration fraud. Back in the 90's, while still an attorney, Barack Obama tried a case on behalf of this group. He joined the U.S. justice department in trying to get the state of Illinois to follow the law and allow people to register at their local DMV office. Pretty radical, huh?

So if you follow the line of thinking that the McCain/Palin campaign would like you to follow: Since Obama once did some work for ACORN, he is obviously now guilty of voter registration fraud.

Except that there is no current link between the Obama campaign and ACORN. During the primary season, they did enlist a subsidiary of ACORN to help get out the vote. But that was during the primaries. During the general election, the Obama campaign has been managing their own massive voter registration effort, with their own offices and paid staff in every state.

Why This is NOT a Big Deal

There are several reasons why this issue is being completely overblown, apart from the obvious lack of connection to the Obama campaign.

As this web site states very succinctly: "It’s completely inconsequential if some fake names are registered to vote. Why? Because a fake name can’t actually vote."

There is a big difference between "voter registration fraud" (like ACORN is accused of) and "Voter Fraud" (like the GOP was guilty of in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000). By itself, turning in false registrations has no effect on the election outcome; it just gums up the registration boards in trying to weed out all the bad registrations.

ACORN's problem stems largely from the fact that they pay people to turn in voter registrations. The more registrations you gather, the more you earn. Particularly for low-income people, this is a heavy incentive to create bad registrations. All evidence gathered against ACORN to date suggests that the problem stemmed from individual workers who turned in fake forms in an effort to get paid for work they didn’t do, and it had nothing to do with trying to stuff ballot boxes by voting fraudulently.

For these bad registrations to effect the election outcome, several things would have had to go horribly wrong. First, all the verification process at the registration board would have had to fail miserably. The fact that they had invalid names, addresses, drivers licenses and/or social security numbers, would somehow have to have gone completely unnoticed.

Next, someone would've had to show up to vote on election day with a crate of fake ID's "proving" that they were these fake voters... you know, Mickey Mouse, Hulk Hogan, Tony Romo, etc.

It was never going to happen.

But Wait, There's More!

Most of the instances of bad registrations that have been turned up were discovered by ACORN itself, and then brought to the attention of the state registration board in question. Someone on the right apparently got a hold of this story and decided to run to the media with it, accusing ACORN of fraud. In reality, ACORN is as much the victim here as anything, as they paid people who turned in useless registration forms.

There is no indication that anyone was going to try to "steal votes" by voting under multiple assumed names at the polls. All these individuals were stealing was money from ACORN.

SOURCES:

• Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN
• The Truth About ACORN
• The Guardian: The Republican Voter Fraud Hoax
• Acorn.org: ACORN Responds to Sen. McCain's Desperate Attack
• MSNBC.com: ACORN Controversy - Stupid Joke or Fraud?
• CNN.com: Ex-ACORN Worker Confesses
  

An enlightening video from MSNBC.com: