Voter Registration Fraud by Liberal Advocacy Group Goes Virtually Unreported

Assume for a moment that a conservative advocacy group was accused of voter registration fraud four weeks before the upcoming elections, and had been accused of similar activities in 2004. Further imagine that this group was accused by some of its representatives of campaigning for a Republican candidate for the U.S. senate in a key state that could determine which party controls that Congressional chamber. Do you think this would get reported by the media, especially given all the attention on expected electronic ballot irregularities in the upcoming elections? Might be front-page news, and the lead story for the broadcast networks, right?

Well, on October 11, the Associated Press reported (hat tip to reader Saw the Light) such alleged activities in St. Louis, Missouri, by a liberal group called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The Kansas City Star reported similar allegations against the group on October 24. And, a video made available by a St. Louis blog called Pub Def on October 4 showed ACORN workers admitting that they had been registering voters specifically to elect Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri). Yet, a Google and LexisNexis search indicated that not one major national news organization other than AP chose to report any of these allegations. Not one.

(Update: A reader just sent me an October 21 article from the Columbus Dispatch concerning voter registration fraud by ACORN members in Ohio.)

According to AP:

At least 1,500 potentially fraudulent registration cards were turned in by the St. Louis branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, leading up to Wednesday's registration deadline for the Nov. 7 election, said Kim Mathis, chairwoman of the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners.

Invalid registrations solicited by ACORN workers included duplicate or incomplete ones, a 16-year-old voter, dead people registering, and forged signatures, Mathis said.

The article continued:

This year in Missouri, ACORN has turned in about 40,000 new voter registrations. Half of those were in St. Louis. The other 20,000 were collected in the Kansas City area, according to election officials.

Four ACORN workers were fired over a September 2003 incident after the St. Louis board pointed out more than 1,000 questionable new voter registration forms collected by ACORN.

ACORN registered more than a million U.S. voters in 2004, when it also had to defend itself against fraud allegations. That year, unreadable cards, duplicate registrations and other invalid or potentially fraudulent registrations turned up in Ohio, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia.

This was reported by the Kansas City Star Tuesday:

Kansas City election officials have asked the U.S. attorney and the local prosecutor to investigate possible voter registration fraud.

Election director Ray James said Monday that at least half the new registrations submitted this fall — more than 15,000 registrations — have “discrepancies,” which he described as duplicates, questionable or unreadable information, or names, addresses and Social Security numbers that don’t match existing records.

Most of the names were submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN.

Pub Def reported on October 4 (hat tip to Gateway Pundit):

Several former and current workers demonstrated today in front of the St. Louis office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) demanding to be paid for work they had performed and alleging that they were instructed to tell people to vote for U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill while registering voters in support of the proposed minimum wage increase.

Ten-year ACORN veteran Josephine Perkins claims she was fired last week, in part because she informed the teams she supervised that it was inappropriate and illegal for them to campaign for McCaskill while being paid by ACORN and Give Missourians a Raise, the political action committee which supports Proposition B and, according to campaign finance reports, has given money to ACORN to circulate its literature.

Update: The Columbus Dispatch reported on October 21:

Three paid solicitors suspected of filling out voter registration forms for people who don’t exist could face felony election-fraud charges.

The Franklin County Board of Elections moved yesterday to refer the workers from ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, to county Prosecutor Ron O’Brien.

Yet, no major news outlet has bothered to report any of this. Once again, imagine how much focus this would get if ACORN was a conservative advocacy group campaigning against raising the minimum wage and for Sen. Jim Talent (R-Missouri).