ACORN to Play Role in 2010 Census
The U.S. Census Bureau is working with several national organizations to help recruit 1.4 million workers to produce the country's 2010 census, including one with a history of voter fraud charges: ACORN.

FOXNews.com

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers."

The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort.

But ACORN's partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization.

"It's a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it's not just the lawmakers' concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country," Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. "We want an enumeration. We don't want to have any false numbers."

ACORN, which claims to be a non-partisan grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, came under fire in 2007 when Washington State filed felony charges against several paid ACORN employees and supervisors for more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations. In March 2008, an ACORN worker in Pennsylvania was sentenced for making 29 phony voter registration forms. The group's activities were frequently questioned in the 2008 presidential election.

ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson told FOXNews.com that "ACORN as an organization has not been charged with any crime." He added that fears that the organization will unfairly influence the census are unfounded.

"It will be the Census Bureau that determines the role and scope of its 300 national partners. ACORN is committed to a fair and accurate count," Levenson said.

The census is an official count of the country's population mandated by the U.S. Constitution. It is used to determine distribution of taxpayer money through grants and appropriations and the apportionment of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Every U.S. household unit, including those occupied by non-citizens and illegal immigrants, must be counted.

Westmoreland and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House census subcommittee, said the panel has held hearings to make sure the penalties for census takers committing fraud are clearly defined.

"I feel fairly confident that the penalties for an individual manipulating the count are pretty severe," Chaffetz said. The penalty for any fraudulent activity can be up to five years in jail.

Westmoreland said he hopes the Census Bureau will maintain its measures to ensure an accurate report.

"I feel comfortable right now with the people at the census department that they're going to put forth their best effort to have a fair count," he said.

The U.S. Census Bureau has refuted any suggestions that ACORN or any other groups will fraudulently and unduly influence the results of the census.

"The Census (Bureau) is a nonpartisan, non-political agency and we're very dedicated to an accurate account," bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner told FOXNews.com. "We have a lot of quality controls in place to keep any kind of systemic error or fraudulent behavior to affect the counts."

Buckner said the bureau received an overwhelming number of qualified applicants -- more than 1 million -- for the 140,000 census taker jobs filled to complete the first phase of the effort. Each applicant, he said, must take a basic skills exam, which includes reading a map and entering data into a handheld computer. Applicants are also subject to an FBI background check, he said.

But Buckner acknowledged that it is difficult to track an applicant's political background.

"I have no way of tracking any of that information," he said. "If somebody comes in to a position with a political agenda and their work exhibits that, there are rules against that," he said.

Buckner stressed the need for organizations like ACORN to assist in the effort, saying that "any group that has a grassroots organization that can help get the word out that we have jobs" is helpful.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau had 140,000 partnerships from "national organizations to local and community organizations to elected officials," he said. "The list is as broad as the phone book."

Surprise, surprise, surprise, indeed...

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The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.
-- Ayn Rand

Acorn doing census...the fox in charge of the henhouse.

Jesus H Christ.

Can anyone show a link where any completed registrations submitted by ACORN were actually fraudulent? Any voters that were ACTUALLY REGISTERED that didn't exist?

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"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party."

-Chairman Mao

http://imgur.com/ESOy.png

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/0...t-acorn-fraud/

•Missouri - Officials now have to sift through hundreds of bogus applications submitted last August.
•Connecticut - A criminal investigation has been opened into ACORN fraud.
•Wisconsin - Registering convicted felons.
•Ohio - ACORN tells Cuyahoga County’s election board that they can’t stop themselves from committing fraud.
•Indiana - Over a thousand new applications from ACORN appear to investigators to be fraudulent, and that should be no surprise, since Indianapolis now has 105% of its population registered to vote.
In Nevada, officials seemed surprised by the news that the Dallas Cowboys had moved en masse to the Silver State. The entire starting lineup registered to vote in Nevada, including Tony Romo, their quarterback. However, Secretary of State Ross Miller assured Nevadans that anyone posing as Terrell “TO” Owens would get a big NO if they tried to cast a vote.

Well, I can see it now. With ACORN in the "count" there will be at least 173 million blacks. At least 170 million of them will be poor.

There will be an additional 162 million Americans of Mexican descent. ALL will, of course be here legally.

I also, bet that ACORN will get paid for all this work they will be doing for the Bobo Administration. That $2 billion they got in the "Spending ill" is for the next election cycle I presume.

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Hmm. Okay, sounds like we should start prosecuting, especially in Indiana. I think the problem is that ACORN paid its employees by registration submitted, providing a powerful incentive to, say, register the dallas cowboys in Nevada.

I'm not sure that oversight is really relevant when considering a census, though.

__________________
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party."

-Chairman Mao

http://imgur.com/ESOy.png

What is ACORN anyway?

Is it a private organization? Is it a quasi governmental organization? Just what kind of an organization is it? Their web site does not say.

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Yes. Here ya go:

"Although the organization prides itself for its registration efforts, it also has a long history of scandal. In the state of Missouri in 1986, 12 ACORN members were convicted of voter fraud. But that case was not an isolated incident in the state. In December 2004, in St. Louis, six volunteers pleaded guilty of dozens of election law violations for filling out registration cards with names of dead people and other bogus information. Authorities launched an earlier investigation after noticing that among the new voters was longtime St. Louis alderman Albert “Red” Villa, who died in 1990. The volunteers worked for “Operation Big Vote” — a branch of ACORN — in St. Louis.
On February 10, 2005, Nonaresa Montgomery, a paid worker who ran Operation Big Vote during the run-up to the 2001 mayoral primary, was found guilty of vote fraud. Montgomery hired about 30 workers to do fraudulent voter-registration canvassing. Instead of knocking on doors, the volunteers sat at a St. Louis fast food restaurant and wrote out names and information from an outdated voter list. About 1,500 fraudulent voter registration cards were turned in.
In October 2006, St. Louis election officials discovered at least 1,492 “potentially fraudulent” voter registration cards. They were all turned in by ACORN volunteers.
In November 2006, 20,000 to 35,000 questionable voter registration forms were turned in by ACORN officials in Missouri. Most all of these were from St. Louis and Kansas City areas, where ACORN purportedly sought to help empower the “disenfranchised” minorities living there. But the ACORN workers weren’t just told to register new voters. The workers admitted on camera that they were coached to tell registrants to vote for Democrat Claire McCaskill.
In 2007, in Kansas City, Missouri, four ACORN employees were indicted for fraud. In April of this year eight ACORN employees in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting bogus voter registrations.

And, that was just Missouri."

North Carolina — State Board of Elections officials have found at least 100 voter registration forms with the same names over and over again. The forms were turned in by ACORN. Officials sent about 30 applications to the state Board of Elections for possible fraud investigation.
Ohio — The New York Post reported that a Cleveland man said he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times. The complaints have sparked an investigation by election officials into the organization, whose political wing has supported Barack Obama. Witnesses have already been subpoenaed to testify against the organization.
Nevada — Authorities raided the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now on Tuesday October 7, 2008, after a month-long investigation. The fraudulent voter registrations included the Dallas Cowboys starting line-up.
Indiana — More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana’s Lake County filled out by ACORN employees turned out to be bogus. Officials also stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.
Connecticut — Officials are looking into a complaint alleging ACORN submitted fraudulent voter registration cards in Bridgeport. In one instance, an official said a card was filled out for a 7-year-old girl, whose age was listed as 27. 8,000 cards were submitted in Bridgeport.
Missouri — The Kansas City election board is reporting 100 duplicate applications and 280 with fake information. Acorn officials agreed that at least 4% of their registrations were bogus. Governor Matt Blunt condemned the attempts by ACORN to commit voter fraud.
Pennsylvania — Officials are investigating suspicious or incomplete registration forms submitted by ACORN. 252,595 voter registrations were submitted in Philadelphia. Remarkably, 57,435 were rejected — most of them submitted by ACORN.
Wisconsin — In Milwaukee ACORN improperly used felons as registration workers. Additionally, its workers are among 49 cases of bad registrations sent to authorities for possible charges, as first reported by the Journal Sentinel.
Florida — The Pinellas County Elections supervisor says his office has received around 35 voter registrations that appear to be bogus. There is also a question of 30,000 felons who are registered illegally to vote. Their connections with ACORN are not yet clear.
Texas — Of the 30,000 registration cards ACORN turned in, Harris County tax assessor Paul Bettencourt says just more than 20,000 are valid. And just look at some of the places ACORN was finding those voters. A church just next door is the address for around 150 people. More than 250 people claim a homeless outreach center as their home address. Some listed a county mental health facility as their home and one person even wrote down the Harris County jail at the sheriff’s office.
Michigan — ACORN in Detroit is being investigated after several municipal clerks reported fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications coming through. The clerk interviewed said the fraud appears to be widespread.
New Mexico – The Bernalillo County clerk has notified prosecutors that some 1,100 fraudulent voter registration cards were turned in by ACORN."

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-com...voter-fraud/2/

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"If the President simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion dollar health care package that the American people don't support, it isn't bi-partisan. It's political cover," Rep Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

"I'm not sure that oversight is really relevant when considering a census, though."

You've got to be kidding?

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