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WHAT IN THE WORLD IS “ACORN”......? UPDATED, and AGAIN, with Video

The short answer is ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW. Their site tells us that they are

...the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country.

and the Home page has a story about voter registration drives. It all sounds really wonderful. But, there’s a dark side, as well.

ACORN employees and supervisors have been charged with multiple felonies for fraudulent voter registrations in Washington State, in the gubernatorial election won by the Democrat by 124 votes, after multiple recounts reversed the original outcome.

In addition to filing criminal charges, Satterberg said state and local officials had signed a five-year agreement with ACORN that requires the organization to beef up its training and procedures for detecting and reporting fraud.

ACORN agreed to pay King County $25,000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington. There has been nothing comparable to this,” state Secretary of State Sam Reed said at a news conference with Satterberg, King County Executive Ron Sims and Acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan.

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Everyone is denying that there was any intent to change the election outcome, but it’s remarkable how often this kind of abuse is occurring, and since “community organizers” are organizing a particular segment of our society, the fraud always benefits one of the two parties.

State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities.

The secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November’s general election….“Today’s raid by the secretary of state’s office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls,” Lewis said.

Miller said that is not the case. He said the state’s investigation began before ACORN submitted the forms referred to in Lewis’ statement. In early July, investigators began looking through ACORN’s registration forms. One canvasser turned in 17 applications; only four addresses existed, the investigators alleged….Other canvassers hired by ACORN were residents at the Casa Grande Transitional Housing Facility, a Nevada Department of Corrections institution that offers convicted felons an opportunity to take part in work-release programs.

“It raises significant concerns that they hired prison inmates, some of whom have been convicted of identity theft,” Miller said.

ACORN’s field director in Nevada and the head of its voter registration effort, known as Project Vote, said the agency is cooperating fully with the investigation.

“We’re proud of what we did here,” Chris Edwards said. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”....“This is a great organization,” Bonnie Smith-Greathouse, head organizer for Nevada ACORN, told a group of about 15 gathered in front of the organization’s office. “We’ve done great things in the community, and we’re going to do even greater things in the future.”

Smith-Greathouse suggested that powerful interests were trying to squelch the voices of the poor that ACORN is trying to empower….ACORN is a nonpartisan organization, but it is affiliated with a political action committee that has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election. The Nevada authorities spearheading the investigation, Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, are both Democrats.

Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago in the early 1990s was with Project Vote, but his campaign said it was not affiliated with ACORN at the time. Obama also was part of a team of lawyers representing ACORN in 1995 in a lawsuit that accused the state of Illinois of putting up barriers to poor people trying to register.

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DO A SEARCH on “ACORN” and “voter fraud” for a fascinating alternative account of what ACORN is about, or perhaps it’s the “means” they’re willing to use to attain their ends that you’ll be looking at. Take a quick look HERE, and HERE, and HERE, for a few samples…....
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UPDATE (Thanks, Vic): Here’s the newest case I’ve seen:MISSOURI OFFICIALS SUSPECT FAKE VOTER REGISTRATION. The question that arises is “At what point does a pattern, repeated over and over in important swing states, begin to suggest a “design”, rather than just random events?” Hmmmmmmm?
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Next UPDATE (from INSTAPUNDIT, a video from CNN, that notorious member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, and hateful anti-progressive campaigning…......