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ACORN: From Defense to Further Reform
If you employ an army of people to register a gaggle of new voters, there are going to be mistakes. And frankly, ACORN is right to defend its efforts, as should all believers in grassroots democracy.
But for the sake of everyone concerned, the organization should immediately take steps to beef up its fraud-prevention processes and procedures — and tell us what those are. It’s one of the key rules of effective crisis communications: Acknowledge (and apologize) for the problem. Explain what you’ve done previously to help prevent it. Explain how you’ll further enhance your prevention protocols.
I don’t see the last of those in ACORN’s response.
Forget the damn association, weak or strong, with a certain presidential candidate. Buttoning down the hatches is the right thing to do, period — for the past, present, and future credibility of all aggressive voter-registration drives.
Speaking of a certain presidential candidate, I love his campaign’s latest on the Ayers issue. Despite my past comments on that subject — and my current comments on the subject noted above — I agree with Mr. Sullivan that these issues are all appropriate to question, parse, and consider in the context of a campaign for elected office. But what continues to be inappropriate are the less-than-subtle suggestions that either issue makes the presidential candidate in question the de-facto enabler of or equivalent to terrorists and hucksters. If every association made us the same as those with whom we associate — to any degree, at any point in our lives — then McCain is disqualified, too, and frankly, no one should ever run for any public office ever again.
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9 Responses to “ACORN: From Defense to Further Reform”
Actually, McCain is disqualified from attacking Obama on ACORN — he'll have to have someone else do it like conservative talk-show hosts do it, and it's awfully late to make a really big deal of it now, much as I wish it had been made months ago.
ACORN is notorious for much more than mere classic-traditional Dem vote fraud.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nu…
http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/129/ACORN.html
It's probably too late — even for the Wall Street Journal to raise the issue:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230…
The only other thing I can point out here is that Obama has responded to this and he won't satisfy most people, but probably has put the issue behind him at this point. It would have been different had this been addressed earlier this year.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008…
Pete – there's more in this transcript between ACORN and Greta Van Susteren:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,437448,00.html
And let's not forget how Obama supporters went after Women's Voices Women Vote, trumping up the mistakes that WVWV did apologize for and did work to correct and learn from during the primary.
And let's also recall how in 2006, the RNC in California got nailed for identical voter fraud problems as they now claim ACORN has committed:
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/102933/califo…
Republicans never cheat (R), Jill. Didn't you read the earlier thread?
Be conscientious and be sure to vote this year, November 14.
Not only does ACORN need to clean up its act, but to clean up and pay for the mess they've made. How much will it cost taxpayers to 'check' all of these registrations, and then to apply the necessary scrutiny to actual ballots that are cast if the registrations themselves haven't been verified yet? Why are we footing the bill for this?
Thanks for the link to the 2003 Sol Stern article. I love how he glorifies the infallible free market and labels working with the poor as “radical”. I think its pretty evident from the article that ACORN has been a target of the right for many years.
By Stern's measure, apparently I am a radical now.
Rush Limbaugh opines on ACORN, Ayers, and Obama (his racist nonsense isn't so easy to stomach, so be warned) :
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rush-limba…
After listening to this blather is it any wonder that minorities overwhelmingly vote democrat?
Alter on MSNBC just said that ACORN actually told the government about these false registrations.
False registrations are a problem, but it's not the same as voter fraud. And ACORN isn't evil, as John McCain knows.