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.