Some of ACORNS transgressions (Part 1)

In 2003 ACORN submitted 5,379 voter-registration cards to St. Louis, Missouri election-board officials, who later determined that only 2,013 of the cards appeared to be valid.

In 2006 approximately 20,000 questionable voter-registration forms were turned in by ACORN officials in Missouri — virtually all in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, where ACORN professed a commitment to empowering the “disenfranchised” minorities living there.

Between March 23 and October 1, 2008, ACORN and other “get-out-the-vote” groups submitted at least 252,595 registrations to the Philadelphia County Election Board; of those, 57,435 were rejected for faulty information. Most of the fraudulent forms — which featured fake social security numbers, incorrect birthdates, forged or duplicate signatures, and non-existent addresses — were submitted by ACORN.

In Centre County, Pennsylvania — the home of Penn State University and its 40,000 students — former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Newman complained in 2008 about a “massive effort” to fraudulently register those students. “I am not confident we can get a fair election,” Newman said.

In Erie County, Pennsylvania in 2008, students at local colleges were targeted in “student registration drives” designed to register voters multiple times. The county’s director of elections reported that the “same handwriting” appeared on a large number of applications.

In October 2008, Philadelphia’s City Commissioners voted unanimously to present to the U.S. Attorney some 50,663 fraudulent voter-registration forms submitted by ACORN. These included 35,888 duplicates; 689 that were filled out by people too young to vote; 2,108 with missing signatures; 5,093 with phony addresses; and 6,161 not eligible because they were missing a valid HAVA (Help America Vote Act) number.

In 2004 a Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said that ACORN had been “singled out” among suspected voter-registration groups as “the common thread” in the agency’s statewide fraud investigations.

In 2004 Mark Wilson, vice president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, said that efforts to register felons and to submit fraudulent voter-registration forms were “so widespread” that “t just seems to be a systemic approach to take advantage of our lax registration laws.”

Among the 1,320 voter-registration forms that ACORN filed in Brevard County, Florida in 2008, fully two-thirds contained the names of people who had been previously registered. One Miami individual in particular filled out 21 duplicate applications.

In 2008 in Indianapolis (where ACORN was very active), the number of registered voters exceeded the official population of voting-age adults by 33,204.

In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN submitted 5,000 voter-registration applications in early October 2008. Of the first 2,100 that were analyzed by election officials, every single one was fraudulent. “All the signatures looked exactly the same,” said Republican election official Ruthann Hoagland. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.” Hoagland’s Democratic colleague, Sally LaSota, concurred: “We’re not handwriting experts, but what’s obvious is obvious.” The fake registrants included dead people and under-age children.