ACORN Turns in Fla. Workers on Voter Fraud Charges

rockin'robin

rockin'robin

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The FBI and state authorities were making arrests Wednesday of workers hired to register voters by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Arrest warrants have been issued in Miami for 11 people suspected of falsifying information on hundreds of voter registration cards -- including registering the name of the late actor Paul Newman -- the Florida state attorney told FOXNews.com.

The FBI and state authorities took seven people into custody Wednesday as it issued 11 arrest warrants for voter registration fraud in Homestead, Fla., in June 2008.

Florida state attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle said 11 workers hired to register voters by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- or ACORN -- submitted 888 fraudulent names. She said the names included people who were already registered voters, fictitious names, and the name of the late actor Paul Newman, who died in Sept. 2008.

Fernandez-Rundle said ACORN alerted her office after it reviewed hundreds of voter registration cards it suspected were fraudulent. She said that none of the names in question actually voted.

"While they were attempting to steal from ACORN, they were stealing from our electoral process and we just will not tolerate that," she said.

Fernandez-Rundle said ACORN alerted her office after it reviewed hundreds of voter registration cards it suspected were fraudulent. She said that none of the names in question actually voted.

"While they were attempting to steal from ACORN, they were stealing from our electoral process and we just will not tolerate that," she said.

Fernandez-Rundle said the workers, who were being paid 10 dollars an hour to register voters, face anywhere from 2 to 37 counts of "false swearing in connection with voting or elections" and "submission of false voter registration information."

"They were attempting to justify their hourly wages," she said.

In a statement sent to FOXNews.com. on Wednesday, Florida ACORN board member Leroy Bell said, "We want to commend the state attorney for taking decisive action. Today's action demonstrates the seriousness we brought to the task of not only expanding the electorate, but also of protecting the integrity of the voting process. "

"Over the last five years thousands of dedicated people have worked or volunteered with Florida ACORN and succeeded in helping hundreds of thousands of Florida citizens -- especially African-Americans, Latinos, low-income and young people -- to apply to become registered voters. Fortunately, our quality control managers and the systems we developed ensured their ability to spot the isolated wrongdoing by these 11 workers who tried to pass off phony forms instead of doing their work," he said.

Bell added that the government should do more to modernize the voter registration system, saying ACORN would "prefer that Florida and the United States adopt a more modern voter registration system where getting everyone on the rolls is the government's job and mission."

ACORN's activities were frequently questioned during the 2008 presidential election. The group, 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.

Click here to read an arrest affidavit.

ACORN Turns in Florida Workers on Voter Fraud Charges - Political News - FOXNews.com
 
Now can we nullify the Nov 2008 election and start over?

Yiz
 
Also, voter registration fraud is DIFFERENT from voter fraud. They were convicted of filling out information of non-existent voters. That is fraud. Many of them have names that are just silly like "Donald Duck" and "Mickey Mouse." They don't translate into real votes at all.

Voter fraud is much more difficult -I am sure you'll claim that Micky Mouse and Donald Duck showed up at the poll?
 
I'm betting that the paper shredders are moving at light speed at ACORN headquarters! :giggle:

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN following the release of three videotapes that show the group's employees offering advice to a "pimp" and a "prostitute" on how to skirt the law.

Rep. Steve King, R-IA, said a video released Monday that shows filmmaker James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, getting advice from ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., on how to launder their earnings and avoid detection while running a prostitution business is "another reason to turn it up" on ACORN.

Four ACORN employees -- two in Baltimore and two in Washington -- were fired late last week after videos showed the "pimp" and "prostitute" getting similar advice in those cities. In those videos, O'Keefe and Giles told the ACORN workers that they intended to bring underage girls into the country to work as prostitutes.

"If you see that it's endemic, that it's at least three cities will help support and organize and provide for lending to homes of prostitution for underage girls that come from foreign countries that are likely illegal, how many drugs are being dealt out of houses facilitated by ACORN?" King told FOX News on Monday.

"What would they not do?" he asked of the ACORN workers. "Where would they reach a moral revulsion?"

King called on Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to hold investigations into ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, which also has been accused of widespread voter fraud during the 2008 presidential election. King also asked for a full "financial forensic analysis" into the group on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service.

"We saw into the offices of ACORN, we saw the faces of ACORN in Baltimore, in Washington, D.C., and in Brooklyn, and you have to imagine that's going on in every inner city across America where ACORN is set up," King said. "We've got to shut off every federal dollar to ACORN and we've got to investigate them thoroughly."

Calls to Conyers' office in Washington were not immediately returned on Monday. Officials at the IRS and the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Jerry Schmetterer, director of public information for the Kings County District Attorney's Office, told FOXNews.com that officials will be "taking a look" into Brooklyn's ACORN office.

"We are going to be taking a look at the situation," Schmetterer said Monday.

A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said ACORN'S tax status as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization should also be probed.

"We've already seen the Census Bureau severe its tie with ACORN," the spokesman, Kurt Bardella, told FOXNews.com. "Certainly, as an organization being subsidized by taxpayer dollars, their relationship with other government entities should be called into question, and whether or not it's appropriate for them to receive taxpayer dollars."

In a statement to FOXNews.com, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said the videos in Washington and Baltimore show "clearly a pattern of improper partisan or fraudulent activities." He pointed to an amendment offered by Sens. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and David Vitter, R-La., that would ban ACORN from receiving direct or indirect federal funds under the FY 2010 Transportation-Department of Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.

"It's up to the Democratic majority to determine whether or not Congress will investigate ACORN or hold oversight hearings to justify any future taxpayer funding of ACORN," Bartlett's statement read.

Johanns' amendment, to be introduced today, will prohibit funds to the group from several different accounts, including monies it receives through mortgage counseling, Community Development Block Grants, and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

"ACORN has been in legal trouble in several states with raid after raid on their offices by officials looking into voter fraud. More than 30 ACORN officials have been convicted of fraud and new allegations of fraud are surfacing by the day," Johanns said in a statement released Monday. "It's wrong to give tax dollars to a group with multiple convictions of undermining our democratic process and our laws. So, I'm introducing measures to stop the federal funding of ACORN."

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said last week that the videos suggest multiple incidents of tax fraud, and called for a hearing to investigate ACORN's tax filing assistance programs.

"In light of the apparent flagrant and willful attempts to suborn tax fraud, I ... (am seeking) a hearing of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee as soon as practicable to investigate ACORN's activities," he said Friday.

The Census Bureau notified ACORN on Friday in a letter that it was severing all ties with the group for all work related to the 2010 census.

"Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN's affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts," read a letter from Census Director Robert Groves to the president of ACORN.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed through your many local offices," the letter continued. "For the reasons stated, we therefore have decided to terminate the partnership."

In response, ACORN officials blamed FOX News and conservatives for fueling the controversy.

"By its actions, Fox is not a news outlet but rather an advocacy organization for rightwing interests that seek to defeat healthcare reform and stymie solutions to the foreclosure crisis," the group said in a statement to FOXNews.com. "That said, with regard to the Census, ACORN has always said it would encourage full participation in the decennial count, and we will continue to do so."

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis said the videos capturing her former workers were "doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist 'filmmaker' O'Keefe and his partner in crime."

Lewis said ACORN will take legal action against FOX News and those involved in the making of the videos. She said ACORN offices were also targeted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Philadelphia, among other places.

"I am appalled and angry," Lewis said. "I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated."

According to USASpending.gov, a federal government Web site for tracking government grants, ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants has given $8.2 million to ACORN between 2003 and 2006, as well as $1.6 million to ACORN affiliates.

Reference: Republican Lawmakers Turn Up the Heat on ACORN - Political News - FOXNews.com
 
I don't think they know how to operate one since ACORN is so inept and corrupt in the first place. Shut 'em all down. At the very least no Federal grants or funding to them until investigations can take place to see what laws they've broken.
 
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