ACORN Under A Microscope

John Fund looks at multiple investigations of the activist group ACORN. He says that it is about time someone paid some attention to them. The indictment of four ACORN operatives in Missouri for voter registration fraud is just a beginning.

One of those states is Missouri. St. Louis election officials were so inundated with bogus Acorn-generated voter registrants that they mailed a letter to 5,000 registrants, requesting the recipients to contact them. Fewer than 40 responded. Mr. Rathke attacked the officials as "slop buckets" and claimed they had "broken the law in trying to discourage new voters illegally."

City officials scoff at that. They say it's up to Acorn to explain why over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations don't exist. "We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside," says Democrat Matt Potter, the city's deputy elections director. His election clerks were already putting in 13-hour work days and "dumping this on them isn't fair." In the past, several Democrats, including Mayor Francis Slay, have complained about bloated voter rolls leading to stolen votes.

Acorn insists any problems stem from dishonest former employees. Mr. Rathke says he is actively cooperating with the probe in Kansas City, and has alerted prosecutors in other states about registration problems. That doesn't satisfy Melody Powell, the Republican chairwoman of the Kansas City Board of Elections, who says Acorn's claim that it brought the fraud to light is "seriously misleading." She says her staff first took the evidence to the FBI, and Acorn only then helped identify the perpetrators. According to Ms. Powell, 40% of the 35,000 registrations it submitted appear bogus. "It's a potential recipe for fraud," she says, noting that "anyone can find a voter card mailed to a false apartment building address lying around a lobby and use it to vote." Ms. Powell worries legitimate voters who were registered a second time by someone else under a false address will find it difficult to vote.

Read the whole thing. There is quite a lot that is very, very questionable about the way ACORN is operating. We need to ensure everyone who is entitled to gets to vote, but we also need to eliminate voter fraud. The system depends on people having confidence in the electoral system.