Defending ACORN

Being a former community organizer, I am somewhat familiar with the organization known by the acronym A.C.O.R.N. (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). It is widely known in organizing circles that A.C.O.R.N. volunteers and employees flub at least one out of five voter registration forms. It is also understood that this makes no difference in the larger scheme of voting because the forms that are incorrectly filled in and the repeating names do not result in "extra" voting rights for people. No matter how many times John Smith at 123 Main Street, Anywhere, USA registers, he can only vote ONCE.

A.C.O.R.N. is not authorized to throw away registration forms they receive from their canvassers. In fact, they are strictly forbidden to discard any registration forms that they find are incorrect. They make a few attempts to contact the potential voter in question in order to correct the information and make the form valid, but if they have no success in getting the voter to correct the information, they must package the invalid forms and send them to the local election boards anyway. The election board workers are left to sort out the mess. If this seems convoluted, imagine the implications of voter fraud A.C.O.R.N. would have to face had they attempted to weed out the invalid forms and discard them. Its better to go ahead and send a bogus registration form on behalf of Captain Kangaroo to the election board and allow THEM to throw it away rather than outrage thousands of people who legitimately filled out a registration form, made a mistake and had it discarded by A.C.O.R.N. "A.C.O.R.N. threw away my vote."

The main issue with A.C.O.R.N. is that they must lower the bar of qualifications for their employees because they are a non-profit organization and usually hire canvassers at minimum wage. How hard is it for a person who can basically read, write, walk and talk to complete perfect, legible documents for the election boards? Its something that anal writer-types like me can do in my sleep, for regular non-nerdy people-not so much. A.C.O.R.N.'s bottom line is: they got what they paid for. They cant afford to hire college graduates to canvass for voter registration. It essentially is an organization mainly comprised of poor people organizing for other poor people. They still manage to get in quite a few numbers of new voters despite the ones that get discarded by the election boards. A.C.O.R.N. is STILL a legitimate organization that does great things for the community.

All this boils down to is another character attack on the Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama who, through political party association has been linked with A.C.O.R.N. This declaration made by the right-wing media is erroneous. The voter registration branch of A.C.O.R.N. is a non-partisan organization that doesn't endorse candidates or political parties. Their main focus and goal is voter registration regardless of political affiliation or candidate preference.

A.C.O.R.N. expains it all here.