Prickly City by Scott Stantis for October 29, 2008
October 28, 2008
October 30, 2008
Transcript:
Carmen: You're sure you registered to vote this time, Winslow? Winslow: Sure. I have my cards right here, Carmen. Carmen: Cards? Winslow: ACORN helped me!!
The voter registration fraud associated with ACORN is an attempt to defraud ACORN itself. ACORN pays people based on the number of voters that they register, so sometimes the workers pad the lists to get more money. ACORN checks for for this, then reports the bad registrations as fraudulent (and fires the dishonest workers).
Having defended ACORN from the popular slander, I should also note that, compared to other voter registration groups, it has much higher rates of fraud (17% compared to 5%, according to Wikipedia). Personally, I think that this is because of their all-out, gung-ho strategy: just get all the registrations that you can, and deal with the bad ones later. In terms of sheer numbers, it's a successful strategy, but it comes at a price.