Voter Fraud Charges Made Against ACORN

According to the New York Post, ACORN is under investigation in at least nine states for allegations of voter fraud. In Ohio, the Post interviewed a man who asserts that ACORN representatives gave him "cash and cigarettes ... in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times."

ACORN is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It is currently at the center of a Republican effort to link Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to negative headlines. Obama was a community organizer before becoming a state legislator.

According to a 2004 article in Social Policy (Vol. 34, Issue 2, page 49-52), Obama appears to have been lead counsel for ACORN v Edgar (which forced Illinois to comply with the National Voting Rights Act) and subsequently ran a "leadership ... session on power [for ACORN] every year." One assumes the author meant Obama ran training sessions for the decade prior to the 2004 article, but the writing is (to be kind) vague.

The article is no longer accessible via the Social Policy website.

As a general statement, Democrats are concerned about vote fraud and Republicans are concerned about voter fraud. The first involves the system of casting and counting votes; the second involves people voting illegally.

See An Overview of Election Fraud and An Illustrated History of Voting Systems.