Easier to get a job in a county elections office and mess things up from there, don’t you think? You can then create a screwy ballot that induces people to think that they’re voting for one of the major parties when they’re actually voting for a third party (Palm Beach County) or have a ballot whose Presidential section extends over two pages, accompany it with instructions to vote on every page, and disqualify the ballots of those who apply that advice to the Presidential section (Duval County).
A lot less work, a proven track record of success, and surely pays better.
One thing I haven’t really seen anyone discuss in this matter is this: is the *hypothetical *abuse of the system enough to counterbalance the good that ACORN, as an organization, does? It seems to me that on the one hand, we’ve got all these new voters that ACORN has gotten into the system- and on the other hand, we’ve got a handful of bogus names and a conspiracy theory that those names could then, somehow, be used to sway an election.
Or, to put it another way, Bricker- if you were to argue for the withdrawal of funding for ACORN in front of a judge, and you presented the arguments you’ve given here… what do you think his response would be?
Bricker asked a good question which I’d like to see answered:
Why register voters at all? What’s the benefit of doing that? It seems pretty much universal that countries do require voters to register. We certainly do in Canada.
So what’s the value of doing so? And if there’s value in it, should you care if an organization is filing large numbers of fraudulent registrations?
The assertion you all seem to be making is, “no harm, no foul”. Yet it is in fact illegal to file a false registration. What’s the justification for making it illegal, or requiring registrations at all, if fraudulent registrations don’t harm the system in any way?
Only legitimate voters ARE allowed to register to vote. Registering to vote illegally is already illegal. There is, of course, no way to stop people from trying.
Not all states do, so no, there’s no special reason we should have to register voters at all. I lived for many years in a state which did not require voters to register, and I’ve never heard of any voter fraud being committed there. Getting rid of the need for registration all together sounds like a fine solution to me.
It’s not required on a federal level in the U.S. It’s decided on a state level. Not all states require it. The sytem still works just fine without without required registration.
This is a fatuous question. Fraudulent registrations don’t affect elections in any way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a nuisance to weed out.
This conflates two issues. I started the GD thread to discuss the apparent willingness of ACORN workers to aid mortgage fraud, tax evasion, and prostitution. The issue of voter registration problems was a separate issue, and several times in that GD thread I tried to stop the discussion of the vote business and return to the actual issue at hand.
As best as I can tell, because there are a numbe of prominent talk show hosts pushing the “ACORN is evil” theme, people seem to conclude that I share this view. I don’t, as I have said several times.
To answer your question… well, I can’t. I’d have to know how the issue got in front of the judge. A challenge on the ACORN funding bill as a bill of attainder? I’d rule against ACORN. Other than that, I can’t think of how it might be in front of a judge, but if you’ll tell me the underlying issues, I’d be happy to offer an opinion.
And I’ll toss in a what-would-I-do-as-a-Congressman answer: I would not vote to defund ACORN based on either issue (the voting or the lax advisory issue). I would, however, vote in favor of a requirement that any organization receiving funds for the purposes ACORN does be required to submit audits and samples of their internal control and hiring procedures and make continued funding contingent on those procedures meeting a minimum standard.
You mean that vast, vast array of organizations devoted to organizing the poor and powerless? Well, its a good thing its not something designed specifically to hinder ACORN, it takes in all those others as well!
The problem of how to maintain quality control when workers have to perform specific tasks is not new to ACORN. Off the top of my head, paying a flat hourly rate, as opposed to a per-registration piece, would remove an incentive to falsify voter cards. And while they may be legally obligated to submit every card received, they can submit each card to a checklist of indicia of fraud, and keep track of error rates for each employee, as well as segregating the suspected fraudulent cards. Although they’re requried to submit them, there is nothing (so far as I’m aware) to prevent them from handing in a separate bunch noted as suspected of having problems – indeed, they’ve done exactly that on occasion, haven’t they?
And undoubtedly people with more experience in the QA field can offer refinements and additional effective ideas.
Do I take it correctly that you oppose the idea of making ACORN, or any other recipient of federal funding, be required to submit audits and samples of their internal control and having hiring procedures meet a minimum standard in order to continue receiving such funding?
Because that really seems like a reasonable requirement to me.
They already do separate and flag the suspicious ones.
They aren’t allowed to make determinations for themselves as to which ones are legit or not, though, so that prevents them from being able to track an “error rate” for respective workers – and these are workers who are hired only for a day or a few hours anyway.
I believe they already do index those forms which look suspicious to the workers which turned them in.
I think they (at least some offices) already do pay by the hour, but require a a minimum quota to stop people from going out, doing nothing for 8 hours, then coming back and demanding to get paid for it.
This is low level work, done by temp workers hired off the street in poor neighborhoods. A certain amount of hustling and cheating is inevitable, unless you’re going to hire extra people to tail and supervise the temp workers.
You are surprisingly well versed in the procedures employed by ACORN! I didn’t know, myself, that ACORN routinely pays on a “piece work” basis, I pretty much assumed that they were strictly “by the hour”. Yes, I can certainly see how such a performance basis could lead to problems. Have you a list handy of those ACORN chapters than use this approach, that we might rebuke them more directly?
Why, no, you may not take it so. In fact, I very, very much doubt you even consider that such a suggestion on my part is plausible, neither of us being idiots.
“Do I take it correctly, sir, that you oppose the idea of forbidding roving bands of crackhead zombies to plunder our day care centers for victims?”
I have an easy solution to the problem of ACORN’s dastardly ways: Don’t rely on outside organizations to do one of the basic functions of government. It should be the government’s job to get all interested parties registered to vote, not some private org.
Oh, yeah, I can just see it. A Dem stands up in Congress to propose spending Federal money to extend registered voters amongst the poor and brown. Who would oppose such a thing? What a splendid opportunity for enthusiastic bi-partisan support!
Well, maybe some of the right might be a tad bit unenthusiastic, but I am confident that their native love for democracy will carry them into the fold. As a hypothetical, I mean.