Per TPM:
The Democrats in Wisconsin are accusing the GOP of paying out-of-staters to collect signatures in a recall counter effort. Among the accusations are that some of the people who circulated signatures were legally prohibited from doing so (the basis for this is unclear to me at this point); that signatories were intentionally mislead into signing petitions; and that fraudulent signatures were turned in.
At this point these are nothing more than unsubstantiated allegations. However, assume for the moment that instances of all three accusations are eventually proven as implied.
**ACORN detractors:Should the Wisconsin Republican Party (or the highest umbrella group responsible for the efforts) be treated in the same manner as ACORN? What are the appropriate organizational punishment/sanctions?
ACORN supporters:** Should the actions be attributed to some minor aspects of the Wisconsin GOP and little to no big deal should be made of this?
Again, these are just allegations at this point, but for the purposes of the thread please treat the allegations as true.
I think a lot will turn on the prevalence and nature of the fraudulent methods used to obtain signatures and the bureaucratic knowledge of submitting fraudulent signatures. I am assuming that any laws prohibiting certain people from collecting signatures have penalties within the law (e.g., not counting the signatures collected; monetary penalties) and would be satisfied with that—whatever the voters of Wisconsin felt was the proper anti-motivation to prohibit the conduct was a choice they made. Similarly, if the fraudulent methods used were rogue workers looking to make extra money, then the law-based sanctions should be sufficient.
However, if the fraudulent methods were endemic to the organization (or the division responsible for the effort)—and it was aware of it, or if the organization was aware of fraudulent signatures and yet submitted them nonetheless (absent a similar law compelling them to do so), then this would seem to rise above the ACORN improprieties and … and I’m not sure what the appropriate sanctions would be. There is likely no mechanism to ‘defund’ the GOP based on this, nor do I believe that that would be a wise choice if it were possible. Clearly there are voter-based measures, but what about the organization itself? If the Wisconsin Democratic party gains control of the state legislature and passes a punitive measure, what should it be?
ETA: Just in case it wasn’t absolutely clear from the post, I wanted to state my initial bias: I thought that ACORN was treated unfairly in being defunded and that the derision towards the organization for the pay-for-registration issue was vastly overblown.