| As one reads or watches stories about "voter fraud" in the media, one is struck by how often various charges are repeated, as opposed to the stubborn fact that there's no case at all in the recent historical record of significant voter fraud. In my poking around, I stumbled on a website that clearly epitomizes this tendency, with the list below--though not enhanced with comments in red that I've thoughfully added.
I've found that a number of other site have simply copied this list, treating it as authoritative proof of... well, something. But to me, what it shows is simply that collecting a bunch of evidence that doesn't prove your point also doesn't prove your point. This, however, is simply evidence of a logos-style mindset. From a mythos perspective, the repetition of accusations, regardless of underlying facts, is what counts. It creates an air of sinister menace, operating in the meaning-making manner indicated by Armstrong above. And the fact that the "liberal media" may not take any of this seriously only serves to reinforce the mythos. And then when the "liberal media" does take it seriously, why then it's "even the liberal media was forced to admit...."
For the peddlers of mythos it's a can't lose proposition. Here then, is the list of accusations from the "Rotten Acorn" website (more about them below), with my handy little comments insterted in red:
| State |
Year |
Details |
| AR |
1998 |
A contractor with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote was arrested for falsifying about 400 voter registration cards. |
| COMMENT: | A contractor with Project Vote. Not ACORN. |
| CO |
2004 |
An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times. |
| COMMENT: | An ACORN employee. Not ACORN. |
| |
2005 |
Two ex-ACORN employees were convicted in Denver of perjury for submitting false voter registrations. |
| COMMENT: | Two ex-ACORN workers. Not ACORN. |
| FL |
2004 |
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman said ACORN was "singled out" among suspected voter registration groups for a 2004 wage initiative because it was "the common thread" in the agency's fraud investigations. |
| COMMENT: | SUSPECTED. Of what? Nothing proven. |
| MI |
2004 |
The Detroit Free Press reported that "overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters." ACORN-affiliate Project Vote was one of two groups suspected of turning in the documents. |
| COMMENT: | "Overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers" who MAY have been working for Project Vote. Not Project Vote itself, and not ACORN. |
| MO |
2007 |
Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for charges including identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 election. |
| COMMENT: | Four ACORN employees. Not ACORN. |
|
2006 |
Eight ACORN employees in St. Louis were indicted on federal election fraud charges. Each of the eight faces up to five years in prison for forging signatures and submitting false information. |
| COMMENT: | Eight ACORN employees. Not ACORN. |
|
2003 |
Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally. |
| COMMENT: | Sounds pretty bad, but again, no indication that it was ACORN, rather than ACORN workers. I discovered that this account comes from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but could find nothing further about it in my initial search of their archives. However, they have recently editorialized against the GOP's baseless accusations against ACORN. Here. |
| NC |
2004 |
North Carolina officials investigated ACORN for submitting fake voter registration cards. |
| COMMENT: | Investigated ACORN. This phraseology is so vague it's impossible to tell if ACORN was ever suspected of anything, or if it was just another case of bad employees. Regardless, this investigation started four years ago. If ACORN had done something wrong, we should have something more recent documenting that. Instead, we have nothing. |
| NM |
2005 |
Four ACORN employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group's Albuquerque ballot initiative. A local sheriff added: "It's safe to say the forgery was widespread." |
| COMMENT: | Four ACORN employees. Not ACORN. |
| |
2004 |
An ACORN employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, New Mexico State Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was "manufacturing voters" throughout New Mexico. |
| COMMENT: | An ACORN employee. Not ACORN. |
| OH |
2007 |
A man in Reynoldsburg was indicted on two felony counts of illegal voting and false registration, after being registered by ACORN to vote in two separate counties. |
| COMMENT: | A man was indicted. No indication that he was convicted (he could have moved, it could have been a bad prosecution), or that he even attempted to vote twice. No indication of wrongdoing by ACORN. |
|
2004 |
A grand jury indicted a Columbus ACORN worker for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, two ACORN workers submitted what the director of the board of election supervisors called "blatantly false" forms. In Cuyahoga County, ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group. |
| COMMENT: | One indicted ACORN worker. Others accused. Errors are not fraud. There is no fraud accusation against ACORN here. |
| MN |
2004 |
During a traffic stop, police found more than 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of a former ACORN employee, who had violated a legal requirements that registration cards be submitted to the Secretary of State within 10 days of being filled out and signed. |
| COMMENT: | A former ACORN worker. Not ACORN. |
| PA |
2008 |
An ACORN employee in West Reading, PA, was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison for identity theft and tampering with records. A second ACORN worker pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is free on $10,000 bail. |
| COMMENT: | An ACORN employee. Not ACORN. |
|
2004 |
Reading's Director of Elections received calls from numerous individuals complaining that ACORN employees deliberately put inaccurate information on their voter registration forms. The Berks County
director of elections said voter fraud was "absolutely out of hand," and added: "Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registration but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations." The Berks County deputy director of elections added that ACORN was under investigation by the Department of Justice. |
| COMMENT: | ACORN employees are accused of deliberately putting inaccurate information on forms, Not ACORN. The claim of a DOJ investigation means nothing, since this was precisely what the US Attorneys scandal was all about: the attempt to manufacture bogus charges of election fraud. |
| TX |
2004 |
ACORN turned in the voter registration form of David Young, who told reporters "The signature is not my signature. It's not even close." His social security number and date of birth were also incorrect. |
| COMMENT: | Another case that indicates problems with an ACORN worker, but Not ACORN. |
| VA |
2005 |
In 2005, the Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN for turning in a significant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons in violation of state and federal election law.
In a letter to ACORN, the State Board of Elections reported that 56% of the voter registration applications ACORN turned in were ineligible. Further, a full 35% were not submitted in a timely manner, as required by law. The State Board of Elections also commented on what appeared to be evidence of intentional voter fraud. "Additionally," they wrote, "information appears to have been altered on some applications where information given by the applicant in one color ink has been scratched through and re-entered in another color ink. Any alteration of a voter registration application is a Class 5 Felony in accordance with § 24.2 1009 of the Code of Virginia." |
| COMMENT: | This sounds like one of the most serious/substantive claims made here, but again, there is no evidence against ACORN, and no mention of any further action. In contrast, here's a 2006 story from Virginia making much more serious allegations the other way. This story, too, appears to have been over-hyped, though there was some basis in fact. The sorts of GOP dirty tricks involved are seldom even considered "voter fraud," but they are, quite literally, fraudulent attempts to prevent legitimate votes from being cast. |
| WA |
2007 |
Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history. More than 2,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted by the group during a voter registration drive. |
| COMMENT: | Seven ACORN workers. Not ACORN. |
| WI |
2004 |
The district attorney's office investigated seven voter registration applications Project Vote employees filed in the names of people who said the group never contacted them. Former Project Vote employee Robert Marquise Blakely told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not met with any of the people whose voter registration applications he signed, "an apparent violation of state law," according to the paper. |
| COMMENT: | One ACORN worker. Not ACORN. |
That's a truly impressive whole lot of nothing. But not if you're looking at it through the eyes of rightwing mythos. And that's just the point: the fact that it's factually vacuous means nothing at all in terms of mythos. It's totally irrelevant to the mindset of mythos.
About The Website's Owners
The website is the product of the Employment Policies Institute, about which Sourcewatch says:
The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries. While most commonly referred to as EPI, it is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization under the name of Employment Policies Institute Foundation. In its annual Internal Revenue Service return, EPI states that it "shares office space with Berman & Company on a cost pass through basis". [1]
EPI has has been widely quoted in news stories regarding minimum wage issues, and although a few of those stories have correctly described it as a "think tank financed by business," most stories fail to provide any identification that would enable readers to identify the vested interests behind its pronouncements. Instead, it is usually described exactly the way it describes itself, as a "non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth" that "focuses on issues that affect entry-level employment." In reality, EPI's mission is to keep the minimum wage low so Berman's clients can continue to pay their workers as little as possible.
EPI also owns the internet domain names to MinimumWage.com and LivingWage.com, a website that attempts to portray the idea of a living wage for workers as some kind of insidious conspiracy. "Living wage activists want nothing less than a national livingwage," it warns (as though there is something wrong with paying employees enough that they can afford to eat and pay rent).
But to really grasp the fundamentally deceptive nature of this outfit, you need to read the history section, which begins thus:
The Employment Policies Institute was launched in 1991, around the time of the economic recession that led to the electoral defeat of then-president George Bush. EPI deliberately attempted to create confusion in the eyes of journalists and the general public by adopting a name which closely resembles the Economic Policy Institute, a much older, progressive think tank with ties to organized labor. In addition to imitating the name and acronym of the Economic Policy Institute, Berman's outfit even used the same typeface for its logo. In reality, the two groups have dramatically different public policy agendas. The Economic Policy supports a living wage and mandated health benefits for workers. Berman's organization opposes both and in fact opposes any minimum wage whatsoever.
In 1992, Los Angeles Times business columnist Harry Bernstein noted that EPI was using "misleading studies" to help put a positive spin on rising unemployment. "The conservative EPI, financed mostly by low-wage companies such as hotels and restaurants, is issuing reports the titles of which alone could help put a bright face on the miserable job scene," Bernstein wrote. "The latest one is 'The Value of Part-Time Workers to the American Economy.' It hails as a great thing the distressing growth of part-time jobs because they offer 'flexibility' in economic planning for both workers and companies, and say that flexibility is vital 'in the growing and increasingly competitive global economy.' Tell that nonsense to the more than 6.5 million workers forced to take part-time jobs because nothing else is available. That is an increase of more than 1.5 million involuntary part-timers since 1990, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says." EPI has been doing more or less the same thing ever since, sponsoring cooked studies and issuing tendentious sound bytes whenever attempts are made to establish healthcare or better wages for workers.
These are the slimeballs attacking ACORN, using everything but facts. They are despicable human beings, to be sure. But we should not let ourselves simply dismiss them as scum. They are scum, but they ways that they bamboozle people, the ways of mythos can be used to drive home truths, as well as lies. And if we want to win long-term, that is a lesson we must all take to heart. |
