Among my 588 unread e-mails I went through today were two or three demanding that I go find out, and report back to the writers, whether ACORN had been doing nefarious things here in South Carolina. I made a mental note to — right after reading the 588 messages, going back and reading the 100 or so that came in while I was reading those, selecting op-ed copy for tomorrow, moving the copy for Friday’s page, finishing reading McCain’s autobiography, reading proofs, writing my Sunday column that I plan to be a companion piece to my tome of last Sunday, and emptying the messages on my phone that have overloaded my e-mail — run right out and interrogate each of the 4 million people in South Carolina to find out whether ACORN was active here.
But then I thought: Why not ask folks on the blog if THEY’VE heard about any ACORN doings in S.C.? If they had, I could pass the tip on to our newsroom, which might, just might have what I will never have — time to look into it.
But before I got caught up enough to do even that, I saw that ever-dependable Cindi had noticed that another paper had already checked, and here’s what they found:
Controversial activist group has made no waves in S.C.
ACORN pulled out 2 years ago after SLED started probeBy Robert Behre (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A national activist organization making headlines for its controversial voter registration drives once had a presence in South Carolina but pulled up stakes after the State Law Enforcement Division opened an investigation into its registration efforts in the Columbia area two years ago.
That investigation is ongoing, a SLED official said, declining further comment.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known commonly as ACORN, operated from an office on Hampton Street in downtown Columbia, but that office has closed….
Anybody hear anything to the contrary? If not, I’m going back to reading that book. I got my proofs turned in a few minutes ago. I’ll probably do what I’ve done all week (and last week, on the Obama book) — stay at my desk past dark, forcing myself to read X number of pages, then going home for dinner, then reading until midnight, or until I can’t keep my eyes open any more. I seldom go to this much trouble for one column, but I thought it paid off in a fairly decent, if offbeat, column Sunday. So I’m doing it again.
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I for one think you work too much.
Or, you really love what you do for a living. 🙂
The primary issue with ACORN is adherence to the rule of law: are their activities lawful, do they comply with the letter of the law in what they do?
I work for a publicly traded corporation listed on the NYSE in this new era of Sarbanes-Oxley wherein auditors audit auditors to find something wrong. We’ve adopted policies and procedures to ensure that every step we take in our attempts to corner the market and assure a revenue stream is not only legal, but also fully frustrated.
There’s also the much maligned and frequently circumvented McCain-Feingold Act that pretends to regulate political parties, political speech, and other important thingies in order to minimize their impact. It was not a great idea and has been less than a great success, but at least there are rules, regulations, and an impotent body to assure that some rules are sometimes enforced.
But when it comes to non-profits like ACORN there seem to be no rules, and they seem to have fastened onto some revenue streams originating in the federal government, but flowing indirectly their way.
I first became aware of ACORN around 1994-1995 when we lived in Minnesota. At the time ACORN was supporting public assistance for immigrants, but they did not restrict their focus to the newly arrived Hmong, but to all folks, even (especially) those with paperwork “issues.” Okay, that’s politics, but ACORN’s expansive notions abut citizenship ran contrary to the law. Yet because ACORN had a brand identity of being all good and quite wholesome, opposition to their voter registration and related efforts was identified as racist or discriminatory.
I’m therefore predisposed to regard any ACORN effort as unlawful and admit that prejudice. That South Carolina has taken a stand against them is admirable yet serves to highlight the cowardice of other sovereign entities in taking them on. When they break the law, they should be held to account. Few places do so.
If SLED chased ACORN out of South Carolina, maybe the FBI will be able to run ACORN out of the United States before every college student in Illinois has registered to vote in Ohio.
If one person with a very good memory could register all voters, the problem would be solved.
Brad, don’t you have some spare time?
Are we 100% sure theis SLED story is true and if so, how come it has never made the national news? You would think drudge would have picked this up by now. “State Agency Ran ACORN Out on a Rail”, sounds like national copy to me.
As long as ACORN is around they will be questionable.
Motor Voter, instant registration, court rulings to block positive identification of voters, mass voting by illegal immigrants, amnesty for illegals, registration by partisan groups like ACORN and black churches, and the total lack of teaching in public schools of citizenship and history, are all part of the socialist agenda to rot America’s democratic institutions.
The initiative goes all the way back to 1922, with the well-documented history of Trotsky’s mapping it all out and sending agents to the USA to begin the process.
The NEA and ACLU were among the first creations of that Soviet initiative.
oh quit whining and get back to your keyboard
ACORN is a fine organization that is doing nothing more than trying to get disadvantaged people registered to vote. The GOP is far, far, far more dangerous to democracy than ACORN. Brace yourselves folks the GOP is setting up for a massive effort to disenfranchise minority, mostly democratic voters. This is nothing more than a FOX News propaganda campaign of the worst kind. Shame on everyone who is on board with this charade.
This all fits in the BILDERBERG master plan to outlaw the US Constitution and put the USA in the North American Union just like the European Union.There is an agenda being pushed by both political parties to desolve all borders in North America and create a giant trade block.To do this the Constitution has to be nullified including the 2nd ammendment. Global warming will be pushed as an excuse to block people out of certain areas of America. People in WVa are already complaining about exits being blocked off to small towns on the new interstate hwy. being built there.Stop the NEW WAVE politicians like OBAMA and the NEW WORLD ORDER ZOMBIES !!!
bud! ACORN IS CORRUPT SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION SPAWNED FROM THE WELFARE ARM OF THE GOVERNMENT. Voting is an important part of civic responsibility, the very idea of having to go out and register people who are too lazy to get up and engage in their own civil right and cast their vote is unbeleivable. The only rationalization is that it is intent on fraud. I suppose it’s just one more example of taking care of people who are unwilling to work and take care of themselves. Now, they will not even get up and go register to vote properly. So we have to bring it to them, paid for by tax dollars.
Does anyone else find this particuarly disturbing that the BLOG link stating “Report: SLED Chased ACORN From SC” is just to the right of the link stating “Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud”. It seems we’re being told this problem was solved 2 years ago but the group is being investigated currently,,,,, hmmmm, I wonder if The State will endorse Obama????
WOW! They moved the headline!!!! It was in Bold letters next to the warthen blong link, and NOW it has been moved down and reduced to regular text! Blatant! Blatant!
So much of “OBJECTIVE” journalism,,,,,
Sorry Dave, you’re absolutely wrong on this. Everyone has a right to vote, regardless of any preconceived notion that you may have that fits in with your GOP-first mentality. It was the GOP that stole the 2000 election by working vigorously to disenfranchise LEGAL voters in Florida. It was the GOP that did the same thing again in Ohio. It is a GOP supporting firm, Diebold, that manufactures voting machines with proprietary software and no provision for receipts that calls into suspicion the accuracy of those machines.
Clearly ACORN is a very small fish in the election process. They are an admirable group working hard to ensure the wheels of democracy are not skewed in favor of the elitists who run the GOP. I applaud ACORN for their efforts and condem anyone who sanctomoniously attempts to discredit them. Shame on FOX, Limbaugh and all the other blathering idiots who defame this fine organization. The Democrats better not let the mendacious thieves get away with stealing another election. We need to fight this with all guns blazing. A fair election is the least we can expect in this country. Unless we squash the diobolical GOP henchmen we could be stuck with more of the same failures we’ve suffered with for too long now. GO ACORN!!
I don’t think anybody got chased anywhere
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=14902
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=14921
seems to me we have been lied to…..
looks like ACORN maintains an office in SC, the webiste has been sanitized so as not to draw attention but I would bet there is more than meets the eye,,,,,
Look at their history, look at their current actions,,, only a naive fool or a liar would dare even advocate for them.
bud
You are right! Every American citizen has the right to vote, I just don’t believe we should use tax dollars to go find people who are too lazy/uninvolved to do it themselves, ergo, “bring me an application and I’ll sign it”.
I DO BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU GO AND REGISTER TO VOTE OR RECEIVE A DRIVERS LICENSE: THESE QUESTIONS ARE ON THE FORM THAT YOU FILL OUT: ARE YOU AN AMERICAN CITIZEN? CAN YOU READ AND WRITE? (ARE YOU AWARE THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE THAT GRADUATE SCHOOL TODAY CANNOT READ OR WRITE): HAVE YOU EVER
BEEN CONVICTED OF A FELLON? THIS IS JUST
SOME OF THE QUESTIONS THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN
VERY SERIOUS.
So how many illegal votes have been cast as a result of ACORN?
Word to the Wise:
In last night’s broadcast on TBN, Bishop T.D. Jakes christened Barack Obama the Moses of our time. Though he spoke in parables, probably to avoid being swooped down upon by the IRS, he is none-the-less laying down the palm fronds.
You McCaino’s are probably wasting your breath, vote, air-time, endorsements, film, and a whole lotta ink.
…………
Meanwhile, I am busy crafting my Ron Paul Tinfoil Hat.
Does Bud live in the US? On planet earth? I’m not sure where he gets his news, but its not any credible source.
Disenfranchising LEGAL voters in Florida in 2000.. he must mean the overseas military personnel the Dems fought hard not to count because most voted for Bush. And Gore did not win FL – the NY Times said so, as well as many, many other media outlets that went to FL and investigated thoroughly. Trust me when I tell you we would have heard otherwise – until the end of time. It simply hasn’t happened because Bush won. Confused voters may have punched the wrong hole, but Bush won more actual votes, as they were cast. Unfortunately for people like Bud, the rule of law matters, as much as they hate it and try to change it.
It is funny to hear people are still so torn up over 2000. My advice is to move on with your life, or perhaps get one.
Bud was the one listener to Air America when it was on in Columbia – all 6 months of it. He was probably a caller too to rail against those waskily Republicans who cheated, blah, blah, blah.
It really is hilarious.
Go get’em Bud! You da man.
News flash howard, Air America is still on in Columbia.
Here’s one of many articles written about the voter disenfranchisement issue:
One Million Black Votes Didn’t Count in the 2000 Presidential Election
It’s not too hard to get your vote lost — if some politicians want it to be lost
by Greg Palast
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. “Spoiled votes” is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them — half of the rejected ballots — were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-’round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It’s easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played — with black voters the predetermined losers.
Florida’s Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state — and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in “Al Gore.” Optical reading machines rejected these because “Al” is a “stray mark.”
By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee’s white-majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.
In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.
A report from Bud’s better-spelling brethren, the Associated Press, shows voters in an AP-Yahoo poll souring on McCain with Obama remaining steady.
The poll’s methodology was like swaddling clothes for the messiah. It included 841 likely voters — 373 Democrats, 252 Republicans and 214 independents.
I wonder why they bothered to include any Republicans at all.
first, somebody really needs to push SLED on this. why ISN’T an investigation ongoing
for 2 years after the target left the state completed? What politicians were involved?
Search ACORN at the NYT or Washington Post sites. Earlier this year one ran a series about an ACORN employee whose brother was on the board, and I think connected to the family that founded/heavily supports ACORN, embezzeled over $1 Million. The scandal was that he was allowed to resign and his family pay back what he took rather than be prosecuted. Some of the board did not like this cover-up and the story got out.
It bothers me, too, that people who are too trifling to register any of the easy ways it can be done are being tracked down and registered – or is it just Mickey Mouse who’s getting on the rolls.
I worry more, much more, about these voting machine with limited security and no paper trails. That’s where the real fraud will take place.
We need precints that are small enough to allow rapid votes and counts and send the machines back from whence they came.
According to his resume, Obama received the majority of his experience to be president while working at ACORN. This says a lot about what the Democrats plan to do with the Presidency.
Dyed-in-the-wool Republicans have rendered themselves not relevant by nominating John McCain. As a war hero he is NUMERO UNO in my book. But he had to wriggle into so many political shapes [Palin=his most drastic contortion] to woo his base voters…
Tanya Tucker says it best:
“If it don’t come easy, you better let it go.”
!
“Clearly ACORN is a very small fish in the election process. They are an admirable group working hard to ensure the wheels of democracy are not skewed in favor of the elitists who run the GOP.” – bud
So registering voters from one state to vote in another state is a good thing, and so is “Mickey Mouse” signing up to vote.
It’s also just peachy keen fine if I only get to vote once, but black folks in Ohio get to break dance from one county to another to another to vote under different names with the tacit approval of Ohio’s Democrat Secretary of State.
Bud, you have the morals of a scorpion.
It’s rather pathetic that an independently owned newspaper with such limited resources as the Post&Courier is relied on to do news repoting for you big shots. Columbia could really used a locally owned paper that is accountable and responsible. And while I’m at it, Brad- You commit more time and space to grumbling about your schedule than any other issue. Either quit bitchin’ or quit your job. You aren’t a martyr, man. I know plenty of people who work as hard as you, but they do it for a reason and they don’t feel the need to tell strangers how hard working they are all the time.
It is almost a 100% certainty that few, if any, of those registered by ACORN ACTUALLY voted fradulantly. This is simply a FOX smear campaign. Yet they ignore the very real problem of voter disenfranchisment. So much for fair and balanced. The only fair result is for all eligible voters who want to vote to be allowed to vote exactly once. There are probably 100 times as many eligible voters who are not allowed to vote as there are voters who vote multiple times. That simple fact favors the GOP.
Some of the posts made by the Obama supporters are so far out and ridiculous. Are these people a joke or do they really beleive that way.
Bud, two weeks ago democrats were saying it was only Voter Registration fraud and not real Voter fraud, now we are seeing that mickey mouse really did mail in a ballot and it got almost got counted,,,,
I see that no matter what facts you are presented with your mind is set, and I respect that.
ACORN is an arm of the Democratic Party.
They INTEND for all those illegally registered voters to actually vote Democrat on election day.
Barney Frank tried to give ACORN as much as $20 BILLION over 10 years in the recent FNMA bailout package.
2% of the registered voters in Florida so far are illegal – more than enough to tip the election in 2000 and 2004.
200,000 illegal voters have been found registered by ACORN in Ohio in the last month.
News flash! for “bud”.
The investigation by the NY Times, and other major news media, of the 2000 votes in Florida found that Bush actually did win, that no voters were disinfranchised, that Bush won the popular vote nationwide, and that the Gore campaign had drawn up the legal complaints for a dozen states weeks before the election, with the plan being to file complaints even without any evidence, just to try to steal the election in the courts.
Bush won the popular vote nationwide,
-Lee
Huh. The official count for Gore was more than 1/2 million more than for Bush. Put up your source for this nonsense. It’s not the NY Times.
I hear ACORN is registering convicted felons too,,,,
If Obama is elected, Democrats intend to pass legislation allowing felons still in prison to vote. The have sponsored this legislation for years, but the GOP has stopped passage.
News flash: A study conducted subsequent to the NYT article you cited by experts in Florida election law concluded that most likely: A) Votes that would have given Gore FL were knowingly disallowed, in violation of law; B) Service personnel stationed abroad had their votes counted, despite failing to meet the requirements; C) the FL GOP deliberately obstructed voter access in precincts with large black majorities; D) Katherine Harris was probably guilty of violating the law. Source: THE BATTLE FOR FLORIDA, University of Florida Press, 2003
BigDave sounds like a big idiot.. it’s not unlawful to help people register to vote. of course, the elite feel threatened when the poor are encouraged to vote. the republicans stay up late at night working on strategies to discourage voting and trying to manipulate the common people to vote against their interests. for them to squeal about ACORN is really ironic
Having registered people to vote for the Democratic Party in 1972, and having worked for the Voter Ed Project, and as a poll watcher and poll manager, I can say with authority that is IS ILLEGAL to register anyone you suspect is not a qualified voter, much less to seek them out, fabricate names, or forge signatures.
ACORN not only registers illegal voters for Democrats, but they also were heavily involved in getting federal grants to lobby for FNMA and FMAC junk loans to unqualified blacks and Latinos, which is the root cause of our current bank credit collapse.
Recount after recount, GW Bush still beats Gore in Florida.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html
More NEWS you will not see in “the state”, ACORN accused of fraud by ny times,,,,,, Now 6 counties in Alabama have more registered voters than elegible voters,,, hmmmm, smells like ACORN, the corrupt arm of the democratic socialist party.
Dies ist ein großer Ort. Ich möchte hier noch einmal.