Late in the Game Political Stunts

[MichaelHarris]

When rats feel the ship sinking they get desperate. When political parties see the big white house leaving their grasp they get dirty. Today's raid of ACORN may be one of those dirty tricks. Who is ACORN? From their website,

"ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system. "

Doesn't sound like they're major players in crime, by all accounts they appear to be an upstanding organization. Today's raid and it's national media attention seem to suggest otherwise, well not when you see the facts. The story,

"The Las Vegas headquarters of the nation’s largest grassroots community organization for low-income people was raided today by Nevada state authorities as part of a voter-fraud probe. The raid was initiated by Nevada’s Secretary of State, Ross Miller, after a series of accusations that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN, was submitting voter registration lists to the state that contained false or duplicate names of voters."

How horrible! Low Income people doing the whole voter fraud thing, the thing usually reserved for Republicans. Well hold on, the media and the Nevada Secretary of State aren't telling you the whole truth. It seems ACORN had recognized the voter fraud ten months ago, they immediately notified election officials. During those ten months these officials routinely ignored ACORN's concerns.

From a statement issued by ACORN,

" Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers. On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29."

All of this leads to today's stunt, a stunt on a day with a presidential debate. A stunt less than a month before the Presidential Election. ACORN say's it better than I can,

"serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls."

Nevadans, is this the sort of actions you want in your state? Hard working people who identified a problem and reported it to officials only to be raided at a more convenient date? Contact Nevada’s Secretary of State, Ross Miller, tell him this is NOT the politics you want your officials playing.

Michael Harris

[NYC_SKP]

1. To late to rec, but I can kick it....

The officials in Nevada, let me guess, hardline republicans, maybe even crooked...