ACORN Part IV: The Payoff

If it were a movie, the title would read ACORN Part IV: The Payoff. Unfortunately, its not a movie and the Association Of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is finally back in the news after a post election hiatus filled with strategically placed puff pieces on members barging into foreclosure meetings and disrupting proceedings. The proposed stimulus package will continue on in the Bush tradition of rewarding bad behavior. 

To refresh the minds of a public who may have missed the 1000+ a day pre-election blogs and articles, ACORN has continued on its storied path of “shady” voter registration tactics, intimidation and ultimately financial rewards.As the civil RICO complaint filed this month by the ACORN 8 illustrates:

“Moreover, through the investigation following the embezzlement and subsequent acts of concealment and retaliation; the complainants have discovered that ACORN has become the victim of its Senior Staff and Executive Committee members through the course of an association-in-fact enterprise and RICO conspiracy.The Defendants have engaged in these acts knowingly and intentionally with a common purpose of controlling ACORN its and its associated/affiliated entities and denying its membership the benefits of any true democratic process. Thus, there appears to be a pattern of misuse and/or conversion of funds,abuse of management authorization, concealment of assets and evidence of management collusion, throughout ACORN and related organizations.”

How can an organization that has pending complaints in 11 states have any access to money contributed by same taxpayers who they have misrepresented and used?

During the election cycle, ACORN was cited in at least twelve states on suspicious voter registration activities, and recently in St. Louis, MO a former ACORN worker was indicted. The real story has not been reported yet, the truth is that the voter registration fraud allegations are pure misdirection by ACORN. They welcome these type of allegation because it allows them to operate while holding up minorities and screaming about racial discrimination and voter intimidation. The Right seems to play their roles perfectly by lambasting ACORN in the press, and the general public doesn't know who to believe. While everyone is looking left; ACORN is making off with your life savings over on the right. This smoke and mirrors approach works well for ACORN whose Voter Registration activities range from the aggressive to the absurd as this excerpt from the Project Voter Voter Registration manual will show: 

TRAIN YOUR WORKERS NEVER TO SAY, “ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE?”If they stop you and say they are registered, ask “Oh, at your current address?” If they say yes, ask, “Did you vote in the last presidential election?” to make sure they haven’t been purged. If they didn’t vote in the last presidential, register them again.General Tips

• set clear numerical hourly expectations, retrain once, and then fire
• review numbers at the end of each shift with them, before they go out again and waste your money on another bad shift
• use the FT organizer job as an incentive for people who do well

ACORN main goal was never bipartisan voter registration, but to ultimately control our once democratic elections. During the November 27-29 2006 Political Operations Debrief Retreat at Petit Jean State Park, ACORN staff met to map out certain goals and among them was how to steal elections: 

“Leveraging of PowerWhat would it take to be able to determine who wins? Could we elect the next mayor of Philly, for example? “

In order to expose ACORN we must retrain ourselves to look beyond their antics in election years and review the overall criminal activities of the organization. At the current rate of expansion, ACORN could control elections in most major cities. As the concept paper entitled: Building Organization Off the 2008 Election Cycle states: 

“We think we can manage staff to get at least 60% of new registers to join as members. At this level we would have joined over 700,000 new provisional members in 2006. “

To explain how this works, ACORN takes money that was given to tax exempt Project Vote, and this “contract” allows ACORN to use the voter registration drives to collect personal information for possible solicitation purposes. A Project Vote Administrative Procedures manual even details the process of sending copies of the information back to funders. 

NOTES ON PHOTOCOPYING AND PACKAGINGYou need to mail copies to national at least once a week, with the proper national tally sheet adding up the copies in the package.PLEASE PLEASE you MUST include national tally sheets in the packages you are sending to National. Not just the batch cover sheets from the organizer's shifts, but the overall national tally sheet that tells us how many regs are in the package, how many emails, and how many phones. Contrary to popular opinion, I cannot just wave my hands over a cardboard box and know how many registrations with phones are in there.Please package your copies so that they will survive the shipping and won't arrive balled up in the corner of the box. Use rubber bands, use newspapers to take up extra space. Remember, these are going straight to the funder.

In order for the new administration to really achieve truth and transparency, they must be able to say no to ACORN's requests for payoff. How many victories has ACORN stolen from candidates by either tainting their election or claiming their victory? I call on all of the Senators from ACORN battleground states like Florida, Missouri, Ohio , Pennsylvania and Minnesota to publicly denounce these type of tactics that allow for the poor to be used and for then indicted.

For those who do not believe that there is an organized effort to deceive the public one only has to look at ACORN's strategy for dealing with or outright deceiving election officials : 

“You have to organize the registrar just like you would anyone else...It’s a good idea to stop by before you start your drive, letting them know you are interested in registering some modest quantity of people to vote and asking what the particular regulations are that you need to follow. There may be little quirks, like the fact that their data entry volunteer comes in on Tuesdays and they like to get the cards turned in on Mondays, and this will help you keep on their good side. I wouldn’t go in with a speech about class revolution. It will be more useful to you if they equate you with the League of Women Voters and have a vague sense that you do charitable things somewhere in the city.”

The excerpt was from Project Vote's own training manual, which also states that they must “Terrorize the contractuals.” Project Vote's Research Director Nathan Henderson James, states in his program evaluation of the 2006 voter registration program that ACORN was aware of training issues but chose to focus on goals instead. 

What were the major goals of the program?To register low- and moderate-income families, African-Americans and Latinos, and young voters in jurisdictions where increased participation by these constituencies would have a positive impact on the election-season policy debates. In 2006 the overall goal for registrations was approximately 600,000 cards.What goals were met? Which weren’t?Overall the program did not meet its initial goals, registering around 530,000-540,000 voters. In most states we failed to reach our original goals.What challenges stopped the program from meeting the goals it didn’t?Funding, first and foremost. After that, I suspect poor implementation of the program hampered its ability to meet its goals. Several cities were faced with bimbo eruptions related to accusations of fraud. Many of the programs also faced changes in the regulatory environment that forced us to curtail activities. FL, AZ, NM, CO, and OH were most affected by these changes.What areas of the program do you think were the most successful?Field implementation was strong despite the challenges noted above with significant numbers of cards gathered in several states including MO, OH, PA, MD, and FL. Our capacity to database these cards was much higher in 2006 than in previous cycles. The added elements of the EA program helped elevate the quality control program and the voter verification work. Site-based work continues to be very strong.What areas of the program do you think were the least successful?While I do not think that quality control was “least successful” it was certainly not as good as it should have been. Other weaknesses related to this were probably the training component for QC staff and the overall accountability of the programs to their QC responsibilities.

While Nathan's notes are enlightening, what is more amazing are the notes from the 2006 Voter Registration debrief held in November of 2006. 

...need to look at hiring practices, look at people and evaluate whether or not they will be able to get people to talk to them and fill out cards, need to be more professional; not being steady and consistent, sometimes have to ramp up on staffing because numbers have fallen behind;Ongoing training has to happen”

ACORN holds these indicted workers up and claims a conclusion to ALL allegations, when actually there is a standing policy to throw them under the bus and move on to the payoff phase. Sandy Newman of Wellspring Advisors and former director of Project Vote lays out how to get to this payoff phase with a simple plan that was targeted at liberal donors in a April 12, 2007 memo entitled:

RE:Preliminary Analysis of Impact of 2003-2006 Voter Registration Drives, and of Voter Participation Opportunities and Funding Needs for 2008

“For donors of tax-deductible funds, efforts to assist any candidate or party are prohibited. These donors may, however, fund efforts to reduce distortions in the democratic process. They may do so because they believe strongly in strengthening democracy regardless of the policy results it produces. They may also believe that reducing such distortions is likely to yield policies more in keeping with the interests of those whose representation in the electoral process has been inadequate. The fact that a donor may hold such a belief, or even that it may motivate giving decisions, does not cause a charitable contribution to be improper, provided that the donor intends that the actual work supported remain strictly non-partisan – that is, the work supported may not provide support or opposition to any candidate or party.”

It's interesting that Wellspring is one of Project Vote's major donors and Sandy Newman steers other money in Project Vote's direction. Newman founded Project Vote along with Zach Polett, who was also head of ACORN Political Operations. ACORN voter registration drives are intentionally partisan undertakings with the intent to replace elected officials with ACORN friendly candidates. This is once again the “wink, wink” approach to doing business. It all seems so legal on the surface.

 America has endured quite a bit in the last 8 years; and now that there is really a chance for reform, it would be detrimental to give ACORN access to such a slush fund. They are operating now at an estimated $100 million a year and causing chaos and division in many cities, I can only imagine what would happen if the had access to even a penny more, let alone a billion. 

The ACORN 8 and other whistleblowers are ready to testify on the Hill, we welcome that chance to expose ACORN, and stop this brazen attempt at giving more money this these poverty pimps. But it is up to our Senators to make the right decision and support the constituents; the moms; the teachers; construction and office workers; and the unemployed. Its time to give them their payoff: loyalty.