Open Left:: ACORN Strikes Back
Let’s be clear about one very important thing. The reason ACORN is the focal point of the combined national efforts of the Republicans is because we recently completed the largest non-partisan voter registration drive in U.S. history. We helped 1.3 million low-income people, people of color, and young people complete voter registration applications.
The attacks on ACORN are spurious to say the least. Here a few key facts that our accusers aren’t telling you.
- ACORN has implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field but in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.
- ACORN flags in writing incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in. Unfortunately, some of these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards. In many cases, we can actually prove that these are the same cards we called to their attention.
- Our canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the card. ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality controls have identified this happening we have fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement.
- The rate of incomplete cards for the drive was 5 percent (about 65,000 cards) and the rate of “suspicious” cards was 1.5 percent (about 19,500 cards).
Those are just the highlights; we have an entire section of our website, The Real ACORN, dedicated to telling the truth about ACORN’s work.
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