This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 17, 2008 - Inside a dilapidated building in the 4300 block of Manchester Avenue this week, as rainwater streamed through a leaking window just a few feet away, Jeff Ordower braced himself against a storm of another kind.
"We would much rather not be in the voter registration business at all," said Ordower, Midwest director of the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known by the acronym ACORN. "But we are not going to let our folks go unregistered. That is why we do what we do. Frankly, people should be commending us for doing this."
Already defending itself against a lengthy series of allegations over voter registration fraud, ACORN has faced some of its toughest days in the past week.
- On Tuesday, taking a lead from GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, former Missouri Sen. John Danforth and Sen. Warren Rudman -- chairs of Sen. John McCain's Honest and Open Elections Committee -- slammed ACORN's voter registration procedures in a news conference at Washington's National Press Club. "A potential nightmare," Danforth called it.
- On Wednesday night, Republican presidential nominee McCain made ACORN's voter registration an issue in his nationally televised debate against Democratic nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
- And on Thursday, the Associated Press reported that a senior law enforcement official confirmed that the FBI was looking for evidence of a coordinated national scam involving the group.
Ordower and ACORN's national officialssay the voting registration issues continue to involve a small number of renegade employees, honest confusion on the part of people trying to register, and a public misperception over the way the registration process is supposed to work.
They also accuse Republicans and other critics of using isolated problems to scare the public into believing that ACORN and the Democrats are in the middle of a widespread conspiracy to cheat the system.
"I suppose when you're down that much, you're looking for any port in a storm," Ordower said in an interview. "Anything to distract people from talking about the real issues, like the economy.
"We're proud of the fact that we did the patriotic thing and helped more than 1.3 million people register this year -- 53,000 in Missouri -- and employed 13,000 low-income folks across the country to help do it."
In a press release issued Thursday in the aftermath of stories about the FBI investigation, national ACORN officials said that, while the group had not been contacted by any federal law enforcement agencies, "should any investigation be forthcoming, we are confident that we would be exonerated. We have always, and will continue to, work with any inquiry."
The news release referred to a "coordinated attack by the Republican Party, including a conservative think tank in Ohio connected to the well-known voter suppressor and McCain supporter Ken Blackwell." The news release added that most of its canvassers "worked to the highest standards of accuracy." Despite occasional problems, the organization maintains that "issues related to voter registration are not voter fraud.
"These are not cases where people are able to vote multiple times."
A History of Problems
There is no question that ACORN has a history of problems surrounding its voter registration drives, particularly in recent years.
The Republican Party's national website devotes an entire area to what it dubs "Barack Obama's ACORN tree," detailing everything from the group's endorsement of Obama for president to $800,000 in Obama campaign money to an ACORN subsidiary for "get out the vote projects."
It also includes links to news stories about the group's voter registration problems. Many of the stories on the GOP page and elsewhere involve local and state investigations into voters registering multiple times, or ACORN workers or new voters fraudulently filling out voter registration forms for people who do not exist.
In Jackson County, where Kansas City is located, election officials announced last week that they are looking at possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by ACORN representatives.
In the St. Louis area, eight ACORN workers were convicted of voter fraud after submitting phony voter registration applications in 2006.
Ordower said his office cooperated fully with that investigation and he hopes now that their workers "are very clear on the consequences."
Ordower contends that the ACORN workers like those in St. Louis who run into problems are working outside the organization's rules.
"It's not a perfect program," Ordower said. "Nothing ever is that is of this scale and this scope. There are glitches."
Still, he said, he is convinced that no ACORN official has been directly involved in the fraud.
He noted a celebrated case where one man registered to vote 73 times, "13 times with us and 60 times with other organizations." He said that ACORN canvassers had no idea that he had been registered before. "We called him and told him to stop. We put his name in big letters, saying 'do not register him.'
"There are always crazy people."
He said a typical fraud case involves a worker who simply decides he or she doesn't want to work on a particular day and fills out a series of fake registration forms. Ordower says ACORN usually has no way of knowing the forms have been faked until local election officials mail a letter to the address given and it is returned unopened.
Ordower said that many of their problems arise out of a federal law that makes it a requirement for a canvassing organization to turn in "all" voter registration forms, even in those cases where ACORN officials know crucial information is missing or that a form may be bogus.
In those cases, he says, ACORN has a policy of "flagging" the questionable applications and bringing them to the attention of local election officials and, possibly, law enforcement authorities.
Checks and Balances
Interviews with election officials in St. Louis and St. Louis County show there is a detailed process in place to ensure that only qualified voters get on the voting rolls and that there are no duplications.
A Missouri voter registration application, such as those distributed by ACORN canvassers, includes a series of questions, including:
- Are you a citizen of the United States of America
- Name
- Mailing address
- Name and address on last voter registration (if applicable)
- Driver's license number or last four digits of Social Security number
- Signature
Ordower noted that the requirement for a driver's license number or Social Security number makes duplicative voting virtually impossible. He said that election officials are able to check each number against databases with the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration. But Scott Linedecker, Republican director of elections for the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, said that the license and Social Security numbers, in fact, are not required.
Linedecker said in those cases where none is forthcoming from the registrant, the name may still be placed on the voting rolls.
Linedecker and Charlene LaRosa, Republican deputy director of elections for St. Louis County, say that any time their office receives a batch of voter registration forms from a group like ACORN, the first step is to "thumb through them" to determine whether there are any obvious, immediate problems, usually involving missing information or forms that may have been mistakenly sent to the wrong jurisdiction.
The forms then go to election employees who go through the forms more carefully, again noting missing information or forms that have been misdirected to the wrong office.
In those cases where information is either missing or incomplete, workers send mailings to the addresses in an attempt to get completed forms.
If the forms are complete and appear legitimate -- and the applicant's name checks with the Social Security and/or driver's license databases -- then the office notifies the applicant by mail that he or she has been placed on the voting roll.
They are then told they will be mailed an official voter identification card after they have voted for the first time and show some form of acceptable identification, such as a driver's license.
LaRosa said the Missouri secretary of state's office also double checks the rolls to rule out duplication. "We get duplicate lists continuously," she said. "The same individual may have registered in our county and then, later, registered in another county."
LaRosa and Linedecker said it is relatively easy to determine whether a person is registered twice in Missouri, but virtually impossible to determine whether he or she is simultaneously registered in Missouri and another state, like Illinois.
"No national database is available," LaRosa said. "And we don't see that in the near future."
Linedecker said that while 2008 has been a relatively uneventful one for voter registration fraud in the St. Louis area, he warned that the potential for abuse is always present.
"A lot of these organizations seem to have the same problems over and over again," Linedecker said. "When an organization drops off a box full of registration forms, that is always a red flag for us."
Even if the fraud does not lead directly to problems with voting -- and Linedecker is not sure that that does not happen --- he calls it "a potential opening of the door."
"When people say there has never been a case of it happening on election day, it's simply a case of nobody being caught on election day.
"There are people who will try to vote twice on election day. There is no doubt about it. But when that happens, you need to make sure they are held to the law and are prosecuted."
He said he would like to see better training on the part of ACORN's workers.
"The No.1 thing is for them to make sure they are hiring decent people."
Despite the fact that he says Ordower has worked to make sure the St. Louis area has not had the problems it had two years ago, Linedecker says the group still gets an "F" for registering voters.
There have been so many problems in recent years, he said, that "they really have no business, in my book, doing registrations.
"I haven't seen a concerted effort of fraudulent votes in the city that can be connected to ACORN," Linedecker said, but added, "I feel they hurt the process more than help the process."
LaRosa, while stopping short of the kind of criticism leveled by Linedecker, said duplicate and fraudulent voter registration forms -- no matter who is at fault -- create "a very serious problem.
"When you get flooded with all these additional registrations that are not necessary because these people are already registered, it does nothing but create havoc in an election office."
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan last week issued a statement, trying to ease voters' concerns over the problems in Jackson County election offices.
Because questionable voter registration applications were caught "before they were placed on the voter rolls," she said it shows that the system works.
"Voters in Missouri should feel confident that elections are secure and run fairly."
Ordower says it is the responsibility of local election officials to identify potentially bogus and duplicate voters.
"That is how the system works."
His office, he says, simply is not equipped to do it. "We do what we can, to the best of our ability."
Get People Out to Vote
Ordower said if elections officials believe they can do a better job of going out and registering disenfranchised voters, they should do it.
"If they think they can do a better job of it, then why don't they go out and make sure all of the people in their jurisdiction are registered," he said. "But the fact is, it is very hard work."
He said that ACORN would like nothing better than to see the country institute a national voter registration program, similar to the Selective Service program, where everyone is registered once he or she turns 18.
He noted that the media have been drawn to cases where voters have registered under names like "Mickey Mouse" and "Dick Tracy," but added that those names would never be placed on voting rolls.
He also said the criticism that the organization is signing up largely Democratic voters -- at a time when the organization has endorsed Obama --- is unfair.
"Our leadership, our membership, our constituency -- they know we are doing the right thing. We know we are making an impact on powerful people and the rich, because we are being attacked so strongly. It's par for the course.
"Maybe the RCGA (Regional Commerce and Growth Association) or Civic Progress should do a voter drive in Ladue."
Acorn: the basics
Roots: In 1970, Wade Rathke, an organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization, begins organizing in Arkansas to unite welfare recipients and working people for shared needs and rights. The organization eventually takes the name Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, which later becomes Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Its Work: Supports a wide variety of efforts affecting low- and moderate-income people, including improved schools, affordable housing, disaster recovery projects, voter registration and health-care reform.
Organization: 400,000 member families, 1,200 neighborhood chapters, 110 cities.
Headquarters: New York, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.