Progress Illinois

Last night, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced an amendment to the stimulus package that would prohibit the "direct or indirect use of funds to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)."  This is the latest example of the GOP's ongoing effort to demonize ACORN, which reached its zenith with their ridiculous "voter fraud" accusations last fall. 

Thankfully, Sen. Dick Durbin stepped up to smack Vitter down, noting ACORN's good works and, more specifically, the assistance they provided to Louisiana residents following Hurricane Katrina (indeed, the organization is based in New Orleans).  Watch:

The amendment, by the way, failed to pass.

Meet Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita. By now, you might know him as the Republican official who stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. He then promised to conduct a criminal investigation into the suspicious voter registration forms submitted by ACORN in the same county, despite no evidence suggesting the organization itself purposefully committed fraud. While his election-season behavior is frustrating, it shouldn't be shocking.

As Talking Points Memo noted, in a 2002 South Bend Tribune article pulled from Nexus, Rokita spoke fondly of his experience preventing a recount in Florida during the 2000 election:

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

But here's the real doozy.

Continue reading »

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films just released a new five-minute video that gives various members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) an opportunity to defend themselves from widespread claims that they're attempting to steal the election.  The video effectively undercuts much of the logic driving such accusations.  It's worth a watch:

For more on ACORN, check out our extensive coverage of the controversy.

On Friday's week-in-review edition of WTTW's Chicago Tonight, the panel discussion at one point turned to the controversy surrounding ACORN's voter registration drives in certain swing states.  When asked by host Joel Weisman to lay out the "vote fraud charges," Tribune editorial page editor Bruce Dold gave an insufficient explanation -- one that left out crucial facts and left Weisman looking pretty confused.  Specifically, Dold never mentioned that there's no evidence the faulty voter registrations turned in by ACORN will actually lead to fraud at the polls.  ABC 7's Andy Shaw then pivoted to the connections between ACORN and Barack Obama, saying: "This is the same sort of taint he's faced in other ways. It's a little bit of guilt-by-association, but nothing direct."  Business writer Bob Reed went on to refer to the group's history of mismanagement.  Dold finally added that ACORN is "running a very aggressive defense of these charges. I mean, they've become partisan in their handling of this issue." Watch it:

Continue reading »

Following the death threats and vandalism last week, we now have more evidence of the real-world ramifications brought on by the Republicans' ACORN hysteria:

In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.” [...]

Continue reading »

The Indianapolis Star has an article out today that CNN's Drew Griffin really needs to read.  It clearly reports what we've been pointing out for weeks (and what reporters like Griffin have been intent on ignoring) -- that ACORN was required by law to turn in all registrations it received from its canvassers in Lake County, IN and that it separated the forms it suspected as fraudulent:

ACORN said it took steps to ensure officials knew some of the registrations it turned in were potentially bad.

"We ID'd those applications as questionable," Charles D. Jackson, spokesman for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said of the Lake County applications.

"We turned them in three separate stacks: ones we had been able to verify, ones that were incomplete and ones that were questionable or suspicious."

Continue reading »

Last night on CNN's Larry King Live, Bill Maher made a brief but effective comment about the ACORN controversy manufactured by Republicans in recent weeks, which he called "completely bogus" and another example of how "people don't really get the true information."  His facts were a little fuzzy around the edges (for instance, he overlooked the role of canvassers in the process and suggested that voter registrations are happening over the phone).  But unlike certain CNN reporters, he noted that the problematic registrations being highlighted by the GOP were first flagged as "suspicious" by ACORN officials themselves. 

As I've written before, this fact completely undercuts the logic of Republicans' suggestion that the group is somehow trying to steal the election.  If they are and if these faulty registrations are part of that plan, why in the world would ACORN itself notify election officials of the problems when they turn in the forms?  As Maher said, "They're not trying to fool anybody."  Watch it:

Continue reading »

That's the number of segments CNN has run in the last ten days on allegations that ACORN is responsible for voter registration fraud in multiple states.  According to Media Matters, which tallied the segments, only one of these 54 reports mentioned both of these salient points:

1) that the statutes of most of those states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they receive; and 2) that actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare. 

In the past week, we've flagged two reports from CNN's Drew Griffin on the registrations submitted by ACORN in Northwest Indiana. In addition to omitting the points above, he also failed to inform viewers that ACORN itself flagged 2,100 suspicious registrations among the 5,000 it turned in Lake County -- a fact that undermines the suggestion from conservatives that the group is somehow trying to "perpetrate one of the greatest frauds in voter history."

It appears that the GOP believe so strongly in their false claims that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is out to commit "election fraud" that they're now issuing warnings in places where the group isn't even registering voters.

Illinois GOP attorney Brien Sheahan sent a letter to Chicago-area election officials yesterday cautioning them to be on the lookout for the activities of "so-called community groups" such as ACORN.

But according to officials in two of the state's largest election authorities -- Chicago and Cook County -- it's been years since ACORN registered voters in the area. In fact, ACORN headquarters told us that the group hasn't participated in voter registration drives anywhere in Illinois during the 2008 election season.

Continue reading »

Politico's Ben Smith has the goods, as well as the above photo:

The beleaguered Democratic-leaning community group Acorn sends over this photograph: John McCain, in March of 2006, sitting beside Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek at an event Acorn co-sponsored in Florida.

Continue reading »