STEALING The Election
Find a Conversation
| Thu, 10-09-2008 - 8:39am |
CLEVELAND - Two Ohio voters, including Domino's pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they'd already signed up.
Barkley estimated he'd registered to vote "10 to 15" times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.
Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.
"I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register," Barkley said. "They'd ask me if I was registered. I'd say yes, and they'd ask me to do it again.
"Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it," he said.
Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.
"You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," said Lateala Goins, 21, who was subpoenaed.
"They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home, it does not matter," she told The Post.
She added that she never put down an address on any of the registration forms, just her name.
A third subpoenaed voter, Freddie Johnson, 19, filled out registration cards 72 times over 18 months, officials said.
"It feeds the public perception that there could be , and that makes the pillars fall down," said local Board of Elections President Jeff Hastings.
Registering under a fake name is illegal. But officials usually catch multiple registrations and toss them.
The major risk of fraud growing out of mass canvassing involves the possibility of ineligible voters filing absentee ballots, and thus avoiding checks at polling places, said Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross.
The subpoenas come as Republicans have ramped up criticism of ACORN. Officials in Nevada raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, accusing the group of signing people up multiple times - in some cases under phony names, like those of Dallas Cowboys.
ACORN's Cleveland spokesman, Kris Harsh, said his group collected 100,000 voter-registration cards; only about 50 were questionable, he claimed.
As for workers, "We watch them like a hawk," he said.
jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

Pages
LOL - I'm not even talking about that.
The person that is registering is doing the different addresses and the different SS numbers.
ACORN has been implicated in voter-fraud schemes in 15 states - including Ohio, from where The Post's Jeane MacIntosh reports today that a Board of Elections investigation has unearthed evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Two voters told MacIntosh they had been dragooned by ACORN activists into registering several times - one reporting having signed up "10 to 15" times.
ACORN canvassers "would ask me if I was registered," he said. "I'd say yes and they'd ask me to do it again."
Tuesday, Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas offices as part of a probe into voter-registration fraud - noting that some forms submitted by ACORN workers included the names of Dallas Cowboys players.
Officials in Lake County, Ind. report that fully 1,100 of 2,000 new voter-registration forms delivered by ACORN were "suspicious."
In Washington state, officials recently closed an investigation into ballot cheating that resulted in prison terms.
ACORN submitted more than 800 phony registration forms in Independence, Mo., with one woman registering 10 times, using three birthdates, four different Social Security numbers and six different phone numbers.
And, as The Post reported Monday, another pro-Obama group, Vote Today Ohio, took advantage of a quirk in that state's law, which allows people to register and vote on the same day without having to prove residency, to drive hundreds of people from homeless shelters and drug-rehab centers to the polls.
John McCain's campaign says all this "doesn't pass the smell test."
Actually, it stinks.
And it's being done by a group with which Barack Obama has proudly been associated.
What, then, would they be able to pull off with a friend in the White House?
Yep, sure did. I even heard that one registration was found (not this election) with the name "Mickey Mouse" on it. Both of which pretty much go to confirm my point that the goal here is simply to make a few illicit dollars, not to commit massive voter fraud. Unless of course you think that someone's going to try to walk up to a polling place - even one which only makes you state your name - and say "Mouse, Mickey"....and get away with it. If that's what you ARE suggesting, well....can we talk about a very good deal on real estate I've got but have to sell at a low, low price, soon for personal reasons? ;o)
Here is the statement ACORN in Nevada released in response to the charges of voter fraud:
Now - unless the executive leadership of ACORN is lying about all this (which should be pretty easy to determine from their records, as well as that of the registrar of voters) - they've made pretty much every good faith effort that an organization which conducts registration of voters is required - or would be expected - to do. We'll see what comes of it, but as I've already said more than once, the idea that low-paid workers, who get compensated per-signature, per-registration, might contain a few people who would fraudulently attempt to pad their incomes by registering Tony Romo or Mickey Mouse....doesn't surprise me all that much. But it's hardly evidence of a massive, coordinated effort by the organization itself to get illegal votes actually into the election(s).
You are certainly welcome for the definition of the word felony! Glad I could help.
Pages