A spreadsheet summarizing local ACORN registrations, presented by Registrar of VotersDeborah Seiler at the September 22, 2009 County Board of Supervisors Meeting

SDNR Commentary

The recent video of a National City employee of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) helpfully—and stunningly—answering questions about prostitution and sex trafficking actually marks the second time that ACORN has made waves locally.

About a year ago, the group was cited nationally and here in San Diego County for systematic voter fraud.

During the 2008 election campaign, ACORN canvassers blanketed San Diego in an effort to register local low-income and minority voters.  The group submitted some 26,000 voter cards—the overwhelming majority of registrations turned in statewide—but nearly 5,000 of them (about one in six) were “red-flagged” by the County Registrar of Voters as potentially fraudulent or deficient.

Elsewhere, other allegations of voter fraud by the organization were serious enough to prompt a 2008 nationwide investigation by the FBI.  But then the election passed, and the issue died down for the most part.

No longer.

ACORN came roaring back into the news earlier this month when self-described activist filmmaker James O’Keefe and his colleague Hannah Giles began circulating shocking video recorded in ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, NY, San Bernardino, and San Diego.  (All of the content can be found here.)

The videos show ACORN personnel around the country blithely offering O’Keefe and Giles—dressed up as pimp and prostitute, respectively—sympathetic advice on how to establish a brothel, import young Salvadoran girls as sex slaves, conceal income earned from these enterprises, and plow that money into a congressional campaign.

The impression one gets from watching these videos is that the filmmakers’ visit was hardly the first time these ACORN employees offered such advice.

Within days of the scandal breaking, pundits, politicians, and activists across the country were demanding investigations into the group’s activities.  On September 14, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to strip the organization of its funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Not to be outdone, the House of Representatives voted three days later to terminate ACORN’s federal funding altogether.

Both the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service severed their ties with the group.  And eleven ACORN employees were arrested in Florida on suspicion of voter registration fraud.

Closer to home, Governor Schwarzenegger asked Attorney General Jerry Brown to “launch a full investigation” of the group.

And here in San Diego, where ACORN had registered all those voters last year, the county Republican Party has beaten the drum of voter fraud, urging local and statewide officials to conduct a forensic audit of the organizations fraudulent registrations.  The County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to assist state and local investigators during their probe.

So has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who spearheaded the House vote, debated ACORN’s CEO on Fox News Sunday, and had been raising the alarm about the organization months before the damning videos appeared.

On Tuesday, Deborah Seiler, the Registrar of Voters, told the Supervisors that when her office followed up on the flagged registrations in 2008, about half of them were ultimately rejected as problematic.

The Registrar’s office then met repeatedly with ACORN representatives in an effort to educate them about the voter registration process and thereby reduce their high red-flag rate.  But when that effort came to naught, the Registrar prevented them from receiving voter registration cards.

At that point, ACORN agents went directly to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and received registration applications from her.  (Bowen’s office fired back on Wednesday.)

But what happened then?  Why didn’t the state agency scrutinize this suspicious activity more carefully?  One hopes these questions will find answers during the various investigations.

In addition, the ACORN flap will likely give a boost to State Sen. George Runner’s (R-Lancaster) Vote Safe Now ballot initiative, which I wrote about for SDNR in June.

After the infamous videos began surfacing earlier this month, Runner wrote on his Facebook.com page that “ACORN is a disgraced, crime ridden organization. I will be asking to have a review to find what California Taxpayer money might be finding its way into the corrupt organization.”

And in a Flash Report blog post regarding President Obama’s efforts to distance himself from the group, Runner speculated that the president’s “actions could fuel the fire for voter reform, including requiring voters to present identification at the polls.”

Let’s hope at least one such good thing comes out of this whole mess.

Michael M. Rosen, a News Room contributor, is an attorney in Carmel Valley and the Secretary of the San Diego County Republican Party.  The views expressed are his own.  Reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

                                        

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Comments (1)

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I'm confused about Bowen's response. In the link you have, there is no response to giving out registration cards to ACORN. That's what I thought I was going to read about.
Also your article states that ACORN submitted 26,000 reg apps, 5000 were flagged, and later it was found that half of them were problematic. So... the other 50% were OK? So...For some reason I was expecting to see 2500 fraudulent reg apps. But in the article linked above, it turns out that 76 were turned in to the SoS for investigation.
If there is real fraud I can't wait to see it. Good to catch the bad guys. If it's someone writing Micky Mouse on the app, please don't waste my taxpayer dollars on such tripe.

mg , September 28, 2009

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