ACORN Accused of Bogus Forms in Mo.
Wed Oct 25,
www.yahoo.news.com 2:38 PM ET
CLAYTON, Mo. - Hundreds of fraudulent voter address changes have been submitted to St. Louis County election officials by ACORN, the activist group that has been criticized for its voter sign-up work elsewhere in the nation.
An ACORN official said it could be the fault of overzealous employees of the organization.
Voters who don't get a polling-place notification card in the mail right before the election could find that their addresses have been changed without their knowledge, said Joseph Goeke, one of the county's two elections directors.
The address changes, including forged signatures, are among thousands of questionable or fraudulent voter registration cards submitted to the county within the past couple of months, election officials said.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, founded in 1970, has run voter registration drives in Missouri and 16 other states this year. Similar allegations have been made in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado, though no charges have been filed.
ACORN has registered hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters across the country, paying workers about $8 an hour in some cases.
The group's leaders don't set quotas for the workers, but some may have turned in phony cards to make it look like they were working, ACORN's national spokesman Kevin Whelan said.
ACORN officials say the group is cooperating with investigators. "Any workers who turned in fraudulent cards should be prosecuted," Whelan said.
ACORN registered more than a million U.S. voters in 2004, when it also had to defend itself against fraud allegations. That year, unreadable cards, duplicate registrations and other invalid or potentially fraudulent registrations turned up in Ohio, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia.
Goeke said voters who don't receive their polling-place notification card can take proof of their residence to the polls on election day. |
