ACORN hit with corruption suit in Ohio

The Buckeye Institute, a public policy think tank, has filed a lawsuit claiming that ACORN has committed voter registration fraud and that this dilutes the votes of eligible voters. The lawsuit was filed in state court on behalf of two Ohio residents against ACORN, a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on issues including voter registration. One legal expert said the suit was filed for political reasons and has little chance of success, but a Buckeye Institute official disputes that claim.

The lawsuit (read the full complaint here) is based on the Ohio Corrupt Activity Act, that state’s version of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act, which was written to go after organized crime organizations. The complaint alleges:

Beginning no later than 2003, and continuing until the present day, Defendant ACORN has engaged, by and through its agents, in a scheme to obtain, prepare and file fraudulent voter registrations throughout the state of Ohio by means of numerous violations…with a purpose to, or with reckless disregard as to whether it will, inter alia, injure or threaten to injure Plaintiffs and other similarly situated citizens by diluting and/or threatening to dilute their vote, by depriving or threatening to deprive them of their rights to participate in an honest and effective election process, by impairing and/or threatening to impair Plaintiffs’ rights to have government officials chosen and other ballot measures approved or disapproved by means of a fair and accurate election process.

The specific section of the law cited deals with “tampering with writings or records.” Several ACORN canvassers have been convicted of turning in fraudulent voter registration applications in various states; the organization says that in most such cases the bad applications are flagged as suspect by their quality control staff but they are required by law to turn in every single registration even if they suspect it to be fraudulent. Nonetheless, the Buckeye Institute is accusing the organization of deliberately handing in fraudulent applications in order to dilute the vote of duly registered voters. Maurice Thompson, litigation director for the group, said in a press release that ACORN is “recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state’s rolls in the process.”

Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan public interest legal group founded by McCain attorney Trevor Potter, told the Michigan Messenger that this lawsuit has little chance of winning and is so badly written that “the complaint filed in this case reads more like a blog entry than a legal document.” Hebert believes the suit was filed solely for political purposes, saying that the suit “seems frivolous on its face, and may have been filed for the purpose of issuing a press release rather than seriously seeking any relief.” He notes that this suit is very similar to a suit filed in Ohio in 2004 that was withdrawn by the plaintiff after the election:

This lawsuit, like nearly all those that have preceded it this year, will probably be dismissed by those who brought it after the election because their ‘publicity window’ will have closed. If it isn’t dismissed voluntarily, the courts will likely do it for them.

Thompson denies that charge, saying, “Our case won’t suffer the same result because we don’t intend to voluntarily dismiss it, as happened in the prior case. I was familiar with that case and the plaintiffs simply lost interest in litigating the case beyond a certain point. I think we have much better evidence than they had in 2004. We have a pattern of felonies that’s at least 5 years old, which is a lot more than they had in 2004. I think we’re going to have legitimate evidence of vote dilution after the election, which I think makes it distinguishable as well.”

Hebert also points to the fact that Ken Blackwell, a Republican and former Ohio Secretary of State, who was sued several times in court for alleged voter suppression efforts, is a fellow with the Buckeye Institute. Hebert said that this fact shows the political nature of the lawsuit:

Former Ohio SOS Ken Blackwell is Exhibit A for why election officials should be non-partisan. Serving as the state co-chair of one Party’s Presidential campaign while simultaneously serving as the chief elections administrator of the state is an inherent conflict of interest. Many of for SOS Blackwell’s decisions in the months prior to the 2004 elections were undertaken to advantage the Republican Party and to improve the re-election chances of George W. Bush, and not because they were intended to carry out the law. In fact, a number of his directives were contrary to law. So the fact that the group that brought this lawsuit, the Buckeye Institute, has former Ohio SOS Blackwell as one of its fellows, suggests to me that the suit is grounded in politics, not legal authority.

Thompson again denies this accusation, telling the Messenger, “Mr. Blackwell is not in our office. He does contract work, so he writes articles and does feature stories from time to time, but has no influence over the litigation actions. In fact, I’ve never even spoken to him personally and I’m the lead counsel on the case.”

The Messenger asked Thompson if he could document any instance of ACORN turning in a fraudulent voter registration application that resulted in someone actually voting who should not be voting. “Yes,” he said. “New Mexico during the Democrat primaries this year. Only one house district performed any kind of quantitative analysis, but they found 80 some individuals who actually cast fraudulent votes because they were fraudulently registered. Not all of those were ACORN, but many of those were.”

When asked to document that claim, however, Thompson provided a link to an article in a Lawrence, Kansas, newspaper entitled “Republican Party finds 28 suspect voters.” The article did not refer to any quantitative analysis by House district officials but merely to allegations made by Republican Party spokespeople that 28 people had voted fraudulently rather than the more than 80 that Thompson had spoken of.

Many experts have pointed out the distinction between voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud, noting that just because someone turns in an application on behalf of a deceased person or a fictional person like Mickey Mouse doesn’t mean anyone is actually going to show up at the polls and be allowed to vote on their behalf. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola University, recently wrote on his blog that those who raise the specter of massive voter fraud are engaging in “irresponsible hyperbole” not based in fact:

But we know that fraudulent voter registrations don’t translate into election fraud at the polls that has any reasonable chance of influencing an election, much less a presidential election…The Brennan Center has done unparalleled work demonstrating that most voter fraud claims are bogus, and the little voter fraud that exists in registration and impersonation voting is not affecting the outcome of elections. The same is true of claims of the dead voting. Lots of sensationalist allegations are made, but when they are investigated, it turns out almost invariably to be a case of something besides fraud: a person signing the wrong line in a poll book, a confusion of two people with the same or similar names, or some other problem.

Hasen wrote in a Slate article last year that the notion of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of an election is not only not supported by evidence, but is almost impossible to imagine theoretically:

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible. Suppose I want to swing the Missouri election for my preferred presidential candidate. I would have to figure out who the fake, dead, or missing people on the registration rolls are, and then pay a lot of other individuals to go to the polling place and claim to be Mary Poppins or Old Dead Bob, without any return guarantee–thanks to the secret ballot–that any of them will cast a vote for my preferred candidate. Those who do show up at the polls run the risk of being detected (“You’re not my neighbor Bob who passed away last year!”) and charged with a felony. And for what–$10? As someone who’s thought about this a lot, if I really wanted to buy votes in an enforceable and safe way, I’d find eligible voters who would allow me to watch as they cast their absentee ballots for the candidate of my choice. Then, I would pay them. (Notably, ACVR and supporters of voter-ID laws have generally supported exemptions from ID requirements for voters who use absentee ballots.) Or, I might find an election official to change the votes. Polling-place fraud, in short, makes no sense.

(ACVR refers to the now-defunct American Center for Voting Rights, a non-profit which pushed for laws against voter fraud. Critics said it was a GOP front group whose support of a photo ID requirement was an effort to suppress the minority vote.)

Hasen says that there is, however, much harm done by making accusations of large-scale voter fraud in lawsuits such as this. “The upshot of all of this litigation and talk of voter fraud and voter suppression is that many voters are losing confidence in the fairness of the electoral process,” he wrote in a column at Findlaw last week. “The swings in voter confidence in the electoral process are troubling,” he said, “and present a real national crisis.”

ACORN is an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.