ACORN documents flagging of fraudulent registration cards

ACORN has released documentation showing how they handled a fraudulent voter registration application that has received much attention in the media.

Three weeks ago, Drew Griffin of CNN’s Special Investigations Unit filed a report (watch the video here) about fraudulent applications turned in by ACORN in Lake County, Indiana. In the report, he made a point of showing a registration card turned in under the name Jimmy John’s, a popular restaurant, by a canvasser named Dain Tarvor. Griffin even filmed himself going to Jimmy John’s to show that it was a restaurant.

The Republican National Committee immediately sent out a press release with a transcript of the CNN report, and this obviously fraudulent voter registration application became the talk of the blogosphere. What was missing from the report and the resulting reaction was the fact that ACORN had not only flagged that application and several others as fraudulent, but had fired the canvassers who turned them in.

In the documentation released by ACORN, you can see how their quality control process operates. It shows the cover sheet on the batch of registration cards the canvasser turned in along with notes made by his supervisors and quality control staff as they went through their procedures for checking the applications for validity.

Tarvor had turned in 14 registration cards, all with phone numbers on them. The quality control staff tried to contact each applicant three times to verify that they had turned in the cards; four were verified by phone. Four of the phone numbers were bad. Four were also verified by email.

The staff also flagged the Jimmy John’s card as fraudulent, attaching a “performance investigation sheet” with the canvasser’s name and noting that the name was that of a restaurant. And it shows that the canvasser was terminated the next day. By law, however, ACORN is required to turn in every application they get even if it obviously fraudulent and they turned that card and several more over to local elections officials along with the other documents showing why the cards were deemed to be invalid. The documents also show the same material for several other canvassers in the same office who were fired for similar reasons and whose identities were then sent to election officials.