Voter fraud allegations once again plague liberal group ACORN

Via the Detroit Free Press:

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”

Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State’s Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday declined to confirm whether an investigation was taking place.

In recent years, ACORN’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Washington, with some employees convicted of voter fraud.

Indeed, this liberal group’s rampant fraud has been well documented.

In light of the latest allegations against ACORN, Ed Morrissey has a suggestion:

The Department of Justice needs to open a RICO probe into ACORN. The RICO statutes make the leaders of a criminal enterprise personally responsible for the crimes committed by its members. If the DoJ can establish that ACORN management has encouraged fraudulent practices from the top down, that puts it within RICO territory. The repetition of their fraud in multiple jurisdictions make it clear that it’s not just coincidence at work here.

Once again, this calls into question why Barack Obama pays ACORN for his GOTV efforts. With criminal investigations underway in several states and now hopefully a federal investigation about to start, Obama shows extremely poor judgment in associating himself with such fraud — as well as paying $800,000 to fund it, unwittingly or not. As President, he would have the responsibility for enforcing voter-fraud laws. This doesn’t give much indication that he’d act to do so. So much for being a reformer.

Curt at the Illinois Review blog has more.

If the McCain campaign has done their homework on this issue, they’ll make it a point to call out Obama for his close ties to ACORN and elevate this story to one that is more than just one restricted primarily to Michigan news outlets. They should push to get Obama to explain his continued association with a group that doesn’t just have isolated problems in one or two places with voter fraud but instead widespread instances of them across the country … and in battleground states at that. Considering how both Democrats and Republicans have made hay out of allegations of voter fraud over the last 8 or so years, the least Obama can do is be made to account for why he’s paying ACORN for some of his Get Out The Vote efforts when it’s been proven in a court of law that they have serious issues keeping their employees honest about who they are registering to vote.