What Is The Truth About ACORN's Vote Registration Drive In Nevada?
ACORN’s voter registration drive in Nevada collected almost 90,000 cards, about 80,000 of them in Clark County, the home of Las Vegas. On October 6, ACORN’s office in Las Vegas was raided by the Nevada District Attorney’s office and the Nevada Secretary of State.
Frankly, ACORN was shocked. ACORN had been in regular contact with the Clark County board of elections since it began its drive in February 2008, routinely flagging and turning-in problematic cards (Nevada requires that every signed card collected must be turned in). Additionally, the affidavit filed by state officials in order to get a search warrant includes numerous instances in ACORN is cited as having caught the problems first and turned them over to the proper officials.
Project Vote has written an excellent blog post about this which you can find here.
Here are some excerpts.
WADE advised that ACORN had identified several egregious cases of canvassers turning in fraudulent forms, including one case in which a canvasser was caught completing forms using names and addresses copied from the telephone book. WADE stated that ACORN would be willing to provide such information and supporting documentation to the county for further investigation. Page 13, Lines 21-25
ANDERSON stated that ACORN had established a verification system that included calling phone numbers listed on the applications and looking for duplicate applications. ANDERSON also confirmed that many canvassers were terminated by ACORN when it was discovered that they had submitted fictitious applications. Page 17, Lines 13-16
On or around August 7, 2008, at the request of LOMAX, ACORN provided copies of Problematic Card Cover Sheets, Performance Investigation Sheets, Worker Batch Sheets and copies of Voter Registration Applications for thirty three (33) ex-employees of ACORN who had been terminated after suspicious Voter Registration Applications were identified through ACORN’s internal quality control process. These packages of documents were forwarded to the DIVISION for examination. Page 13-14, Lines 26-3
Here is a timeline of all the interactions between ACORN and Clark County.
Feb 15: ACORN sends an introductory letter to Clark County Registrar of Voters Harvard Lomax explaining the program and asking him to contact Brian Mellor, Senior Counsel for the voter registration program if there were any problems.
Feb 15: Southwest Regional ACORN VR Director Francisco Acosta met with Brenda Miller, Clark County Director of Field Operations, to explain program including procedures for handling problematic cards.
Feb – June: Periodic meetings to discuss issues. The biggest issue raised by Clark County was duplicates. They showed us a few problematic cards, cards that our system had already caught, flagged, and turned in with coversheets
June 24: Registrar Lomax informs ACORN that cards are being returned in the mail, but offers no other specifics. ACORN offers to help and asks to see the applications so that it can look into the problems.
July 3: Instead of full copies of the cards, the Registrar gives ACORN just the serial numbers of cards.
After this correspondence, ACORN and Project Vote, ACORN voter registration partner, decide they needs a meeting at a higher level and work to set one up.
July 17: ACORN Voter Registration Counsel Brian Mellor, ACORN Las Vegas Project Director Chris Edwards, ACORN staff members Ali Cochran and Joe Camp, meet with Clark County Registrar Harvard Lomax, two other board of elections staffers and Chris Lee Southwest Director of the Secretary of State’s office. Mr. Mellor asks why the county and state officials are not doing anything with problematic cover sheets and why no prosecutions resulted. Prosecutions would be helpful as an object lesson to current VR canvassers about the seriousness with which ACORN and the authorities take VR irregularities. Mr. Mellor offers full access to copies of all of ACORN’s problematic cards, so authorities could pursue further action. The meeting ends with no commitment for action from Nevada authorities.
Aug 18: ACORN again provides full copies of all problem packets of cards turned into to the County.
Sept. 12: An Investigation from the Secretary of State’s office asks for information on 15 employees
Sept. 19: Secretary of State issues subpoena to ACORN for information on 15 employees, employee packet and all cards
Sept. 29: ACORN responds to subpoena and provides employee information for employees listed and gets extension to 10/9 for all applications.
Oct. 6: ACORN’s Las Vegas office raided.
ACORN Official Statement On the Its Las Vegas Voter Registration Drive
October 13, 2008
Over the past year, ACORN has worked hard to help over 80,000 people in Clark County register to vote.
Hundreds of canvassers and volunteers have worked for months talking to citizens from Nevada’s most disenfranchised communities and encouraging them to exercise their right to participate in our democracy. Their work has been tireless—they deserve a great deal of credit for spending days in the hot sun at public places from parks to community centers to shopping centers helping citizens complete voter registration applications. Most of the 80,000 registrations they have collected and turned in to election officials come from young people, low income people and minorities—the very people whose voices are too often left out of our electorate.
As part of our nonpartisan voter registration program, ACORN staff reviews every single application submitted by our canvassers. Special, dedicated staff makes up to three phone calls attempting to reach the voter listed on EVERY SINGLE CARD before they are turned in to verify the information. Our callers verify the information on the cards before turning them in to election officials to make sure that as many new voters as possible get on the rolls and to make sure that all of our voter registration workers are doing the high quality work they are trained to do.
While the vast majority of our voter registration canvassers do a great job, there have been several times over the past ten months that our Las Vegas Quality Control program has identified a canvasser who appears to have knowingly submitted a fake or duplicate application in order to pad his or her hours.
Anytime ACORN quality control staff has identified a suspicious application, we have separated that application out and flagged it for election officials. We turn any suspicious applications to election officials separately, along with a cover sheet identifying the nature of the problem and an offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual. (Note that civic organizations are required by law to turn over ANY signed voter registration applications even when they are known to have problems). We immediately dismiss any employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.
It was surprising that law enforcement officials appeared suddenly at our Las Vegas offices yesterday, because ACORN and its attorneys have already been proactive in providing information about problematic cards and any employee suspected of misconduct. In July, ACORN staff and our attorney set up a meeting with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State’s office to urge them to take action on information ACORN had provided. Since then, and as recently as September 29th, ACORN has provided officials with copies and—in some cases—second copies of many of the personnel records and the “problem card packages” and cover sheets with which we originally indentified the problem cards.
In regards to the voter registration workers provided by Casa Grande, ACORN wants to be clear that ACORN was approached by Casa Grande staff this summer to offer ACORN new employees, who were participating in a rehabilitation program under the Nevada Department of Corrections. ACORN did not seek out Casa Grande's services. ACORN was assured by Casa Grande that the program was safe and legal and was further assured that Casa Grande would maintain the program's integrity by having its own staff do spot checks on the employees provided by the program. ACORN accepted the Department of Corrections' request to assist them with their rehabilitation program in good faith. And ACORN, indeed, found that the Casa Grande employees made a positive contribution to the voter registration drive.
ACORN is a community organization dedicated to making everyone’s voice count in the vital public policy debates in our country. Helping citizens become active voters is a crucial part of our work to help build a fairer and more inclusive democracy. We will continue with this important work by encouraging every eligible voter to the polls this November.
