Indiana’s Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita has requested a criminal probe of ACORN alleging that ACORN has:
>> “Violated Indiana election laws with respect to the solicitation, completion and submission of incomplete, forged or fraudulent voter registration applications.
>> “Violated Indiana election law with respect to the submission of multiple voter registration applications for the same person.
>> “Violated Indiana election laws with respect to obstruction of elections and interference with election officials.
>> “Violated Indiana’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law.
>> “Violated Indiana and federal laws protecting individual rights to register and vote in elections.”
Indiana is one of many states that received fraudulent registration forms from ACORN in which third-party registration groups are required, by law, to submit all completed registration forms. There’s a reason for that, if groups are allowed to throw away the forms from one party they can potentially disenfranchise voters from whatever party they don’t like. This is what Nathan Sproul is accused of doing. But Rokita says:
“complying with the law to submit legitimate applications does not allow Acorn officials to evade the law against knowingly submitting fraudulent applications.”
So you’re required by law to turn in all the forms filled out, but if any of them are fraudulent you’ve broken the law. The two laws would seem to be in conflict, since only the person who solicited the form or filled it out fraudulently is aware that the form is bad, and the ACORN officials who the form is turned into are required by law to pass it on. (ACORN claims they flag suspicious forms). It’s one thing for an ACORN worker to do this, it’s something else to say the entire group is responsible, which is where the racketeering charge comes in.
Rokita reportedly also said that ACORN should have turned suspicious forms over to law enforcement, rather than election officials, and ACORN is arguing that Rokita “appears to have changed his opinion on this question two weeks before the election.” Obviously, what matters is ultimately whether the law explicitly makes that distinction about where suspect forms should be turned in.
It’s likely that some workers at ACORN are guilty of the first two, but I think it’s a stretch to say that the entire organization is guilty of conspiring to produce fraudulent registration forms for money. It’s not exactly running numbers or selling drugs, I don’t see the financial incentive, let alone the political one, in submitting bad registration forms.
–A. Serwer
