The FBI has launched a probe of ACORN over whether the group is trying to "foster" voter registration fraud. This is extremely suspect. As I've pointed out before, the law in many states dictates that voter registration groups have to turn in even those forms which seem suspect. It's not like ACORN can simply throw away voter registration cards it thinks are bad. ACORN claims that it flags suspect forms -- if there's an issue here it would be that they failed to do so. But no one is even alleging that.
More importantly, a nationwide voter registration fraud scam would be absolutely useless in terms of affecting an election. At worst, it clogs up state election bureaucracies. Mickey Mouse can register all he wants, unless he has a federally approved ID or utility bill in the name of Mickey Mouse he's not casting a ballot. This is why Republicans insist on using the phrase "voter fraud" instead of "registration fraud". The former is extremely rare, the latter is as easy as filling out a form incorrectly.
Yesterday, Rep. John Conyers sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey pointing out that the leak of this investigation may "violate the principles set out in the Election Crimes Manual." Note however, that this provision was removed for the express purpose of covering for Bradley Schlozman's prosecution of ACORN in 2006:
Indeed, I note with dismay that this sort of release likely would have violated the traditional principles stated in the Department's Election Crimes Manual, such as the requirement that prosecutors "must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself," and that "most, if not all, investigation of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates," but those provisions were removed by the Department in May 2007 as the U.S. Attorney controversy was unfolding and it was learned that former U.S. Attorney Brad Schlozman had apparently improperly brought enforcement action against ACORN volunteers during the run up to the 2006 national elections.
Schlozman, as TPM has reported on extensively, was at the center of the politicization of the Justice Department. He was appointed U.S. Attorney in Missouri to prosecute ACORN in the state in 2006 after Todd P. Graves was reluctant to pursue charges due to lack of evidence.
It's becoming increasingly clear that ACORN, whatever its faults, poses a minimal danger to the integrity of the election. It does however, have the misfortune of being a target of the Republican Party, which has a great deal to gain from suppressing turnout among first-time voters. Given the past politicization of the department, I wouldn't discount the motivation behind casting doubt on Barack Obama by leaking work of the investigation three weeks before the election. This to me, would seem to be the only reason behind publicizing the investigation in the first place. This whole fiasco has been aided by the media's acquiescence in refusing to distinguish between voter fraud and registration fraud, and its breathless hyping of the (im)possibility of stealing an election through registration fraud.
--A. Serwer
