Blue Spot

ACORN office in Vegas raided in voter-fraud probe - San Jose Mercury News

LAS VEGAS—Nevada authorities seized documents and records Tuesday in a raid on the Las Vegas headquarters of a community organization that works to get low-income people to vote.
Secretary of State Ross Miller said the raid was part of a monthslong voter fraud investigation of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which he said submitted fraudulent registrations, including forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said.

Miller said other voter registration forms used false names or information, or had duplicated information on multiple forms. Some of the forms were obvious frauds, Miller said, but he did not give an estimate of how many fakes were submitted.

Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, said the group has been working with election officials to weed out fraudulent forms from the canvassers it hires to register voters.

"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans," Lewis said.

The group received a subpoena two weeks ago seeking information on 15 employees who the ACORN group had previously flagged for turning in suspicious voter applications, Lewis said in a statement.

"For the past 10 months, anytime ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual," Lewis said.

Lewis said ACORN turned in 46 problem applications submitted by 33 former employees to election officials in the Las Vegas area, where it has registered 80,000 people.

Labels: voter registration, voting rights