The main claims against ACORN don't make sense

Some righties are accusing ACORN of trying to steal the election, but that does not make sense:

(1) ACORN employees submit false registrations. Most of them are clearly false (fake names, addresses, same handwriting, etc.), but let's suppose a few thousand of them are pretty authentic in enough respects to fool the elections officials.
(2) The crooks can then vote in one of two ways:
(a) they can request absentee ballots, but those will go to thousands of different addresses. What does ACORN do then? Visit all those addresses and steal the absentee ballots?
(b) they can go to the precincts to vote, but they'd have to get thousands of different people to participate in that process since the elections officials would recognize if the same person showed up again and again.

Is there something I'm missing?

If not, there's voter registration fraud, perhaps, but not election fraud. This needs to be made clear.

they have been accusing them of 'election fraud' for about a week now.

In some states, by law a voter registration agent *has* to submit all registrations, even if some are obviously false. Otherwise they could be fined money for each application they don't turn in. If someone hands ACORN a registration for Mickey Mouse, ACORN has no choice but to turn it in.

Even if they do turn the cards in: "Fact: ACORN flags in writing incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in,. Unfortunately, some of these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards. In many cases, we can actually prove that these are the same cards we called to their attention."

Here's ACORN's press release that explains everything: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0810/S00259.htm

Welcome to DU! :hi:

John McCain and ACORN

By Joel Wendland

In an op-ed posted Tues. Oct. 14th, titled "Obama and Acorn," the Wall Street Journal's editorial board attempted to link Barack Obama to the activist group ACORN, and by association to recent false allegations that ACORN engaged in deliberate voter fraud.

Of course the WSJ editors offered only the slimmest evidence to link Obama to the group beyond the word "like." ACORN is "like Barack Obama" stated the Wall Street Journal editors in what appears to be the biggest stretch of intelligence and logic since the paper's editors opined that the deregulation of banking was a splendid idea.

The WSJ editorial board refused to remind its readers of John McCain's own links to ACORN. In 2006, McCain spoke at an immigrants' rights rally co-sponsored by ACORN in which he stated that groups like ACORN "make America special."

Of course, if McCain has to explain why he spoke at an ACORN-sponsored event, he is forced into the unenviable position of explaining to his right-wing base why he attended an immigrants' rights rally. At that point, he would be mired in the sticky situation of needing to address again why he authored a 2006 bill with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) that provided comprehensive immigration reform, but now, just two years later, wouldn't vote for a bill he helped write.

(See the video here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ9wy2MI1NI

To help McCain rethink his new-found dislike for ACORN, in a press statement released Oct. 13th, the group's chief organizer, Bertha Lewis, responded to McCain campaign criticisms of her group, saying, "It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans."

So it's best that the Wall Street Journal just not bring all that up.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7562/

brought up ACORN.

'ACORN registered Mickey Mouse, but Goofy has been in the White House for 8 years.' LOL

It is all a right wing attempt at clouding the issue and trying to create a myth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ePGGyvp7Hc

that explains how these voter registration applications are validated. Anyone can download an application from the net, put any name in they want, make up a SS# and send it off. Are the Republicans trying to say that all registrations are suspect, because our government doesn't know how to check an application and make sure it's valid? I'm definitely missing something.

That basically voter registration fraud is meaningless because there's no way to carry it over into actual vote fraud.