What’s ACORN up to? Voter fraud as usual
By Michelle Malkin  •  July 7, 2008

What are Obama’s “old friends” at ACORN up to these days? They’re signing up countless new voters who will dutifully cast dubious ballots for their far Left savior and soulmate. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports today on ACORN’s flurry of suspicious activities. Remember, people. This is your tax dollars at work:

Analysts have attributed much of the surge to interest in the election and enthusiasm for Democratic candidate Barack Obama among young people and blacks, traditionally two groups that register and vote at lower rates than the population as a whole.

But as a day spent with canvassers showed, the new voters aren’t lining up at the county building to register themselves. Rather, they’re being aggressively recruited.

“We approach them. We bring the issue to them,” said Chris Edwards, ACORN’s Nevada field director. “We don’t wait for them to come to us.”

ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to have collected 60,000 new voter registrations in Clark County since February. The group, which works to promote the interests of lower-income people, is aiming for 100,000 by Labor Day.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he has never seen such a deluge. “The biggest year we ever had was 2004. That year, we processed almost 300,000 (voter) applications — 291,000, to be exact. We’re running double that rate right now.”

…Lomax said while he supports the goal of getting more people registered to vote, he sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.

“Whenever people get paid to register voters, those individuals have an incentive to meet their quota, and that results sometimes in people doing things they shouldn’t,” Lomax said.

His office sends out thousands of letters based on registration applications that don’t have valid addresses or Social Security numbers, or have other suspicious irregularities.

The office also receives frequent complaints from people who have been notified of changes in their registration that they say they didn’t make.

“There’s no question it’s a crime. It says right there on the form it’s a felony to put down false voter registration information,” said Lomax, who is working with authorities to see what can be done.