This ACORN voter registration fraud is fading from the headlines, but it shouldn't. Voter fraud allegations will be the story if this is as close election as polls are showing. And running across a connection between ACORN, the DCCC and Jim Oberweis' 14th CD campaign has made the ACORN story even more interesting.
Who is allowed to vote and ACORN's questionable activities was addressed a few days ago in a press release by Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole (more on IR later today). Cole's points about ACORN are poignant:
Unfortunately, it does not appear to be just a few bad apples at ACORN. The entire organization has a considerable record of manipulation and fraud. In June the Consumers Rights League published a series of internal documents from the organization that reveal ACORN has comingled political money and taxpayer funds. In order to prevent future taxpayer rip-offs and blatant voter fraud, the Community Reinvestment Act needs to be overhauled, and ACORN should never again receive a penny of taxpayer money. Furthermore, those responsible for the fraudulent registrations must be thoroughly investigated, and if found guilty, punished to the full extent of the law.
What does that have to do with Republican Jim Oberweis?
In Illinois, a Lake County household received notice their dead goldfish was registered to vote by another group called Women's Voices. ACORN and their cousins, Women's Voices as well as Illinois' Coalition of Immigrants and Refugees' Rights (ICIRR) have been implementing questionable voter registration manipulation tactics for years. It's about time someone began paying attention.
This whole ACORN thing came home when I was watching a FOX NEWS broadcast about the ACORN allegations a couple of weeks ago. In the discussion between Meghan Kelly and the head of Ohio's ACORN, FOX used a video clip featuring a young blonde-haired woman who looked familiar to me. Where had I seen her? In Illinois' 14th Congressional District.
Here's the piece:
The blonde woman in the red ACORN t-shirt was notable -- I had looked her straight in the eyes at a town hall forum in West Chicago, one featuring 14th CD candidate Jim Oberweis.
The blonde was at the forum to video Oberweis, and Jim acknowledged her in the room and joked that she'd been following the town hall circuit, saying she was recording the conservation for the DCCC on behalf of Bill Foster's campaign. She was forthright, and didn't attempt to disguise her activities. She butted her way around the room and stayed next to Jim the whole time he talked to constituents after the forum. (See to the right a photo I took that night, which includes on the far left a photo of her hand with video cam.)
So what a surprise it was to have the Oberweis campaign acknowledge that the woman who had been following their campaign with a video cam in hand was the same woman who had acknowledged to Oberweis campaign workers she also worked for the DCCC, and that the Oberweis campaign was the one she was assigned to follow.
Anything wrong with any of these activities? Not as far as we know now. But to those of us who aren't fully immersed in politics, it's fairly enlightening to know how the DCCC works. And how we're often innocently manipulated.
Congressman Cole's recommendations should be seriously considered in the days ahead. However, since DCCC workers double as ACORN workers, we can be fairly certain absolutely nothing like that will happen with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid leading Congress.
That's a grim reality.
