Fraudulent "fraud" ad

Yesterday the Ohio GOP debuted a deeply misleading web site and a radio ad that asks "Could Ohio's election be stolen?" They directly accuse Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner of concealing voter fraud. They claim that in Cleveland, ACORN paid for "illegal registrations in exchange for cash and cigarettes." The web site asks for people to vote early, contribute to a legal fund, and volunteer to be poll observers.

Let's sort through the claims:

-There is no evidence that anyone is trying to steal the election.

-The Cleveland example sounds scary, but won't lead to anyone voting illegally. Freddie Johnson, the 19-year-old who filled out 70 to 80 identical registrations in exchange for cigarettes and dollar bills, will only vote once. He filled out the same address every time. No one actually trying to stuff a ballot box would do this. They would almost certainly get caught. Even if their multiple registrations slipped past the data-entry clerks, poll workers would either recognize the same person coming to the voting table twice, or they'd notice the duplicate listings next to each other in the poll book.

-ACORN is not scamming elections officials. Lazy ACORN employees scammed ACORN. Their system is vulnerable to hourly workers who'd rather convince registered people to fill out a duplicate card than do their jobs right.

-Brunner is not concealing voter fraud. This is about the GOP's lost lawsuit trying to force her to compile lists of mismatches between the state's voting and driver's license databases. But Brunner is providing the mismatch information to counties in another format. The mismatch info is one tool for verifying registrations, but on its own it's several times more likely to accidentally flag valid voters because of typos and other clerical errors.

Republicans are not only trying to make ACORN and Brunner a campaign issue -- they're getting ready to try to force overtime if Obama wins Ohio.

Here are some questions to ask when you hear scary claims about voting scandals from the right or the left:
-How many votes is the problem affecting? Do you have solid numbers, or just scary anecdotes?
-If you say votes are "at risk," or that there's a "risk" of fraud, how likely is the risk?
-What's the cause of the problem? Are there other possible explanations besides the most sinister theory?

Just like the left-wing conspiracy theories about Ohio in 2004, this right-wing conspiracy theory falls apart when you ask these questions.

Giant squirrel attacks ACORN

A man in a squirrel suit crashed Gov. Ted Strickland's press conference in Columbus this week to protest ACORN's voter-registration drives.

Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, standing on the Statehouse steps, denounced Republican attacks on Barack Obama. As Strickland complained that the GOP was scaring Ohio voters by threatening their right to vote, the squirrel chipped in the other side of the story with a sign: "Don't let ACORN + Obama steal Ohio."

I think the right's stolen-election charge is exaggerated and unfair, but this video is really funny.

"They even resort to things like sending squirrels to news conferences because they have nothing else to talk about," Coleman ad-libbed. "Well, I say to Sen. McCain and those who are backing Sen. McCain in the way they are doing now, is to stop being squirrelly and start being straight with the voters."

Some reporters chased the squirrel through the streets of Columbus. This reporter played it straight. Here's the squirrel's blog.

Supreme Court strikes down voting order

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the federal judge's order that would have thrown 200,000 Ohio voters' registrations into limbo. See this Columbus Dispatch story.

It's a huge victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and it appears to stop cold the Ohio Republican Party's sweeping effort to question new voter registrations. The unanimous, unsigned opinion suggests the Republicans didn't have standing to sue over the issue.

Get ready for stolen election theories from the right if Obama wins Ohio by anything less than a landslide. Ohio Republicans are charging that Brunner is "actively working to conceal fraudulent activity in this election." They're blowing the ACORN controversy way out of proportion. They're arguing that registration fraud involving 50 to 60 voters -- and corrected by election officials -- justified making it harder for 200,000 people to vote.

Republicans are understandably upset that federal law is vague about what to do when the state's voter database and driver's license database don't match. But critics -- such as Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate today -- argue that the Republicans' cries of "voter fraud" are really meant to build support for disenfranchising voters.

Update, Sat. 10/18: A Republican activist has taken the legal battle over new registrations to the Ohio Supreme Court. See the Columbus Dispatch story here.

Massive voting fight appealed to Supreme Court

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step into a high-stakes fight over 200,000 Ohio voters' registrations, the AP and the New York Times report.

This battle, building for the past week, has become the ominous sequel to Ohio's 2004 voting controversies. Brunner says thousands of people could lose their votes. Republicans say she hasn't done her part to test the registrations for fraud. (See Brunner's press release on the case and the GOP's statement.)

Here's the problem. A 2002 federal law says states have to match new voter registrations and changes of address with state driver's license records. But what happens when there's no match? The law doesn't say. Neither has Brunner or her predecessor. Some Ohio counties double-check registrations that do not match up, some don't.

Republicans sued, and got the federal courts to order Brunner to give the counties an easier-to-use list of mismatches. They point to small numbers of duplicate registrations filed by ACORN to say the 200,000 mismatches need serious vetting. But they concede there are lots of reasons the records might not match, such as voters or data-entry workers messing up one digit in a license number.

What happens next, we don't know. Brunner says she doesn't want these voters to have to use provisional ballots -- which get scrutinized after Election Day and fought over if the election is close. (About one in five provisional votes are usually rejected.) A top Republican suggests that having all 200,000 people vote provisionally isn't a bad idea. But that's a number so big, it could throw any half-way close election result into the courts. (Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes in 2004; 150,000 provisional ballots were cast then.)

Brunner will issue a directive soon, and the Republicans may well take that to court too. The Republicans will shout "voter fraud," the Democrats "vote suppression," and we're in for a battle as intense as 2004's over who gets to have their vote counted.

That year, Republicans filed mass challenges to voters' eligibility in several counties (they were struck down by a judge). But this year's deadline for filing direct challenges passed yesterday. Instead, we have this lawsuit, which makes the county boards' jobs much more complicated less than three weeks before Election Day.

This may make voting harder for many people who've either registered to vote or changed their registration this year. If it does, I'll write about what you can to do protect your vote.

Update, Fri. 10/17: Dahlia Lithwick of Slate argues that the Republican attacks on ACORN are intended to build support for efforts to disenfranchise voters.

(Caption: Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner at the City Club of Cleveland on Oct. 8.)

The ACORN hearing

Christopher Barkley walks to the microphone, wearing a Domino's Pizza uniform and a doo-rag. He's sworn in, and tells the board of elections why he registered to vote 12 times.

"I'd be sitting down in Public Square, reading my book," says Barkley, who was homeless this summer. "People asked me, 'Can you sign these papers?' I said, 'No, I'm already registered.'" They asked him to sign anyway: "I'm trying to hold onto a job," they said. Being a "kind-hearted person," Barkley says, he signed.

Freddie Johnson leaves his black Indians cap on his chair and goes to the mike. He's 19, tiny in a huge sweatshirt. He sells cell phones from a kiosk in Tower City. When he'd wait for the bus in Public Square after work this summer, he says, ACORN workers would approach him. When he said he was registered, they'd "come up with a sob story" and say "it's cool to sign again, because I need a signature, because they get paid by signature." He filled out 48 cards with the same address. Sometimes the workers gave him a cigarette or a dollar.

Luren Dickinson of Shaker Heights, a bespecatcled guy in a suit, testifies he keeps getting board of elections mailings at his house, sent to people who don't live at his address. They're using his house number for false registrations. One guy, Darnell Nash, registered at Dickinson's address and had his registration cancelled when Dickinson complained. But then, Nash came into the elections office, registered again at Dickinson's address, and cast an early ballot. The board votes to void his new registration and ballot. The sheriff will be looking for Nash soon. {*See update below.}

The board of elections votes to ask the county sheriff and prosecutor to investigate the duplicate registration cases. It's going to be a national story. Fox News is covering the meeting. Republicans, including the McCain campaign, are portraying ACORN as a criminal organization.

Let's hope the national reporters keep the story in perspective.

"It's not voter fraud -- people are not multiply voting," said Jane Platten, Cuyahoga County's elections director. "We have safety nets in place that do not allow a person to vote multiple times." Her staff flagged Barkley and Johnson's names during their weekly searches for duplicate registrations.

This year, the elections staff has found 50 to 60 duplicate names out of 71,000 cards submitted by ACORN. Also, they send a mailing to every newly registered (or registration-changing) voter. Of those 71,000 registrations, 3,550 people couldn't be located. They'll have to vote on provisional ballots, which get scrutinized after Election Day to see if the voter is eligible. That's a 5 percent bad-card rate. I asked Platten how that compares to the rate of bad cards among non-ACORN registrations. She said she'd find out and get back to me.

After the meeting, ACORN staffers passed out a folder full of defenses, but their argument that they have a good quality control system was laughably weak. They said they called Freddie Johnson multiple times to verify his information was accurate. Sure, they called him a lot -- because they had 48 cards from him to verify!

The Republican caricatures of ACORN are unfair -- the group has registered hundreds of thousands to vote, and they sounded alarms about the foreclosure crisis long before it wounded the entire economy. But they've got to figure out how to motivate their low-income workers without accidentally giving them reason to cheat, and they've got to check their cards better for problems. They could learn from groups like the Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition, which kept such a thorough database of who they registered in 2004, they used it to prove the county's voter rolls were flawed.

The real effect of ACORN's mistakes on the voting rolls will probably be small. But if Obama wins Ohio in anything less than a landslide, I'm afraid these stories will lead to lots of right-wing stolen-election conspiracy theories -- reverse images of the left's allegations about 2004. I could also see the Republican Party using ACORN mistakes to justify mass challenges to new voters' eligibility. The deadline for challenges is this week.

(Caption: Christopher Barkley testifies at the board of elections meeting.)

Update, Tue. 10/14: An ACORN staffer defends the group's system here, saying they don't pay by the signature. Fox News ran this extremely misleading report claiming there are 4,700 "phony" registrations in Greater Cleveland. For a better sense of proportion, see the Plain Dealer report and editorial.

*Update, Thu., 6/4/09: Darnell Nash was indicted on voting fraud charges. See this new post.

(The original version of this post said Nash's case apparently didn't involve ACORN -- but the prosecutor's office now says it did.)