Was Mickey Mouse’s Voter Registration an Urban Legend?
In presenting three public controversies that engulfed ACORN in the last 1 ¾ years of its existence, I sometimes took sides – either defending the organization or admonishing it. I offered my most robust defense of ACORN regarding the voter registration controversy (in a post titled, “Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote (as a Democrat)”).
To review briefly: I wrote that Republican charges of “voter fraud” hurled at ACORN were part of a concerted campaign – stretching over a number of election cycles – of voter suppression: the deliberate, sometimes illegal attempt to prevent Democratic-leaning constituencies from voting. I linked the firings of federal prosecutors by a Justice department doing the bidding of the RNC to this strategy. I showed that while the charge of “voter fraud” was widely repeated in jurisdictions across the country and in the media, there was virtually no evidence of any fraudulent voting as a result of an ACORN/Project Vote voter registration drive.
But did I get everything right? Kevin Whelan, who directed the 2008 voter registration project for ACORN (and was ACORN’s Communications Director in March 2010 when he contacted me), objected that my post on ACORN repeated “a couple of urban legends about ACORN’s voter registration drive,” and suggested that we discuss the issue. We exchanged email messages and spoke by phone. Here’s what I learned:
1. “We are 99.99% sure we didn’t turn in a Mickey Mouse card at all.” Further, he cast doubt on the claim that voter registration forms were submitted in Nevada for “the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.” My post repeated both claims, based on an article, “ACORN controversy: Voter fraud or mudslinging,” written by Deborah Hastings of AP, which appeared in USA Today (10/18/2008).
2. “I think if you had all the facts,” Mr. Whelan advised me, “you might reconsider this thesis: ‘reveals (in a number of episodes) ACORN’s inattention to legal fine points and indifference to procedural safeguards.’” He allowed that, while the phrase (which appeared in the first paragraph of my initial post) might apply to ACORN in other areas, it was (with very few exceptions) not an accurate characterization of the voter registration project.
3. Why is this significant? Kevin Whelan suggested that this was more than a point of professional pride: it “has a bigger importance for other groups who attempt to do voter registration in the future.”
Let’s take a quick look at each of these points. Regarding the first, Mr. Whelan put me in touch with Brian Mellor, Senior Council at Project Vote (which partnered with ACORN to register voters). “The story out there is that ACORN did not run a very competent voter registration drive,” he told me. He said, as Kevin Whelan had, that there was a strong “quality control system” in place throughout the 2008 voter registration campaign.
Brian Mellor advised me that, while the Mickey Mouse and Dallas Cowboy claims were aired at one point by Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, the charges were “made up out of whole cloth.” He noted that neither the Secretary of State, nor anyone else in a position to do so had provided any documentation to support these charges.
Regarding the second point, Kevin Whelan described an elaborate system of controls and safeguards – built-in in 2008 after the experience gained in previous voter registration campaigns. Staff members (not the canvassers who submitted the forms) made at least three attempts to contact by phone everyone whose name appeared on a registration form. Forms were submitted to officials in three batches with prepared cover sheets describing each: verified, not verified, and problematical (which included incomplete forms, duplicates, and potentially fraudulent submissions). As I noted in my initial post, state laws generally require that all forms collected must be submitted (even when fraud is suspected).
But Mr. Whelan noted that, “the tighter and more elaborate we made our own quality control system, the more our own documentation could be used to smear us.” Indeed, this pattern was clear when I researched this issue two months ago. The whole story – the more truthful story (that ACORN flagged suspicious forms) – was often not heard above the din; the smear, however, (that ACORN submitted suspicious forms) was amplified.
Regarding the final point: the stakes are high. I quoted conservative activist Paul Weyrich (who appeared in a Brave New Films video) in a previous post: “They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the election, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
From that insight, well-understood by political scientists and political operatives alike – and from the fact that the previously unregistered voters that ACORN and Project Vote sign up are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican – comes the fervent opposition to, and resulting ‘controversy’ surrounding, the voter registration campaigns the two groups conducted.
Mr. Whelan suggested that, after ACORN was attacked so relentlessly over its voter registration efforts, few nonprofits would be eager to pick up the torch in the future. Brian Mellor anticipates, however, that Project Vote will find partners for future voter registration drives.
Here’s a link to the Brave New Films video on voter suppression.
Here’s a link to a video with Kevin Whelan at an October 14, 2008 press conference on the voter registration controversy.
Next post: The Undercover Videos: Final Nails in ACORN’s Coffin?
(The image – of voting results by county in the 2008 U.S. presidential election – is from Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan.)
