ACORN and the election

Just about the most detailed and clear-headed discussion of ACORN I've seen to date over at Washington Monthly:

That said, on to a few specific cases. I picked them more or less randomly, based on what I happened to read about when I was thinking of doing this. I tried to dig a bit deeper, to figure out whether or not the evidence pointed to any sort of systematic fraud. In particular, I wanted to know whether or not ACORN had flagged suspicious registrations, and whether or not it seemed to be cooperating with the authorities and generally trying to minimize fraud. I did this because I wanted to find some sort of evidence one way or another.

In the cases I've gone through, the takeaway seems to be: ACORN had flagged suspicious registrations; it was cooperating with authorities, there is no evidence that it was trying to submit fraudulent registrations, and plenty of evidence that it was trying not to. (E.g., firing people who submitted fake registrations to ACORN.) I do think ACORN ought to ask serious questions about its practice of paying people to register people to vote, and/or about its controls on its employees, though I understand why one might want to give low-income people the work. Details below the fold.

And remember kids: it's a FELONY to throw out voter registration cards, even if you think they're fraudulent. You can indicate your concerns, but have to return them.

So if you're especially concerned that thousands of Mickey Mouses and Daffy Ducks are going to show up to vote in Florida and steal the election, maybe you might want to click through and get a fresh dose of reality.