Chris Fitzsimon
One of the biggest disputes in the most important election in a generation is whether or not everybody should be encouraged and allowed to vote. You might think there would be a consensus about that in a democracy.
You probably learned in school that voting is a precious right that must be protected or heard politicians of all stripes lamenting the low percentage of Americans that exercise their right to choose their leaders.
Not this year. Republicans across the country and in North Carolina are complaining about early-voting sites, same-day registration and voter-registration drives – in their minds, all part of some grand conspiracy to steal the election, or as Sen. John McCain puts it, perpetrate “one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country.â€
The only problem with all that demagoguery is that none of it is true. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud this year or any other year. As New York University professor Mark Crispin pointed out in a recent interview with Bill Moyers, there have been 82 convictions of voter fraud in the last four years in a country of 300 million people.
Many of the most absurd allegations have focused on ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a community-organizing group that conducts voter-registration drives that McCain and his supporters in North Carolina say are threatening the integrity of the election by registering illegal or fake voters.
There’s no evidence of that either, just anecdotes about registration forms with Mickey Mouse listed or vague accusations that ACORN is intentionally submitting thousands of fraudulent names to elections officials.
ACORN has all sorts of protections in place to prevent that from happening and the organization has never been charged with a crime. Many states require ACORN to turn in all the registration cards it collects even if the group itself has identified the cards as problematic.
That does not constitute fraud and there is almost no danger that incorrect registrations lead to someone voting illegally. As Richard Hasen of Loyola Law School put it recently in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Are they going to have duplicate or false names in their registration databases? Yes. Is it going to change the election outcome? No.… Duplicate registrations don’t lead to fraudulent votes being cast. You don’t get Joe Montana voting 400 times even if he’s registered 400 times in San Francisco.â€
But this isn’t about the facts. Desperate Republicans are trying to demonize ACORN and make the group the focus of the election and aren’t letting the facts stand in the way.
North Carolina’s Sen. Richard Burr said in Rockingham recently that Barack Obama’s “claim to fame is as a community organizer with ACORN…. We don’t want someone associated with that type of organization in the White House.â€
Obama was a community organizer before he attended law school, but for Developing Communities Project, a church-based group in Chicago, not ACORN. McCain ought to know all that. He delivered the keynote address at ACORN’s 2006 annual meeting. Sen. Burr must not have been there.
Less than a third of adults voted in North Carolina in the 2006 election, ranking the state 47th in the country in voter turnout. In 2007, the General Assembly passed legislation to allow people to register and vote on the same day at early-voting sites, which are open until three days before the election.
The legislation passed over the objections of many of the same lawmakers and interest groups now complaining about ACORN, the same people who oppose virtually every proposal that makes it more likely that people will vote.
They opposed the creation of early-voting sites years ago too, predicting all sorts of problems, including widespread fraud that never materialized. Years ago, they fought against laws to allow people to register to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses.
There is a pattern here and it contradicts the very essence of democracy. The good news is that it’s not working. Thanks to the work of civic and community groups like ACORN and many others, legislation has made voting more accessible; and because of the determination of citizens to have a voice in their government, more than 400,000 people have already voted in this year’s election.
We may be on the way to a record turnout in North Carolina. Seems like that would be something to celebrate, not try to prevent with lies and distortions. Unless it is the people the demagogues are afraid of.
Chris Fitzsimon is the director of NC Policy Watch.
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