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By TODD SPANGLER
Barack Obama’s legal team wants a special prosecutor to determine whether partisan politics is at play in a reported though unconfirmed Justice Department investigation of a voter registration effort which has been the target of numerous complaints of late, including one in Michigan.
With the election just over two weeks away, Bob Bauer, Obama’s chief lawyer, said in a conference call with reporters this afternoon that he is asking U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to to hand over to special prosecutor Nora Dannehy any probe into what Bauer called “bogus claims of vote fraud” that mirror concerns raised by Republicans two years ago.
According to a recent Justice Department report, those issues played a role in the controversy over the forced resignations of nine former federal prosecutors.
That report – performed by the inspector general overseeing the Justice Department and others – found that David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, “was removed because of complaints to the Department of Justice and the White House … about Iglesias’ handling of voter fraud” cases. He had been pushed to bring a case against ACORN – the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now, the group at the center of the current controversy.
“Are we seeing a repeat now?” said Bauer. “It would seem that we are.”
Justice Department didn’t immediately have a comment about Bauer’s letter – though it was unclear they would given that no investigation has publicly been announced and would not be. In his letter, Bauer noted that in citing unnamed sources for the report, the Associated Press said “Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly close to an election.”
Bauer said there appears to be an “unholy alliance” between law enforcement officials and Republican officials, including presidential nominee John McCain’s campaign. In his letter, Bauer said in a footnote that several of the nominee’s supporters in Congress have written to the Justice Department “pressuring them to investigate ACORN.”
Also, word of the investigation was leaked within a day of McCain’s saying at Wednesday’s final presidential debate that the group “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of our democracy.”
Rep. Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican and former Michigan secretary of state, added her voice to the call for an investigation, saying today, “This rampant abuse must be stopped.” Earlier in the day, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis again questioned Obama’s links to the group and used much the same language, saying while Democrats believe Republicans are engaged in voter suppression, there is evidence of “rampant voter fraud” that must be addressed.
While there have been numerous reports linking ACORN workers to falsified voter registration cards, however, there has been little – if any – evidence of a vast voter-fraud conspiracy Most of the cases which have come to light so far have involved a relatively small number of bad registration cards – and while elections officials have said checking them means more work few for them, few have suggested publicly that false registration cards lead to fraudulent votes being cast.
Even Davis, in his call with reporters, noted that “we don’t know how big the problem is” and that outside of some state investigative reports, “I don’t think anybody at this stage has any sense of how widespread the fraud has been.” Bauer, in his letter to Mukasey, argued that McCain’s claim of widespread fraud are “entirely unsupported” while Republicans want to “harass” and “impede” voters by challenging them at the polls, an accusation GOP officials have denied, saying they only want to combat fraud.
At the center of the debate is ACORN, a community rights organization which – among other activities – works to register voters, particularly in low- and moderate-income areas. This year, they say they have registered some 1.3 million new voters nationwide, particularly in battleground states. In Michigan, the group says it has registered more than 200,0000 new voters.
In the past, some of ACORN’s workers – who are paid by the hour to register voters – have been convicted of falsifying voter registration cards. ACORN acknowledged that some workers skirt responsibilities by falsifying cards but the organization maintains that it double-checks cards before turning them in. When it finds suspicious ones, it flags them for election officials – though still turns them in – and fires workers caught falsifying cards.
“They’ve done a much better job of weeding out the stuff that shouldn’t be there,” said Lynnette Hagen, a deputy clerk in Saginaw, who said maybe as many as 5% of the 2,500 or so registrations ACORN has turned in there might be bad. They catch the ones that are bad, she said – and while it’s possible that a false one might get through, it’s unlikely someone is going to purposely show up at the polls and try to vote under it, especially when he or she is going to be asked to produce identification.
“There’s no perfect way to do it,” said Hagen.
As the election has gotten closer this year, meanwhile, the scorn heaped on ACORN has gotten much deeper. In Nevada, state authorities searched the group’s Las Vegas offices, saying they had evidence of cards being turned in with names of players for the Dallas Cowboys, for instance, and there have been concerns raised in various other states as well. The Republican National Committee, on its Web site, keeps a running list of stories about the group’s activities.
In Michigan, the Free Press reported last month that clerks were seeing numerous problems with registration cards turned in by ACORN, which led state Attorney General Mike Cox to look into the matter. This week, he announced the arrest of a man for allegedly falsifying six registration cards in Jackson, Mich. ACORN officials in Michigan argued that the timing – coming this week – appeared political, but an official in Cox’s office said that had nothing to do with it, that the investigation took time.
Fueling part of the ACORN controversy has been Obama’s links to the group and the McCain campaign’s demands that they be fully and publicly vetted.
Obama does have ties to the group, though he has repeatedly said they are straightforward. He was one of a group of lawyers – including Justice Department representatives – who represented ACORN, the League of Women Voters and other groups in a voter registration case against the state of Illinois in the 1990s, and he also sat on a foundation board which gave money to the community organizing group. Obama – a former community organizer – also attended training sessions for the group in the past but never worked for it.
His campaign also paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary this year to help get out the vote – not register voters – during the primary season.
Meanwhile, in 2006, McCain spoke to several groups in Miami, including ACORN, though his campaign has downplayed the significance of that engagement, noting that it was an immigration forum at the local archdiocese and the SEIU were also taking part.
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