Obama and ACORN: can they only win by stealing?

October 9, 4:14 PMConservative Politics ExaminerKathy Shaidle

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Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman must be turning in their graves.

Those three young men were murdered while trying to register disenfranchised black citizens in Mississippi back in 1964. Today, their noble cause has suffered a tarnished reputation, due to allegations against the non-profit group ACORN.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, "is a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members. With a membership of over 350,000, ACORN is organized into more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States."

Sounds impressive, not to mention downright laudable.

Yet as the 2008 Presidential election draws to a close, ACORN's voter registration methods are under scrutiny by the media and the FBI.

In an October 8 editorial, Investors' Business Daily asked bluntly, "Is ACORN stealing the election?"

It's a legitimate question to raise now that the FBI has raided the offices of the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Nevada and North Carolina, two states where Obama and John McCain are running neck-and-neck. ACORN has registered bogus voters in both states.

The group's voter-registration fraud is rampant, and authorities plan a nationwide sweep of ACORN offices to collect records.

In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.

And as blogger Ed Morrissey points out:

Not only has Obama publicly endorsed ACORN, he has paid them at least $800,000 for their services, an amount that he didn’t immediately disclose until pressed. (...)

Barack Obama helped run an ACORN unit, represented them as an attorney, and is now a client of ACORN.  He needs to answer for their fraudulent tactics. His money helped fuel the organization, after all, and there is little doubt that they are working on his behalf. Their fraud intends to get him elected President. Will he denounce it, and demand prosecution? Or will he keep pretending that he doesn’t know them?

[ACORN] should be looking at the business end of a federal RICO prosecution.

Michelle Malkin details that state-by-state details of ACORN's suspicious voter registration activities this year alone.

ACORN has been found guilty of voter registration fraud on many occasions since 2004. ACORN employees have been indicted by federal grand juries and served jail time for falsifying forms and other crimes.

In many cases, ACORN "volunteers" are being paid for every name they register, leading inevitably to abuses like those reported in the New York Post today:

Two Ohio voters, including Domino's pizza worker Christopher Barkley , claimed yesterday that they were hounded by the community-activist group ACORN to register to vote several times, even though they made it clear they'd already signed up.

Barkley estimated he'd registered to vote "10 to 15" times after canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama, relentlessly pursued him and others.

Here's a FOX News investigation of Barack Obama's connection with ACORN:

Here's a new video from a McCain rally earlier today ("Somebody here keeps yelling 'ACORN', ACORN'!...)

The only positive outcome of this whole mess? The rest of us finally understand what "community organizers" really do. And it doesn't look pretty.