A US House Oversight Committee has released a report on their investigation into alleged wrongdoing by ACORN

A House oversight committee has released a report charging that ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has engaged in widespread corruption including laundering federal grant money and funneling taxpayer dollars into partisan political campaigns.

ACORN has been under investigation in several states for alleged improprieties arising from their activities around the 2008 elections. The House oversight document purports to provide a comprehensive examination of the allegations against ACORN – and they are numerous.

ACORN played a large role in Minnesota’s 2008 elections as well. They endorsed and provided financial support to the campaigns of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Attorney General Lori Swanson. Perhaps not coincidentally, ACORN is not facing criminal charges or even investigation in Minnesota. Maybe this is the one state where they played by the rules.

ACORN took credit for registering at least 40,000 Minnesota voters in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Evidence of fraudulent voter registrations began to emerge almost immediately. Fictitious characters were registered, and at least one convicted felon who was incarcerated at the time managed to submit a new voter registration. It appears that the registration was fraudulently submitted by someone engaged in a voter registration drive.

 

Minnesota’s Secretary of State has remained adamant that Minnesota’s elections are pristine, a model for the nation, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary being brought to his attention.

 

Minnesota Majority’s independent investigation of the 2008 election has uncovered evidence of duplicate votes, deceased people, convicted felons and non-citizens voting, non-deliverable mailing addresses used in voter registrations and other anomalies like more ballots counted than voter histories in the statewide voter registration system would indicate were cast.

 

Minnesota Majority has repeatedly called for investigations into problems with Minnesota’s election records. In 2005, a joint law enforcement task force consisting of the FBI, the Justice Department, Milwaukee County, and Milwaukee city police conducted an investigation into the 2004 general election in Milwaukee. Their findings were strikingly similar to situations in Minnesota that have thus-far not been investigated by law enforcement. 

The evidence is mounting, suggesting that ACORN may have been deliberately structured as a criminal enterprise and this organization had its hands all over Minnesota’s elections. Simultaneously, evidence of election irregularities continues to come to light. Therefore, Minnesota Majority renews our call for investigation into election irregularities and improprieties in Minnesota.

Read the complete report.

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