So I have recently written in defense of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). What I have yet to write about is my experience working for and with ACORN. For over a year and a half I worked on canvasses either for ACORN or with one of their close allies. For most of that time, I worked as either a Field Manager or Canvass Director. In other words, I not only canvassed. I also recruited, trained, and managed canvass staff or Field Representatives. So when I watch the development of this current story of voter registration fraud, I have a unique viewpoint, which I would like to share with you all. I have seen, firsthand, the art and challenges of organizing ACORN style.
As with any not-for-profit organization, fundraising is a large part of the job description. These organizations often go up against the most highly funded opponents (the healthcare industry, the oil industry, predatory lenders...etc). We will never have the funding that they do, and we know that, but we need funding to keep lights on in the office and paper coming out of the printer. Our fundraising also helps on a more political level. We depend on the power of numbers and on maximizing someone’s support. We get more power from someone’s name when we can call that person a contributor, even if the contribution is only $1.
This is often a tool used on an issue campaign. One of the recent campaigns I worked on was a fight to pass Connecticut Senate Bill 217, an act mandating employers provide paid sick leave to employees. We knew we would get this bill passed in the Senate, we had the year before but the House let it die when the clock ran out. This time around, we focused our resources towards gaining support in the House. Our canvass began getting handwritten letters from residents in targeted areas addressed to their Representative. We also asked them to sign on to the campaign as a member, requiring a contribution It means almost nothing if we go to a local Representative and say, "We would like you to support this bill." However, it is a different story if we can say, "Not only would we like you to support this bill, but X number of people in your district signed on and contributed to our efforts to pass it. Your constituents want you to support this bill and our investing in it."
You may be asking why I’m talking about this? What does this have to do with voter registration fraud? Trust me, I’m getting there.
The reason I’m talking about this, is because this is the core of the work organizations like ACORN do. No one there is doing it for the money, we do it for the issues. Trust me on this, organizing is not glamorous. And there is a clear difference between an issue campaign and an electoral campaign. Our voter registration drives are not what keep our members contributing every month or year. It is the ability to move issues that creates a sustainable grassroots network. This type of work is for the truly committed, long-term activists. An electoral campaign (elect a candidate, petition drive, voter registration drive, ballot initiative) is a completely different ball game.
During an issue campaign, the staff is generally a lot smaller, and much higher quality. These issue campaigns are tougher. They have no set end date. Fighting for universal healthcare or energy independence could take decades. We know that. We don’t expect to get universal healthcare in one legislative session. A petition drive, on the other hand, has a set end date and goal. We need to get X number of petition signatures in X number of days. An absolute win or lose situation is easier mentally. It is also an easier ask. Asking someone to vote for a candidate or ballot initiative is much easier than asking them to contribute time and money to an issue campaign. It is harder to get a larger commitment to a more vague concept. What happens is this, the canvassers that can handle the fundraising of an issue campaign, take on a leadership role during an electoral campaign. In other words, a Field Representative from an issue campaign can take on the Field Manager role on an electoral campaign.
One of the reason we do this is that electoral campaigns usually allow or require for a much larger staff capacity. Since the work is easier, and generally more exciting, you are able to bring on staff that might not make it on an issue campaign. This requires more people in leadership roles, and is ultimately how I came to take one on.
Now I am getting to the details of a voter registration drive, which I classify as an electoral campaign. Obviously, ACORN has undertaken an extraordinary voter registration drive. They have registered over 1.3 million people to vote, and the number is still rising. I cannot even begin to guess how many canvassers that would require. But let us do a completely unscientific estimation. Let us say a decent canvasser registers about 30 people a day. That’s over 43,000 shifts. Holy crap. For anyone that has put together a grassroots plan, 43,000 shifts is scary. Obviously this poses a tough recruitment challenge. Even if you say each canvasser can get 50 voter registration cards, that is still 26,000 shifts.
So they had quite a challenge to go out and recruit lots of new canvassers. They have been accused of hiring homeless people, drug addicts, ex felons. They probably did hire some of each. However, they did not target that. My guess is they put ads on CraigsList, DemocraticGain, and other internet job sites. They hung up recruitment posters all over the city, they made the job offering available to as many people as possible. I am sure that plenty of the people that applied never made it past the interview. Sadly, some that were willing to lie made it through.
This is a reality of grassroots organizing. On an issue campaign, you cannot fake the money. We set a tough quota, and if you do not make it, you do not make it (another reason the staff is smaller). On an electoral campaign, everything you do can be faked. I have caught people lying on more than one occasion, luckily never on a registration drive. The people that lied to me never broke any laws. And those that lie are few and far between. The truth is, we make it so that if you are working hard, you will last. You do not need to lie, just work.
This brings me to quotas. As I said, on a fundraising campaign, we do set a quota. It cannot be faked. I have never, I repeat, never given a quota on an electoral campaign. In all our planning meetings, we always concluded that if we give the staff a quota, they will come back with it, by any means. That does not mean there was none, I said we never "gave" one. Management staff (who had to meet the same quotas if not higher) always had a quota in mind, but there was never a thin line. We never said, "If anyone comes back with less than X, they are fired." What we said is, "If they come back with less than X, you should find out why. What happened that night?" Everyone, and I mean everyone, has bad nights. I once came back after only raising $3 and was not fired. So I find it very difficult to believe that ACORN would have fired someone who came back with less than 10 voter registration cards filled out. My guess is that a former employee felt that way, but no canvass director fires someone for one bad night.
There has to be a standard though. If someone comes back consistently with little results, the organization cannot afford to keep that person on staff. So yes, these canvassers had to get some results if they wanted to keep their job. Without a stated quota, there is still an incentive to fraudulently fill out registration cards. That is completely unavoidable. No one thinks they can keep their job without getting any results, and people will do what it takes to keep their job. It is a sad reality that we have to live with. And we prepare ourselves for it. Like I said, I have caught people lying about results. It was not a chance happening, but an intentional effort to analyze someone’s numbers on a nightly basis. A good canvass director will catch lying. It is usually obvious, if you look for it. We do training to teach people how to analyze these numbers, which includes practice sessions where the only thing you see is someone’s results, and you have to explain what the night was like. You are trained to spend extensive time on quality control. You stay up late at night checking over everything, and I mean everything. You come over letters, signatures of support, petitions, voter registration cards, walk sheets. Anything that goes out and comes back is looked over. You also spend extensive time training and analyzing the staff. Very quickly, you can tell whether or not someone is actually a good enough canvasser to bring in the results they claim.
So as a canvass director, you are not only expected to get the same results that the other canvassers are getting, but you are expected to ensure the quality of everyone else’s results as well. As I said earlier, I never had the misfortune of dealing with a fraudulently filled out registration card. The people I have caught lying were not breaking the law. They were lying to us, which sucked, but not to our state or federal government. In these cases, we simply fired them. As this controversy has been played out on the mainstream media, I have tried to put myself in the shoes of an ACORN canvass director.
The first question I asked myself: what would I do if I caught someone turning in a fraudulent registration card? What should I do? Well, obviously, the first thing to do is fire that employee. They have broken the law while on paid time. No way around it Fired. What next? The law says you have to turn the card in, no matter what. So turn it in, and separate it from the good cards. Inform the county clerk as to the situation, which may include providing information on the employee. That is where one would think this would end. The card will not be counted. The State then has to make the decision of whether or not to prosecute the individual, but the organization has lived up to its duties. This is what ACORN has done. They had no other option. If you are going to do a massive voter registration drive, this WILL happen. So be prepared for it, as I believe ACORN was.
I think we all knew the details of that last paragraph. We also know that this could be just the groundwork of a plan to challenge election results if Barack Obama wins by a small margin. Therefore, we have to take it down. We cannot sit idle and let them trump up these ridiculous lies about ACORN. We can not let them feel comfortable blaming this election on ACORN.
All I know is, ACORN acted in as proper a fashion as they could. They have been a strong voice for progressive, low and moderate income Americans. And I have seen the way they act first hand.