"...this is looking like a fraud committed against ACORN."
That was the conclusion of investigative reporter Drew Griffin (who we are told "broke" the ACORN story) on a CNN Truth Squad report this afternoon. The segment on This Week in Politics opened with host Tom Foreman skeptically questioning McCain's assertion, during the debate, that we are facing a threat to the very "fabric of democracy." Drew Griffin then laid out the facts.
I don't get to write this very often, but CNN is actually cutting through Republican spin and getting the story right.
Drew Griffin explained that these are merely accusations of registration fraud and told viewers that it is very unlikely that the bogus registrations would actually lead to voter fraud.
Griffin also made a point of noting that, regardless of any fraud accusations, there is no connection between the Obama campaign and ACORN's registration drive.
Kudos to CNN for providing some rational, unbiased reporting on this issue. The only thing missing was the obvious question: why is the FBI investigating this distraction?
I couldn't find today's video, but here's Drew Griffin on CNN yesterday. He spends far too much time blaming ACORN for a "sloppy" registration drive, but again says that ACORN was the victim of fraud...and also notes the Republicans will use these accusations to question the legitimacy of the election:
http://www.cnn.com/...
UPDATE #1:
As discussed in comments, there are still major problems with CNN's reporting on this, particularly that they continue to ignore that these accusations are part of a long-term Republican strategy to disenfranchise voters and delegitimize elections. More on this from digby here and here.
UPDATE #2:
In comments, FightingRegistrar points to a new AP analysis that also gets the facts right:
"This is all just one big head-fake," said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause. "What silliness this is, at this point. It's all about creating this perception that there is a tremendous problem with voter fraud in this country, and it's not true."
...
"There are certainly problems and I don't think anyone disagrees on that," said Wang of Common Cause. "But it doesn't get reported that ACORN finds these registrations errors themselves. They flag them as being no good, but they have to turn them in anyway."
"They don't get processed," she said. "And Mickey Mouse is not going to vote."
UPDATE #3:
More from comments. understandinglife notes that the Seattle PI is also on board:
In issuing his dire warning in the debate, McCain apparently conflated voter-registration fraud with voter fraud. Voter-registration fraud -- at least, of the type ACORN workers committed in Seattle last year and allegedly engaged in elsewhere this year -- is annoying, potentially costly to taxpayers and certainly illegal, but not, by itself, a serious threat to democratic foundations.
Voter fraud, on the other hand, can change the outcome of elections.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, a Republican, said last year that the ACORN case in Seattle had nothing to do with manipulating outcomes and everything to do with the workers' efforts to keep their $8-an-hour jobs. If anyone was defrauded, it was ACORN, an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
"The defendants ... cheated their employers to get paid for work they did not actually perform," Satterberg said. "The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets."