A good friend of mine is working hard in Florida registering voters, and pushing for a higher minimum wage, with ACORN. He's given me the inside scoop on what Republicans are falsely calling "Democrats trying to steal the election", and are using to distract from the real voter fraud perpetrated by Nathan Sproul and Associates.
One of the best things we can do right now is keep the Republican disenfranchisement and fraud meme alive and in front of people for the next few weeks. By letting the media know the truth behind the desperate republican allegations of "They're doing it too", we can clear the air now before the story gets submerged in whatever else happens. Details after the break.
First - ACORN's voter registration work is entirely non-partisan. While it does focus on minority communities and is therefore reasonably seen as leaning democratic - people are welcome to register regardless of affiliation.
The allegations of impropriety are coming from a guy, Mac Stuart, they terminated on August 5th "for failing to follow our procedures of how to run a proper voter registration effort." My friend adds " we were concerned that his failure to follow our protocols was inappropriate and could possibly lead to other problems."
Now we get to the good part - how good a witness is this guy? Not very -
Two weeks later, we were contacted by Total Bank in FL that he has attempted to cash a $5000 check from a donor and has crossed out another name and written in his own. We have a copy of this check and a signed affadavit from that attorney. We are presently, and have been for several weeks, trying to get law enforcement to investigate this matter.
My friend continues:
After we fired Mr. Stuart, he alleged that we were pulling out Republican cards. This is absolutely, completely untrue. To date, Mr. Stuart has presented no evidence, and there is none. He did get a number of papers and TV stations to air his attacks on us, though none but one even bothered to contact us about the situation. Apparently, Stuart shows in one of the TV interviews a large stack of Republican cards that were allegedly held by us. Now obviously they are or were in his possession. I believe that either 1. he swiped these during his employment with us; or 2. he collected these after we fired him and is using them to embarrass us.
Understand that the fact that this slimeball is very useful to both the national RNC and the local (eg. Florida restaurant industry) forces who are fighting against a minimum wage increase does not
prove that he was placed at ACORN as an agent provocateur, just as the fact that he TRIED TO COMMIT A FELONY by cashing a check that wasn't made out to him does not
prove that he is lying about ACORN - but he certainly seems to pass the duck test in my book.
Seemingly, I am not alone - a google news search suggests his baseless accusations only passed muster as "news" for the integrity-challenged Washington Times and NewsMax. This does not mean, however, that as an allegation this has gone away - the rightwing blogs and republican spokespeople still believe that citing ACORN is their best response to questions about Nathan Sproul and Associates-linked registration fraud. We have to take that away from them by making sure the SCLM knows the ACORN allegations are bogus.
It would also help to be sure of our own facts when we go on the offensive - so check in with the
DKOS vote-fraud center to make sure we are not citing unproven allegations the way the Republicans do.