Members of Congress Urge Justice Department to Investigate Alleged ACORN Voter Fraud

Press Release

The ranking members on the relevant committees and four former state Secretaries of State currently serving in Congress today sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting the Department of Justice ensure that the actions of ACORN did not violate federal laws or harm the validity of our elections.

The letter signed by former Secretaries of State and current Reps. Roy Blunt (Mo.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Candice Miller (Mich.), and Ranking Members Vern Ehlers (Mich.) and Lamar Smith (Texas) requests the Department of Justice to take "appropriate measures to ensure that both the Civil Rights Division and the Criminal Division look into the actions of ACORN, including any violations of the federal law, and including but not limited to the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act or any other civil or criminal laws covered by their alleged fraudulent activities."

This week alone, ACORN officials admitted to submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in Ohio and press reports confirmed that ACORN submitted hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms in Kansas City, Mo., forcing local officials to wade through fraudulent voter registrations, potentially disenfranchising legitimate voters.

The full text of the letter is below and a .pdf version is available here.

October 10, 2008
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Mukasey,
As former Secretaries of State in charge of operating and enforcing state and federal election laws, and the Ranking Members on the Congressional committees of jurisdiction, we are acutely aware of the need to encourage voter participation while demonstrating to the American public that the electoral process is secure and reliable. It is therefore with deep concern and a sense of urgency that we ask that the Department of Justice take all active and appropriate measures nationwide to preserve the integrity of our upcoming elections and the voter confidence in the election system by protecting the public's confidence in the electoral process and ensuring that efforts to defraud the process are thwarted and legally pursued.

President Abraham Lincoln said that "[e]lections belong to the people. It is their decision." President Lyndon Johnson called voting "the first duty of democracy." Our courts have affirmed the primacy and necessity of all Americans to participate in the election process when it stated in 1886 that voting is "a fundamental political right, because [it is] preservative of all rights." Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356.

However, as the Report from the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform entitled "Building Confidence in U. S. Elections," and better known as the Carter-Baker Report, noted "Americans are losing confidence in the fairness of elections" and that "[b]uilding confidence in U.S. elections is central to our nation's democracy." The Report also observed that the "electoral system can¬not inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters." The Commission went on to explain that "[d]emocracy is endangered when people believe that their votes do not matter or are not counted correctly." Most recently the Supreme Court noted that "public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process has independent significance, because it encourages citi¬zen participation in the democratic process." Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 553 U. S. ____ (2008).

Voter registration fraud is a serious problem that endangers the security of our elections and puts legitimate voters at risk of having their ballots devalued or stolen. To combat this issue, Congress made such fraud a serious federal crime. It is therefore deeply troubling to read continued reports of alleged voter registration fraud in many of the states that are considered to be "battleground states" and where the margin of victory or loss could be small. Even the bipartisan Commission noted there is no doubt that voter fraud occurs and that "[i]n close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference."

Specifically, we bring to your attention one organization - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN - that had their offices raided in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 7, 2008, and admitted on October 8, 2008, to submitting fraudulent voter registrations among the 65,000 forms it submitted in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Unfortunately this particular organization has a long history of such behavior with its employees having been convicted of voter registration fraud in past elections and current state-level investigations of its activities ongoing in more than a dozen states in this election cycle. The concerns raised in states such as Nevada and Ohio demonstrate clearly the administrative problems this type of voter fraud causes for local election officials. These local officials are forced to wade through hundreds, if not thousands, of fraudulent voter registrations submitted by organizations such as ACORN, which in turn slows the processing of legitimate registrations from other citizens, potentially disenfranchising legitimate voters whose registrations cannot be processed in time for their names to correctly appear on the voter rolls before election day.

The submission of fraudulent voter registrations was something that Congress expressly intended to address in the Help America Vote Act by requiring that States verify voter information con¬tained in a voter registration application using either an applicant's state-issued driver's license or the last 4 digits of the applicant's social security number. In fact, in a letter dated September 8, 2003, to the State of Maryland, your Department specifically addressed this issue and reminded the States that under HAVA "a State must set up a verification system that enables it to determine whether the information provided by a registrant is accurate by comparing it to its own state motor vehicle driver's license records or federal social security records."

In light of the admissions by Ohio ACORN employees, the recent letters and press release from the Commissioner of Social Security questioning the high usage of the verification process in six states, including Ohio, is extremely disconcerting. Your Department and the Social Security Administration should be commending these states for actually following the law and deploying the resources of both agencies to assist them in complying with HAVA rather than attempting to manufacture allegations of impropriety. Indeed, your Department has an enforcement obligation to ensure that States are complying with the HAVA verification requirement. We urge you to ensure that the diligence of these states is not chilled as some try to intimidate them into not following the law.

At the juncture of this critical election, it is imperative that you do all that you can to assure Americans that their votes will not only count but that the votes of ineligible or fraudulent voters will not serve to cancel out or disenfranchise them. Given the breadth of the current investigations of ACORN, the history of such practices by this organization, and a failure of this organization to change its methods or processes to prevent voter registration fraud, what once may have been a single state or regional issue is now obviously a national problem that requires the resources of a federal law enforcement agency. We urge you to take all active and appropriate measure to ensure that both the Civil Rights Division and the Criminal Division look into the actions of ACORN, including any violations of the federal law, and including but not limited to the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act or any other civil or criminal laws covered by their alleged fraudulent activities. However, we do not want this request to be construed as a limitation to just this organization or as a political endeavor, and we would also encourage you to diligently and expeditiously take actions and measures against any other organizations with a similar track record or whose actions serve to perpetuate as opposed to prevent voter fraud. Americans who come out to vote deserve to have confidence in the electoral system and to know that their vote will be counted.

We would greatly appreciate you timely response to this request, given the short time until the national election. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

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