Opinion: Chicken Little and the ACORN

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So begins the famous children’s story about how panic and misinformation can make people do foolish things. It is important to remember this story when one listens to the squawks of panic emanating from the right over the recent ACORN voter registration ruckus.

To listen to those on the Right one would think that there was some vast plot by the poor and by black people to steal the election, but that is simply not the case. Conservatives have always disliked programs aimed at helping the poor and racial minorities to get registered to vote since these people tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, which is why they have invented the myth of voter fraud in order to justify their numerous attempts at voter suppression. Real cases of voter fraud are as rare as hen’s teeth and even most of the cases that are brought are phony and were motivated by partisan politics.

This is the main reason that the Bush Administration fired so many of the US Attorneys in the case that helped bring down former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They had refused to pursue politically motivated cases of alleged voter fraud that the administration wanted to use for the purposes of voter suppression.

Which brings us to ACORN. Once again we see Republicans making phony allegations of voter fraud in a case that is actually about registration fraud, a case in which it was ACORN that was the victim and in which it was ACORN that flagged the phony registrations itself when they were required by law to turn in all the registration forms that their workers had submitted, even the ones that ACORN officials suspected where false.

The problem arose because, just like every other voter registration group in the nation, ACORN hired part time employees to gather registrations, paying them for each registration form submitted, regardless of whether it was true or not. When these employees collected money from the organization for phony registrations it was ACORN that was the victim.

An important thing to remember about ACORN is that, unlike other groups, such as the ones that John McCain has supported to the tune of $175 thousand dollars, ACORN is non partisan, and collects registrations from anyone who wants to register, regardless of party affiliation. This is why McCain was an honored speaker at an ACORN rally two years ago.

Now McCain and his supporters are trying to pretend that the fraud perpetrated on ACORN by its part time help is in reality some sinister plot to have Mickey Mouse and legions of zombies vote for Obama in the upcoming election. What these worthies carefully avoid mentioning is that not only were the names on the fraudulent registration forms false, so too were the addresses, which means that there is no way that anyone could actually vote using these fake registrations.

Nor has there been any claim, even by the McCain campaign, that there is any evidence of people planning to use these false identities to vote. Frantic claims by McCain that this fraud perpetrated against ACORN means that the voter registration group:

"may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and may be "destroying the fabric of democracy."

are simply the hyperbole of a losing candidate in full panic mode grasping at any straw that they think may keep them afloat.

Claims by the Right that since the Justice Department and the FBI, at the insistence of the Bush Administration, is “looking into the charges” this means that there is real evidence of voter fraud are simply false. What these investigations really mean is that the Administration may be trying to help Republicans by launching investigations in order to lend credence to the overblown Republican claims of voter fraud. It was this possibility that has prompted the Obama campaign to ask for a special prosecutor to look into the charges that, like the US Attorney scandal, this too is an attempt to use offices of the Federal Government for partisan purposes.

So what does all this mean to the average voter? Simply this, this is a registration fraud case and not a voter fraud case and attempts by the Right to pretend that it is are simply false. So relax, the sky is not actually falling simply because Right Wing Chicken Littles say that it is.