ACORN: Explain this, wingnuts

Josh Marshall has an excellent summation of the ACORN “voter fraud” fauxtrage currently making the rounds of the wingnutosphere. And he point out something the wingnuts won’t discuss:

…[S]omeone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN’s own efforts to catch errors. (It’s important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it’s ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of ‘thousands’ of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

If ACORN is coordinating all this fraud, wingnuts, then why does ACORN turn in those whom it catches submitting fraudulent registrations? Hmmmmmm?

The real reason for this wailing on the right is quite clear:

The essence of McCain's campaign now appears to amount to prepping McCain's base to believe they didn't really lose the election. The election was stolen from them by Barack and his army of gangsters and black street hustlers.

For all their claims that they love democracy, the wingnuts simply aren’t prepared to accept the results of the election if their guy loses. Liars and hypocrites, the lot of them.

UPDATE 10/14/08 8:17 AM EDT: In many states, ACORN is required to turn in all registration forms, even if it suspects they may be fraudulent:

In an October 14 editorial, The Wall Street Journal asserted that Sen. Barack Obama’s “kind of organizers work at Acorn [the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now], the militant advocacy group that is turning up in reports about voter fraud across the country.” The editorial cited as evidence reports that ACORN submitted allegedly false or duplicate voter registration applications this year in Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, Connecticut, and Texas. But the editorial did not note that the statutes of at least nine of those 11 states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they received. In an October 10 press release, ACORN noted that “in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.”

More: Nutty attacks on ACORN

UPDATE 10/14/08 10:03 AM EDT: And still more, from Brad Friedman:

Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can’t authenticate the registration, or it’s incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic (“fraudulent”, “incomplete”, et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you’ve heard about fraud by Acorn, it’s because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that’s been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming “Acorn is committing fraud” know all of the above but don’t bother to share those facts with the media they’ve run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it’s voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

You’ll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That’s true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.

What you won’t hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won’t be voting this November. You needn’t worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead you.

If it quacks like a duck, in this case, it’s likely another Republican Acorn voter fraud lie. They haul it out every two years.

UPDATE 10/14/08 10:14 AM EDT: Ed Brayton has posted a very informative ACORN fact sheet.

UPDATE 10/14/08 12:28 PM EDT: Via Right Wing Watch… The New York Times reported last year that the Bush Justice Department could find no evidence of massive voter fraud:

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.