ACORN in my side.

A few posts back I opined whether the Ayers 'association' was all that McCain had. It now seems he had this ACORN issue. I use the term 'issue' very loosely.

The Obama campaign has contributed to about $800,000 to groups affiliated with ACORN. The purpose of this money was to fund voter registration drives. Every candidate does such things in order to increase their potential constituency.

ACORN leads a great number of these drives. They hire people to go out and register voters. In many cases, they pay these employees based on the number of completed applications they submit.

What happened here was that a number of people submitted applications with names including the starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys and Disney characters. It is pretty obvious to just about everyone that this was just a case of people padding their numbers so they can make more money. I mean, knowing these people were paid by the form, then it is not too much of a stretch to imagine some people submitted large numbers of bogus forms just to make some extra cash.

Are they gaming the system? Yes. Are they perpetrating a fraud? Yes. Is this a threat to the fabric of democracy? No.

That last question comes from Mr. McCain himself and is comical when you look at the details of this case. In order for this to be a threat to the fabric of democracy, two things would need to happen.

1) There would have to be an intention that these false forms would be used for people to vote more than once.

2) Someone would actually have to show up at the polls and attempt to vote using the names provided on these forms.

Let's have a look at each point.

First, what is the intent. Except for those trying to smear a political opponent, it is obvious that the intent was for a few people to make some extra cash that they did not really earn.

Consider that ACORN is required by law to submit to the board of elections each and every form that someone fills out. This is a good thing. You do not want any group collecting voter registration to make any determination as to whether your form should be submitted. Think about if a McCain canvasser showed up with a registration form. You fill it out and indicate you are a Democrat. It is nice to know that this canvasser is required by law to submit that form and cannot simply discard it based on a bias against Democrats.

So ACORN complied with the law in submitting the forms. In addition, they flagged most of the forms as questionable before they submitted them. It is hard to imply fraud when the person you are accusing makes it clear to you that something is amiss.

Secondly, is someone going to actually try to vote under the names listed on these forms. This is where things get really loony.

In order to actually commit election fraud, someone would have to try to vote using the names on these bogus forms. Even if it had not been flagged by ACORN, the board of elections would most certainly be suspicious of any voter registered under the name 'Mickey Mouse'. As such, this voter would be flagged in the system and would be required at the polling place to provide some proof of their identity. The fraud scheme would therefore have to require that the person posing as Mickey Mouse have a fake picture ID stating their name as Mickey Mouse. This alone would break a rule of any crime. Do not draw attention to yourself.

Mickey Mouse is an extreme example, but even if someone tried to vote using the name of an unknown Dallas Cowboys Offensive Lineman, they would be under scrutiny. The registration would have to have an address so they can confirm you are at the right polling place. This address would have to match what is on your fake ID. For this to work, every form you filled out would need to use a different address in the district. These addresses would have to be valid.

Then comes the question of who would actually vote. Anyone can get a fake ID, but if you show up at the same polling place with 10 or more different IDs, eventually someone will probably recognize you has having already been there. You would have to rotate through different polling places or have a large number of people willing to pose as fake voters. Sure, you could all vote absentee, but absentee ballots are subject to even more scrutiny for exactly this reason.

To pull this off it would have to be a coordinated effort with lots of people and lots of funding. The logistics of such a fraud would be enormous. Not insurmountable and not impossible, but enormous. And the risks of discovery would be very high.

According to Mr. McCain, this fraud is exactly what Obama has been scheming. It is ridiculous and saying that it, 'threatens the very fabric of democracy', just emphasizes the fact that you are trying to make this a larger issue than it is.

And by the way, the fact that this ACORN 'issue' was even made public might be a violation of election law. Federal agencies are required by law to keep such election fraud investigations under wraps until after the election. Making such things public risks affecting the election. But, then this is exactly what McCain wanted.

The Obama campaign has asked for an independent prosecutor to look into whether or not the Bush administration has colluded with the McCain campaign to release news of this investigation in an attempt to influence voters. Such collusion would be a violation of the law.

I am glad to see that Obama is not sitting idly by while McCain throws his mud. I don't want Obama to throw mud, but I do want him to protect his name.