ACORN

Posted at 7:3 5 p.m. ET

The strangeness of this election year progresses.  The machinations of ACORN should be major news, but to make it major news means raising questions about the group's relationship with Barack Obama, and there are religious lines that a proper journalist doesn't cross.   You don't want to be shunned by the other parishioners.

Well, there are some journalists who have crossed.  The San Diego Union-Tribune editorializes on ACORN today, and its words are worth examining:

Using corporate, partisan and taxpayer grants, the nonprofit group has spent $35 million this year to register 1.3 million people in 21 states. But it's highly likely that hundreds of thousands of these registrations are bogus. That's because ACORN relies on canvassers who appear to be paid based on how many signatures they get – an invitation to fraud – and because ACORN as an institution appears to collectively think such fraud is tolerable in the name of “social justice.”

ACORN's voter drive in San Diego County – detailed in yesterday's Union-Tribune – is troubling. Nearly 2,000 of the 26,000 forms it turned in were invalid, much higher than the norm. But compared with what ACORN did elsewhere, its San Diego effort was a model of probity. In Ohio, for example, officials say ACORN gets the primary blame in the registration of 200,000 new voters whose forms appear to be bogus.

But remember, it's social justice.  We're all for social justice, aren't we?

Unfortunately, many Democrats depict concern over ACORN as Republican hysteria. They are right that voter fraud has been a tiny problem in recent years. But they ignore a key point: the stunning scale of bogus registrations this time around.

Even if a tiny fraction of these fake voters actually fill out a ballot, they have the potential to tip the presidential vote in battleground states – such as Ohio. Or Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina or Wisconsin – all swing states where ACORN has been active.

And then there is the fundamental principle - that the ballot is sacred, and that sanctity must be protected, no matter what polling statistics in a state show.  We don't want to become a third-world country.  Or do we?  Or do some of us?

If we have another very close race, the subsequent court fight could make Florida 2000 seem like a polite tiff.

So, please, spare us the “social justice” rhetoric. What ACORN has done isn't noble. It's reprehensible. We hope that the FBI's investigation into the group is vigorous and thorough.

The problem is, investigations take time.  The FBI is part of the Justice Department, and operates under the attorney-general.  The new attorney-general will probably be chosen by President-elect Obama.  How enthusiastic do you think he or she will be about probing ACORN? 

Watch for the "investigation" to fade away, or be dragged out to the point where no one cares.  Oh, if there is a report, you'll read it on page 56 of The New York Times, right below the closeouts at Fred's Camera and Electronics.

October 19, 2008.