8 Plead to Election Fraud in St. Louis

[ben_meyers]

Source: USA Today

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Federal prosecutors say eight workers for a get-out-the-vote effort in St. Louis city and county have pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election.
U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway says Wednesday that eight former temporary workers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now admitted submitting cards with false addresses and names, as well as forged signatures.

ACORN has said the workers likely turned in the false applications to try to increase their wages.

Prosecutors say 21-year-old Kenneth Williams was sentenced in March to 15 months in prison. The others face fines and up to five years in prison at their June sentencing hearings.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-02-mo-election-fraud_N.htm?csp=34

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Cleaning up the elections?

[seriousstan]

1. ACORN guilty of election fraud???? No shit!!! ACORN should be baned from any election activity.

[armodem08]

2. I do not condone this behavior, however...

Notice that nowhere do they allege that these registrations were used to actually vote. That would certainly be much worse. The U.S. Attorney's scandal has unfortunately made me suspicious of every indictment that they bring, especially in election related cases. That was a central part of the Rovian strategy, prosecute massive amounts of voter-fraud cases to make it appear that such fraud was a serious problem, thus justifying repressive measures such as picture ID laws or Republican operatives challenging voters' ballots at polling places

A very similar thing happens with paid signature gatherers who are paid per signature. People who conduct petition drives that require massive amounts of signatures routinely require these gatherers to get more signatures than needed, because some are inevitably going to be faked to make more money.

edit: spelling