from TomPaine.com:
Out to Get ACORN
John Atlas
June 11, 2007
John Atlas is co-author of Saving Affordable Housing, and is currently writing a book on politics, democracy and poverty through the lens of ACORN. He was formerly executive director of the nationally-recognized Passaic County Legal Aid Society.If you think it's safe to do your civic duty in George Bush's America, ask Matt Henderson. Henderson, the head organizer for ACORN in New Mexico, believed his grassroots group's effort to register poor, minority voters was a time-honored way of bringing disenfranchised people into the American democratic process. It almost got him indicted in October 2004, when it put him squarely in the crosshairs of a protracted fight between the Republican Party and ACORN over voting rights. It's a struggle that is likely to continue into the 2008 election.
ACORN, a little known, but very successful national grass-roots anti-poverty organization, came under White House fire after registering more than 1.6 million voters in the past two national elections: mostly poor and minority people who tend to vote Democratic, and mostly in swing states. Republican operatives went after ACORN hard, with a media smear campaign, trumped-up lawsuits in Florida, New Mexico, and Ohio, and pressure on state law-enforcement officials to file criminal charges against the group. Days before the 2006 election, a U.S. attorney in Kansas City brought a voter-fraud indictment against four people registering voters for ACORN, spurring a congressional investigation led by Iowa's Republican Senator Charles Grassley.
The GOP voter-fraud vendetta might have remained exactly where Bush loyalists wanted it—below the radar of the press—had it not been for the scandal surrounding the firing of eight U. S. attorneys, including David C. Iglesias of New Mexico. Iglesias lost his job in December 2005 after he declined to prosecute a voter-fraud case against ACORN, which had been registering large numbers of voters in the state's low-income and largely minority neighborhoods in 2004. Prominent New Mexico Republicans, including U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, had repeatedly complained to chief White House political strategist Karl Rove about Iglesias' failure to bring voter-fraud indictments. Once Iglesias said he couldn't prove a case against ACORN, his days were numbered.
ACORN became a target because of its successful voter-registration work. As the 2004 election approached, then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft launched a broad initiative to crack down on supposed voter fraud in battleground states, including Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and New Mexico, where ACORN was making headway registering voters. In all of those states, Republicans filed suits against ACORN for voter fraud, and, in every case, ACORN was exonerated.
Nevertheless, conservative media continued to smear the group. In October of 2004, right-wing news outlets pounced on a story about the organization mishandling voter forms and, according to Rush Limbaugh, "trying to register voters two and three times." Two years later, after the 2006 election, the Wall Street Journal promoted claims that ACORN was under scrutiny for election irregularities with one headline blaring, “A union-backed outfit faces charges of election fraud.” An editorial included an allegation-that ACORN gave cocaine to a worker in exchange for fraudulent registrations-that was a complete fabrication. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/06/11/out_to_get_acorn.php 
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