Posted on 09/29/2009 7:54:19 PM PDT by swheats
LAS VEGAS -- Testimony has begun before a judge hearing allegations that the political advocacy group ACORN illegally paid canvassers to register voters in Nevada during last year's presidential campaign.
The judge will decide after an evidentiary hearing whether to bind the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and former regional supervisor Amy Busefink over for trial on felony charges.
They are accused of paying bonuses to canvassers who turned in at least 21 voter registration cards per day in the summer of 2008. Prosecutors said that violates state law banning voter signup quotas.
Former ACORN organizer Christopher Edwards is expected to be the star witness for the prosecution.
He pleaded guilty last month to two misdemeanors in a plea deal and promised to testify against ACORN and Busefink.
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ACORN Director Pleads Guilty
A high-ranking official at the taxpayer-funded leftist group that conducts fraudulent voter registration drives has pleaded guilty to conspiracy for organizing a scheme that illegally paid workers to register new voters.
As a Nevada field director for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Christopher Edwards paid canvassers—many of them “lazy crack heads”—to register new voters for the 2008 presidential election. He also set illegal quotas of at least 20 voters a day for canvassers to keep their job and offered an additional $5 for registering 21 or more.
ACORN’s shady quota system is illegal in Nevada as well as most states and the Chicago-based community group with strong ties to President Obama faces criminal charges across the nation. As part of Edwards’ guilty plea, he is cooperating with authorities and will testify against several high-ranking ACORN regional officials.
His testimony could strengthen other pending criminal cases against the group and its crooked method of recruiting new voters in low-income, “underserved” communities. For its corrupt 2008 drives alone, ACORN faces criminal charges in Florida, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. In an effort to dismiss the charges in Pennsylvania, the group actually filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the state anti-quota law it violated unconstitutionally interferes with important political activity.
In previous elections, ACORN has been busted for falsifying information to register new voters in numerous other states, including Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado to name a few. In 2007 the group settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State after seven workers were caught submitting about 2,000 fake registration forms.
ACORN’s well documented history of fraud and corruption led to an overdue congressional investigation that determined the community group is a criminal enterprise. A lengthy report recently published by the House Committee on Government Reform reveals that ACORN has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systematic fraud and that the group hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.
I pray that Mr. Edwards is in the Secret Witness program.
Or not. Evil gets it's just reward, regardless of what we humans do.
/johnny
So true. I’m more concerned with the info that can bring the rest of this evil enterprise down.
I’ll update as info comes out.
RICO them!
We should be seeing ACORNS/SEIU thugs doing the perp walk EVERYDAY.
That means Pres Obama will be doing a lot of traveling the globe looking all presidential.
He might as well. Even his ‘RAT pals are telling him to cut down on the TV show appearances. LOL! I think he needs to “retire” and go home to “spend more time with the family.”
ACORN May Face Trial for First Time as Nevada Prosecutors Allege ‘Widespread’ Criminal Policies Fox News By Eric Shawn
LAS VEGAS — When ACORN took to Las Vegas and started playing “Blackjack” and “21,” the activist group was making a far bigger gamble than it ever guessed, according to Nevada prosecutors.
There’s nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but authorities say ACORN was using the names of those casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system.
A preliminary hearing Tuesday in the downtown Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant.
Until now, prosecutions for voter registration fraud have focused on ACORN workers, and authorities have secured guilty pleas from several who admitted to falsifying voter registration forms.
But when investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller’s office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that implicated the ACORN organization itself.
“We came across policy manuals that outline their policy of creating a quota system, which is against the law,” Miller told FOX News in an interview. “This, in fact, was something that was widespread and something the organization itself knew about, and it’s important to hold the organization criminally accountable as opposed to the individual field directors.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557461,00.html
He might as well. Even his ‘RAT pals are telling him to cut down on the TV show appearances. LOL! I think he needs to “retire” and go home to “spend more time with the family.”
++++++++++++
Hear, hear!
Good Site:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968
We need to keep pressure on ACORN/COI and all their affiliated groups and the funding for such.
It’s a shame we have to worry ourselves with all this corruption - but we do.
Not really shady in my opinion, just illegal. Mala prohibita, not an evil in itself. If I were hiring people, this is how I would pay them as I don't know better. ACORN, I am confident, did know better, did know this was illegal and didn't care.
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