“In my opinion, it is now becoming racketeering,” is how I described the voter registration fraud activities of ACORN, the liberal group, Barack Hussein Obama’s former client and current voter registration vendor, to a Christian Science Monitor reporter over the weekend.   “That we see it now involving a multitude of states and a multitude of voters, I think at some level ACORN is becoming a criminal enterprise in its engagement of voter registration activities.”  See http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/10/19/are-voter-fraud-fears-overblown/

     And there is plenty of proof that ACORN is mucking up the election to create more votes for Obama, even if they are going to be illegal votes.  ACORN’s office in Las Vegas, Nevada (a swing state) was raided by government investigators last week.   Claims are pending in 12 states about illegal voter registration activities, including registering one man 72 times who definitely lives in an Obama-leaning precinct.

    And in the process of his investigation, Christian Science Monitor reporter Ben Almondy learned something new about ACORN: that despite its claims of being a "nonprofit" on its website, that ACORN is actually not "tax-exempt" and can’t produce a so-called "IRS tax determination letter" from the IRS.   The implications?   Tax determination letters are generally required by Foundations and the U.S. Government for grant-giving.  And none of the public interest laws that require nonprofits to be transparent, disclose finances, salaries, activities, or pay commercially reasonable salaries apply to ACORN.   They really aren’t a nonprofit, they are a business, and must file federal corporate tax returns (IRS Form 1120) not nonprofit returns (Form 990). 

     This of course caused liberal election law lawyers I interface with to have a holy cow.  One of them, Paul Lehto, wrote it was "common" for nonprofits to not be tax exempt.  That is just not true, it is not common, rather, it is uncommon.   The whole point of being a nonprofit is to gain tax exemption so that the benefits of nonprofit status, such as tax-exemption, nonprofit postage rights, waiver of property taxes, deductibility of contributions, might apply.  To say it is "common" for ACORN to be a "nonprofit" but at the same time not tax exempt is to say that "black" is "white."   The reality is the ACORN’s legal status is as a business, not a public interest group.

     Other liberal election lawyers are writing that it doesn’t matter that ACORN is not tax exempt, because it has tax exempt subsidiaries to work through.  I can understand that, but I come back to the point that ACORN continues to claim they are nonprofit on their website, and the reality is, they are not, and there is no law the public can rely on to find out what ACORN top staff pay themselves through their network of subsidiaries funneling money back to ACORN, and whether those salaries are commercially reasonable, and whether the basic activities of ACORN are fair and impartial.

     But the biggest news the liberal election lawyers are rejoicing in today is Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s inspiration for the indictment and arrest of Mark Jacoby over the weekend, a voter registration and petition gatherer, for listing a "false" residence on his personal registration form, in order to qualify to circulate petitions and voter registration in California.  

     Jacoby collects registrations of Republicans.  California has a law that states that a person who does that work must be a registered voter here.   That law is unconstitutional.   According to Fred Woocher, an election lawyer who helps mainly Democrats, a California residency law to circulate petitions has already been struck down as unconstitutional in a lawsuit he brought last year, at least insofar as it required residency in a local jurisdiction in order to circulate a local petition.  For state petitions, one only needs to be a resident anywhere in the state, however, there exists other Federal case law that strongly suggests that such residency requirements are an infringement of the fundamental constitutional right to petition government.  That right exists whether or not a person is being compensated for circulating petitions.

     Thus, there is no comparison at all in the ACORN voter fraud activities and Mr. Jacoby’s attempt to qualify himself to circulate petitions and registration materials in California.   What ACORN has been accused of is real fraud.  What Jacoby is doing is exercising a constitutional right.

     And what Debra Bowen is doing is grandstanding.  Bowen proudly displays her endorsement by ACORN -PAC on her Sacramento office wall.   There is no mistake in why she wants to prosecute poor Mr. Jacoby: to take the wind out of the voter fraud allegations against her buddies at ACORN and their funders in the Obama campaign.

     As the facts develop the sad arrest of Jacoby is going to shown to be a horrible abuse of process by Bowen and her staff.  This poor guy in Ontario, Ca simply registers to comply with an unconstitutional predicate to circulate petitions and registration materials, and he ends up indicted secretly by a grand jury and arrested by 9 police officers.  And Bowen’s staff was on the "crime scene."   One would think those 9 police officers would have better things to do on a Saturday night in Ontario.

     Yes, there are reports of some problems in the voter registration program Jacoby was associated with.   That happens on all sides in an election year.  But the fundamental case against Jacoby is only about one thing: whether he needs to be registered to vote in California to circulate petitions.  A criminal indictment on resolving that issue is unheard of and unwarranted.

     The Jacoby case remains just one registration issue for now, and I believe it can be constitutionally justified.  In the meantime, the Ohio Secretary of State refuses to aggressively pursue 200,000 registration mismatches, ACORN is being chased by regulators in 12 states, and Bowen refuses to pursue real cases here in California.

     The California Republican Party has weighed in on this situation, and they have a lot to say:

      "Why hasn’t Bowen hasn’t gone public condemning ACORN for the reported problems in San Diego discovered by San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, a respected election official?  Perhaps because Bowen recently lost a lawsuit filed by Seiler in which the appellate court said Bowen had abused her authority and violated the law? (County of San Diego v. Bowen MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "dl1.activatedirect.com" claiming to be http://www.morelaw.com/verdicts/case.asp?n=D052744&s=CA&d=37032)"

     "Why Has Debra Bowen’s Office Engaged In Voter Registration Suppression?
(MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "dl1.activatedirect.com" claiming to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsoDTphC5qA)"

     "Why hasn’t Bowen Condemned Thug Like Tactics By Those On The Left?
(MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "dl1.activatedirect.com" claiming to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M9dBoavIYc)"

     Bowen’s action here on poor Mr. Jacoby, his life now near ruin by a political prosecution, will be seen for the politics it is, and shame on those who would wreck this poor guy’s life with a politically inspired criminal perjury indictment that is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a garden snail.

 

    

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.