ACORN hits registration record but it wonders what could have been?
Officials say there was a lag in voter registration forms
New Mexico's ACORN voter registration drive has netted more than 65,000 new voter applications already this year, and its field director wonders how many more they could have registered had it been supplied with more official state applications.
Mouath Baesho, field director for ACORN in New Mexico, said there was more than a month lag in getting blank applications to the office from the Bernalillo County Bureau of Elections. But, he said, he was told it was not the county's fault.
The state is responsible for the printing of the applications, and Baesho was told by an elections bureau official that there was a printing issue and the state had basically run out of applications. Bernalillo County spokeswoman Liz Hamm said the county was without applications for a few weeks, but has plenty of applications now. She said ACORN and other voter registration groups have had big drives since this is a presidential election year, but she doesn't think the shortage has resulted in any potential voters being turned away to apply.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Mary Herrera dismissed the notion that the state hadn't ordered enough applications.
Still that doesn't explain why Bernalillo County ran out of applications. One reason may have been ACORN's fierce push in Bernalillo County, especially to register new voters for the upcoming election. In addition to the more than 10,000 new applications in Bernalillo County, the organization also has registered record numbers of voters in rural communities, especially in Southern New Mexico, said Baesho.
The application shortage was challenging because ACORN employees and volunteers had to use the federal voter registration application, he said. That is just a black-and-white sheet of paper with blanks for applicants to fill in their Social Security numbers and other personal information, which is required by law to register to vote. State forms are printed on a thicker card stock, and once information is taken, applicants receive a tear-off tab to keep as verification that their application was taken.
"We are opening a Santa Fe office for the big push before the election," Baesho said. "It's our hope to continue to provide help to anyone who wants to register to vote. We think our contribution to registering and Get Out the Vote campaigns is going to make a significant impact in this election."
Mathew Henderson, ACORN executive director, said the agency has made several improvements to its voter drive since 2004 in areas of accountability and the safety of personal information that is required on New Mexico's applications. In 2004, an ACORN employee, Christina Gonzales, registered a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old boy to vote in Albuquerque. Also, completed and fraudulent forms were found in an Albuquerque home during a police drug bust at the home of a foreign national who worked for ACORN.
More recently, a New Mexico Independent story reported that ACORN's efforts in Doña Ana County were not without criticism.
ACORN officials said that their organization was unfairly targeted and that their employees are trained. Because ACORN is one of the largest voter registration organizations, sometimes all the criticism is pointed at its operations, they said.
ACORN has responded by implementing an extensive quality control process, organization officials say. Registrars, who are notarized by the Bureau of Elections to conduct voter registration, have their application serial numbers recorded and when they are turned in they are accounted for. Then, ACORN staff calls to verify information on the application. If information is missing or incorrect, the application is marked as such and sent to the Bureau of Elections for further review.
Because New Mexico is one of only a few states that requires all applications to be turned in within 48 hours of being collected, the staff at ACORN doesn't have much time to verify. But that doesn't stop them from trying, organization officials said. A field office on West Central handles all verification. But there are no applications just sitting around for days, Baesho said. Also, all employees -- ACORN has 600 paid employees during an election year and about 100 volunteers -- are trained before they are handed any applications.
Henderson said criticism that ACORN employees are nothing but hired guns who don't understand the political process is unfair.
Warner Traynham, an ACORN canvasser, said he's taking a break from job as a mortgage broker to help in this election. He said the training provided to him before he began working for ACORN was comprehensive.
"By the time we start registering, we are able to tell people how important it is to be registered and how important it is to go to the polls on Election Day," he said. "I don't feel like I'm just out here to earn an hourly wage. I feel like I'm making a difference, and that's how I think a lot of us feel about doing what we do."
The total far surpasses the 35,540 voter applications ACORN collected in 2004, and it marks ACORN's largest in the state's history, said Henderson.
This year's ACORN drive targeted primarily minority voters in Bernalillo, Doña Ana, Santa Fe, Sandoval and Valencia counties. Most of those new voters, however, came from Bernalillo County, said Henderson.
"These numbers of new voters will undoubtedly make a significant impact on the November elections," Henderson said. "We've studied our numbers over the years and found that about 65 percent of people who ACORN registered in the 2004 elections cast ballots that year."
To get thousands of new voters, ACORN's strategy was to focus on primarily urban areas in the targeted counties. Most canvassers are from the communities ACORN is targeting, including from the South Valley, Westgate and the Southeast Heights.
"We are interested in getting those who have been most disenfranchised from the political process," Henderson said.
Still ACORN has been widely criticized, especially by Republicans who are examining the voter registration surges in several states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law recently that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud, according to this Wall Street Journal article.
Despite the scrutiny, election officials in many states say there is no evidence of widespread fraud. Numerous studies have found fraud and other voting irregularities in past elections to be infrequent and generally not prevalent enough to influence the outcomes of most contests. Some Republican lawyers say that despite the huge numbers of new registrations in some areas, this year's problems could be fewer compared to prior years, because of improved procedures and tougher rules.
The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama has begun its own voter legal defense operation, which is much earlier than those of previous Democratic campaigns. The campaign has legal counsel on the ground in 50 states. The campaign is working closely with the Democratic Party, which said it has spent three years building a voter-protection program that includes more than 18 paid staff and 7,000 lawyers.
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