Connecticut Local Politics

I’ve updated this post because I got lazy and read a few things into the interview that I shouldn’t have. I’ve tried to give it a more balanced treatment here. –GC

The Bridgeport Republican registrar of voters, Joseph Borges, is accusing ACORN of voter fraud, according to a site called Election Journal.

Joe informs us that of the more than 5,000 registrations submitted by ACORN staff this summer, more than 20% have been fraudulent or duplicate. The Registrar’s office has not had time to fully investigate, however, [the office?] has been contacted by voters who have denied filling out the card (read: forged).

Here’s ElectionJournal.org’s interview with Joe Borges:

ACORN, who had been having similar fraud problems in other states who have had volunteers accused of fraud in other states.

Update – So what does this actually mean? Where is the fraud? It’s hard to tell, because the registrar here is not all that clear. How many were duplicates? How many were actually fraudulent, and filled out without the person’s knowledge?

And how did that impact the primary, if at all? There seems to be no evidence of anything underhanded going on here, like dead people voting, or people voting twice, or anything like that. It may have just been a volunteer (or volunteers) who went a little too far. The Secretary of the State has been notified of this, however, and I expect things will become more clear.

One thing that seems to be clear is that the author of ElectionJournal seems to have something of a beef with ACORN. Republicans have been stepping up efforts to identify fraudulent or duplicate registrations as voter registrations surge ahead of the 2008 elections, and ACORN and other nonprofits have been at the center of that. There have been cases in several different states of problematic registration cards. However, ACORN does have it’s own fraud control programs in place, and they have been successful in the past at catching problems. Not mentioned here is whether the registrar in Bridgeport was the one to catch problems, or ACORN.

ACORN is a community organization with 350,000 members, and chapters in over 100 cities across the country.