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No problems on LI from group accused of voter fraud

BY MICHAEL AMON | michael.amon@newsday.com

October 13, 2008

ACORN, the anti-poverty group under investigation for voter fraud in several states, has organized voter registration drives on Long Island this year but no allegations of misconduct have been made, officials said yesterday.

Cathy L. Richter Geier, the Republican commissioner of the Suffolk County Board of Elections, said workers with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had dropped off registration forms this year, including 66 last week.

"We have not seen anything out of the ordinary," Geier said.

ACORN's efforts - which the group says have added 1.3 million new voters this year - have been thrust to the center of the presidential election. Republican John McCain released an ad criticizing Democrat Barack Obama's links to ACORN, which has received $800,000 from Obama's campaign to get out the vote. Republican congressional leaders yesterday called for a halt to federal funding of ACORN-affiliated projects.

The group's Las Vegas offices were raided last week by state investigators looking for evidence of fraud. In the Kansas City area, election officials said they discovered nearly 400 registrations from ACORN with problems.

On its Web site, ACORN said it alerted authorities to many of the problem registrations.

ACORN - an umbrella group of dozens of nonprofits that advocate for housing and job programs for the poor, as well as registering voters - has endorsed Obama through its political action committee. The Illinois senator represented the group once, along with other private attorneys, and led a training session of its leaders in the late 1990s.

Ann Sullivan, an ACORN organizer on Long Island, said the group had registered 3,000 new voters in Nassau and Suffolk and no irregularities were found.

"We feel these attacks are politically motivated," Sullivan said

At the center of the controversy is ACORN's use of paid employees to gather registrations. ACORN said it pays its employees by the hour not by how many registrations they garner.

Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the League of Women Voters, which registers voters with volunteers, said: "Paying anybody does raise those questions: Is there an incentive to get people who are not legitimate to be able to vote?"

Richard Schaffer, Suffolk Democratic Party chairman, said: "There's nothing wrong with sending people out and paying them to work to get people involved."