Rift Over Voter Fraud Reopens (ACORN)
by Jonathan Tilove - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

WASHINGTON -- At Wednesday night's presidential debate, Sen. John McCain said the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

At ACORN's New Orleans office Thursday morning, Charles Jackson, a national spokesman for the group that advocates on behalf of lower-income Americans, regarded McCain's apocalyptic warning as preposterous.

ACORN's voter-registration drives are being investigated by several states and now, apparently, by the FBI because a certain percentage of the registration applications were fraudulent, a fact that ACORN said that it, following the letter of the law, brought to the attention of the same investigating authorities.

Three weeks out from the Nov. 4 election, ACORN's registration efforts are at the forefront of the presidential campaign, laying bare once again the deep and abiding fault line between the two parties on the explosive issue of vote fraud.

When Republicans think about vote fraud, they tend to think about efforts to pad the voter rolls and steal elections with fraudulent and multiple ballots. They view Democratic opposition to what they consider sensible measures to tighten ballot access -- like requiring voters to produce a photo ID -- as a self-serving wink-and-a-nod to political corruption.