Fairfax, VA, July 10th, 2009—Americans for Limited Government today called upon its 400,000 members nationwide to support Senator David Vitter’s (R-LA) moves to block the nomination of Robert Groves as Census Bureau Director until Barack Obama responds to the Senator’s request to confirm “in writing that ACORN will in no fashion be involved in gathering data for the 2010 census.”
Vitter’s request to the White House came in a June 25th email. The email also asked that the President confirm “in writing that he will not direct the Census Bureau to use ‘statistical adjustment,’ also called sampling, to determine the numbers for the 2010 census.” To date, Obama has not responded to Vitter’s email. Nor has Groves responded to similar requests from the Senator.
“This President has a long and tawdry track record as ‘ACORN’s Senator,’ to quote Investor’s Business Journal,” said Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government. “Now, with rumors rife that he intends to hand over census-taking to his former cronies at ACORN, Senator Vitter’s questions are not only legitimate, they are vital to the sanctity of the census process.”
“Indeed, the very legitimacy in our democracy hangs in the balance,” Wilson added.
Though the Obama Commerce Department has said it will not directly pay ACORN field operatives to conduct the census, it has maintained that it will officially “partner” with the organization, despite ACORN’s lengthy track record of voter count fraud. The Commerce Department has not commented on whether ACORN “partners” will be reimbursed for such expenses as housing, office rental, per diems, and such.
“This is worse than just having the fox guard the hen house,” Wilson said. “This is tantamount putting the fox in the hen house to deliberately lie about the number of chickens. ACORN is a past master at phony tallies. Letting them anywhere near the census is nothing short of a deliberate attempt to corrupt the entire process.”
ACORN is currently under investigation for committing electoral fraud in 12 states during the most recent election cycle alone, including Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. And it’s the same group whose malfeasance dates back at least to 1998, when its Project Vote contractor was arrested in Arkansas for falsifying 400 voter registration cards.
In King County, Washington, in 2008, elections officials were forced to remove 1,762 voter registrations submitted by ACORN. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, nearly 1,200 fraudulent voter registrations were submitted by ACORN. In Cleveland, Ohio, ACORN registered one voter 77 times. And in Chicago, 10,000 false registrations were submitted.
In 2008, the Obama presidential campaign paid ACORN operatives more than $800,000 to register voters. During Obama’s tenure on the board of Chicago’s Woods Fund, he helped channel more than $190,000 in grants to the group. And when seeking ACORN’s endorsement for his presidential bid, Obama, a former ACORN lawyer, told the organization’s leaders, “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
“Barack Obama knows from firsthand experience that ACORN is little more than a criminal enterprise,” said Wilson. “So, he knows that if they are allowed to take the census, they will falsify head counts just as they have falsified voter registrations.”
Wilson says there is a real danger that ACORN operatives would turn in inflated figures for Democrat-dominated states and congressional districts and deflated figures for Republican-dominated areas. Should that occur, federal revenue-sharing would be skewed, and the redistricting of congressional districts would result in substantial Democratic increases in Congress at the expense of traditionally Republican districts.
“David Vitter is striking a blow for the entire democratic process,” Wilson said. “If Barack Obama is not willing to commit in writing to keeping ACORN out of the census process, the nomination of Robert Groves should be put on permanent hold. And no Census Bureau chief should be approved until the sanctity of that critical organization is protected from Obama’s ruthless, reckless politicization of the process.”
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