The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year’s count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States—currently believed to be more than 306 million people.
A U.S. Census “sell sheet,” an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN “play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful,” including by “help[ing] recruit census workers.”
The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort.
But ACORN’s partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization.
“It’s a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it’s not just the lawmakers’ concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country,” Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. “We want an enumeration. We don’t want to have any false numbers.”
ACORN, which claims to be a non-partisan grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, came under fire in 2007 when Washington State filed felony charges against several paid ACORN employees and supervisors for more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations. In March 2008, an ACORN worker in Pennsylvania was sentenced for making 29 phony voter registration forms. The group’s activities were frequently questioned in the 2008 presidential election.
ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson told FOXNews.com that “ACORN as an organization has not been charged with any crime.” He added that fears that the organization will unfairly influence the census are unfounded.
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Westmoreland and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House census subcommittee, said the panel has held hearings to make sure the penalties for census takers committing fraud are clearly defined.
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The U.S. Census Bureau has refuted any suggestions that ACORN or any other groups will fraudulently and unduly influence the results of the census.
“The Census (Bureau) is a nonpartisan, non-political agency and we’re very dedicated to an accurate account,” bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner told FOXNews.com. “We have a lot of quality controls in place to keep any kind of systemic error or fraudulent behavior to affect the counts.”
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But Buckner acknowledged that it is difficult to track an applicant’s political background.
“I have no way of tracking any of that information,” he said. “If somebody comes in to a position with a political agenda and their work exhibits that, there are rules against that,” he said.
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[Editor’s Note: Other AR News stories on ACORN (especially as it relates to voter fraud) are listed here.]
