ACORN Linked to Massive Voter Fraud in New York

As if ACORN didn't have enough headaches lately, now they are linked to massive voter fraud in New York.

Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy, the Times Union has learned.

Working Families Party, you ask? Yes, it is ACORN. The Working Families Party is not about working people or families and it isn’t really a party. The WFP is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN. Bertha Lewis co-chair of the Working Families Party is the Executive Director of New York ACORN. New York ACORN leader, Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national and New York office at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York (1).

Many of the questionable ballots were filed under the names of students and people who live in government-subsidized housing and other downtown areas. Still others were submitted on behalf of voters who were alleged to have signed the ballots earlier this month, but those people have not lived in New York state for at least a year, records show (2).

There may be as many as 50 absentee ballots that were forged, according to people close to the case. Countywide, there were 126 absentee ballots applied for on the Working Families Party line (3).

It’s the classic “pay to play” politics. Candidates like Democrat Bill de Blasio pay the Working Families Party and this shady “consulting firm” which operates from the same address as the WFP and New York ACORN. The city Campaign Finance Board recently said “there are no apparent firewalls between them.” The New York Daily News has called the relationship between candidates endorsed by the WFP and DFS an “election funding scam.”

Queens County Democratic Chairman Clarence Norman went to prison for trading his party endorsement and ballot position in return for political consulting contracts to favored vendors. The Working Families Party endorses candidates willing to pay DFS (4).

But the WFP-DFS scam is even more insidious than that. DFS provides the candidates a discounted rate on their canvassing, staff and get-out-the-vote services – thus allowing the candidate to cheat the public campaign finance system which enforces strict campaign spending limitation (5).

For example, a voter file like the one public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio purchased from Data and Field Services should have cost $40,000. Instead, he paid only $5,000 (6).

But the back-scratching goes both ways. De Blasio and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, both endorsed by the WFP in their respective races, were among the four Council members who steered $85,000 in government grants to another ACORN affiliate, New York Agency for Community Affairs (7).

Supporting articles can be found here and here.
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1. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

2. Lyons, Brendan J. (2009, September 26). "Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant". Times Union.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from Times Union

3. Lyons, Brendan J. (2009, September 26). "Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant". Times Union.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from Times Union

4. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

5. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

6. "Questions for Data and Field" (2009, August 21). The New York Times.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from The New York Times

7. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com