ACORN Scandal VS Vote Suppression

"Experts who have examined the allegations against ACORN have concluded that there is no significant threat of voter fraud."-CNN

From what I understand, the ACORN scandal was a voter's fraud. In the Wall Street Journal it stated "If voter fraud would ever be ripe for investigation, this would seem to be the year with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) having been caught filing thousands of bogus voter registrations in at least 14 states." First off, what is ACORN? ACORN is a community organization of low and middle class families who work together to build a stronger community and gain social freedom.

The difference between the ACORN scandal and voter suppression is that the ACORN scandal is a voter fraud scandal and voter suppression is when people try to make it very difficult or nearly impossible for some people to vote.

The ACORN scandal was made out to be more of a scandal then it actually was. ACORN actually did nothing wrong. What the big hype was about was how ACORN submitted voter registrations that were for people who did not have their license to show to allow them to vote, so no information saying they can vote or they submitted forms with fictitious people on them. So why did ACORN submit the fake registration forms? From a editorial on the Washington post it says: "ACORN did flag some cards as questionable, but by law even those had to be turned in _ only the board can reject them." So by law, ACORN did nothing wrong and the "scandal" had more attention then it deserved.

Unlike the ACORN controversy, vote suppression is a real issue that should be discussed more so. Vote suppression is when people try to keep other people in certain areas from voting at all. Ways people achieve this is a variety of ways, they can prey on college students, inner city people, and even minority groups. An article I found on vote suppression talks about the ways people legally try to keep minority groups from voting. A piece of the text states: "They include letter-writing challenges, residence and citizenship challenges of non-native born Latino voters, and reliance on a provision in the Help America Vote Act on provisional ballots. Worst of all, these tactics are all perfectly legal." Because these people are not born here and may have not lived in the states as long as a native has it may be harder and discourage them to vote.

In one of the articles I read it stated that the government needs to be more worried about vote suppression more so then the ACORN scandal that is said to be a "myth" by McCain.

On the Acorn site here is what they had to say about voter suppression:
"ACORN recently worked to stop Republican voter suppression tactics in New Mexico and Michigan." From this statement it means that the ACORN association wanted to make it easier for people to vote and make it an equal opportunity activity. I think that is a good thing because I think everyone who lives in the US legally should be able to have a say in what and who runs this country.

CNN-ACORN
ACORN site
Video about ACORN
Voter Suppression Incidents 2008
Washington Post ACORN
Legal Vote Suppression Article