ACORN...

...and I don't mean the kind falling from the trees to be hoarded by squirrels - I'm referring to the community organization called ACORN, which has been getting a lot of play in the news lately thanks to hysterical cries of voter fraud from Republicans, Fox News, and the McCain campaign. I touched on the ACORN controversy the other night during the debate, and I think it's worth bringing up again because this scandal is being blown up into something much bigger than it actually is.

Here's the story: ACORN, a liberal community organizing group, has been using paid canvassers to register new voters in predominantly poor areas. Several canvassers padded their registrations with phony forms, filled out with names like Mickey Mouse. ACORN, by law apparently, has to turn in all voter registration forms, and as such, these phony registrations were turned in to state governments. But ACORN itself alerted state officials to the problem voter registration forms, which doesn't sound like the actions of an organization seeking to perpetrate, as Senator McCain put it in the debate Wednesday night, "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." I don't know - if it were me trying to perpetrate voter fraud so I could destroy the fabric of democracy, I wouldn't call attention to myself - I'd be a lot more shadowy and sneaky, and tell my associates not to try and register Mickey Mouse to vote, because even if someone shows up a the polls wearing mouse ears - it's going to be pretty obvious that it's not actually Mickey Mouse, because Mickey Mouse is not real. You heard it here first, folks.

Even John McCain knows this is ridiculous, and he joked about it at the Al Smith Dinner last night in New York: "In case you haven't been following my opponent's get out the vote campaign, ACORN is helping to register groups previously excluded, overlooked and underserved -- second graders, the deceased, Disney characters. In Florida, they even turned up an ACORN registration form that bore the name of one Mickey Mouse. We're checking the paw prints.Although, I might let that one go, I'm pretty sure the big rat's a Republican." Comedy works best when there's some truth behind it.

There's a larger story here, I think, which is that the Republicans and the McCain campaign are trying to set the table for legal challenges in battleground states they're worried about losing to Obama and the Democrats.

More on this here and here and here. Worth reading.

-EB