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1 Gerald Reynolds, Letter: Commission Chair Gerald Reynolds to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder regarding ACORN 1 (2009)

handle is hein.civil/usccvg0001 and id is 1 raw text is: UNITED STATES 624 Ninth Street, N.W. COMMISSION ON Washington, D.C. 20425 CIVIL RIGHTS October 9, 2009 The Honorable Eric Holder, Jr. Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Room 1145 Washington, DC 20530 Dear Attorney General Holder: As you are aware, the Commission on Civil Rights investigates, among other things, complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, religion, sex, age, disability and national origin, or by reason of fraudulent practices. Referred to as the conscience of the nation, the Commission and its individual members have historically stood against systematic efforts to corrupt the electoral process and disfranchise qualified voters. A majority of Commissioners share the concerns expressed recently by prominent lawmakers in both the House and Senate, and other worried citizens, regarding the activities of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).' The Senate voted 83-7 last month to cut off ACORN's federal housing funds, while the House voted 345-75 just days later to end all federal funding to the group. State authorities have begun or called for investigations into ACORN's activities in numerous states, including Louisiana, California and New York. The Census Bureau has severed ties with ACORN in connection with all work having to do with the 2010 census. An internal report by the organization itself raises serious questions about the relationships between its nearly 175 affiliates and possible violations of federal law, including potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.2 Of most immediate concern to the Commission, however, is the serious problem of ACORN's role in fostering vote fraud. In November 2008, several commissioners wrote to your predecessor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, urging him to launch a nationwide investigation into ACORN's practices in the face of widespread evidence that it had engaged in filing possibly hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications in some fourteen states-an invidious invitation for corruption in our electoral process. Aside from fraud, ACORN has also been accused of intimidating and misleading citizens about voter registration and soliciting them to commit criminal conduct. Such action could disfranchise legitimate voters by overwhelming state election officials with fraudulent and/or problematic registrations, thereby slowing the process of legitimate voter 1 The decision to send this letter was arrived at in a public, telephonic business meeting of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on October 8, 2009, by unanimous vote of those Commissioners participating (5-0). 2 Stephanie Strom, Acorn Report Raises Issues of Illegality, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 21, 2008), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/us/22acorn.html?_r-1 &ref-us.

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