GOP warns against registering to vote with ACORN

The state Republican Party is cautioning against registering to vote with workers employed by ACORN.

“Voters who would like to register to vote would be better served by contacting their county or state Republican or Democratic parties or their county clerk,” Adam Feldman, the state GOP executive director, said in a news release.

The GOP joins the Doña Ana County Bureau of Elections in expressing concern about the non-profit group, which has had two problems in the county in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the county warned that it had received complaints about misleading voter-registration activities by ACORN employees, a charge ACORN denied. And about a week ago, 90 completed voter-registration applications were stolen from ACORN’s Las Cruces office.

This year, the group has registered more than 33,000 voters statewide, including 7,000 in Doña Ana County.

Feldman said registering with a group “that has such a controversial track record of illegal registration activity is simply not a form of registration in which New Mexico voters can have confidence.” ACORN has defended its work and pointed to an article that attempts to debunk allegations against the group.

But the controversies have been frequent. In 2004, an ACORN employee registered two teenage boys to vote in Albuquerque, and the leader of ACORN in New Mexico, Matthew Henderson, pleaded the fifth when asked about the group’s handling of voter-registration forms, according to the GOP release.

In addition, the release stated, completed and fraudulent forms were found in an Albuquerque home during a police drug-bust at the home of a foreign national who worked for ACORN that year. And an Albuquerque Republican who registered to vote with ACORN that year wasn’t on the voter list when she tried to vote.

All claims made in the GOP release were backed up with citations from articles published in the Albuquerque Journal and Tribune.

The group has also had problems across the nation. In 2006, a former ACORN worker in Missouri said he was fired because, in addition to registering voters, he would not knock on doors for a Democratic senatorial candidate, according to the state GOP. And last year felony charges were filed against seven employees and supervisors of ACORN in the state of Washington. Three pleaded guilty to fraudulently filling out 1,800 voter registration forms in 2006.

In urging people to register to vote through their county clerk’s office or the major parties, the GOP provided links to a listing of county clerks’ offices, the state GOP Web site and the state Democratic Party Web site.