Doubting Democracy (Part 4 of 8)

The 2008 ACORN Scandal helped give legs to the right's voter fraud narratives (and to the rise of "right-wing provocateurs").

Click on the below links to view the other parts of this series:

• Doubting Democracy 1: Introduction & the Prelude to 2000

• Doubting Democracy 2: The 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

• Doubting Democracy 3: The 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio

• Doubting Democracy 4: The 2008 ACORN Scandal

• Doubting Democracy 5: The 2008 Minnesota Senate Election & the Post-2012 Narratives

• Doubting Democracy 6: The 2016 Presidential Election Narratives

• Doubting Democracy 7: The 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Election (and 2020)

5. THE 2008 ACORN SCANDAL

The 2008 ACORN scandal was in many ways a watershed moment for the rise of the voter fraud narratives on the right, particularly because ACORN had some loose connections to Barack Obama (see the linked article if you want the details on that). Now, this is not to say that right-wing voter fraud narratives suddenly materialized for the first time in 2008. Throughout the 2000s there had been many accusations of voter fraud; which had led many Republican-controlled states to pass voter identification laws; which had led many Democrats to staunchly oppose such laws. This, I think, resulted in feeding both sides’ paranoias. For Republicans: Why would Democrats oppose perfectly reasonable voter identification laws (which have always been supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle) unless they really did want to commit voter fraud? For Democrats: Why would Republicans predicate these voter identification laws on easily disproved notions of rampant voter fraud unless they had ulterior motives in mind?¹

The George W. Bush administration was also responsible for pushing the voter fraud narratives and had tasked their Justice Department to seek out and prosecute voter fraud shortly after the 2000 election.² There were even accusations that their department fired some attorneys because they were not “aggressive” enough in finding voter fraud cases to prosecute (an accusation I myself can neither confirm nor deny). Ultimately, the Bush administration’s Justice Department came away with only 120 persons charged and 86 convicted for voter fraud, and all instances appear to have been individual acts — no coordinated voter fraud conspiracies were ever uncovered.

For context on this ACORN scandal, I think it’s important to remember that when Obama first came to office, the Republicans were at about the lowest point that they could possibly find themselves in. The 2006 midterms were a landslide for Democrats, mainly because the Iraq War had become universally accepted as an unmitigated disaster by that point, in a way that it had not yet been during the 2004 election. In 2008, the Democrats held onto the House; got a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate; and took the White House with a charismatic, progressive black guy who had a foreign, Muslim father (and who conservative media was increasingly portraying as an “undercover communist”). In the shadow of the Republicans’ across-the-board defeat, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression just as Bush was walking out the door — conservatives were in full-on panic mode. This spurred a type of “Obama Derangement Syndrome” on the right that I will admit I did not take seriously at the time, but it soon led to the rise of the Tea Party movement which completely changed the political landscape.³

ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) described itself as “non-profit, non-partisan, social justice organization” — although anyone who follows politics knows that if you describe yourself as a “social justice organization” then you are probably on the left. ACORN was founded in 1970 by “disillusioned antiwar activist” Wade Raethke who “based his work on accepted community organizing principles laid out by Saul Alinsky.” Obama had also said he was inspired by Saul Alinsky to become a community organizer in Chicago, and right-wing pundits became obsessed at the time with talking about the connections between Saul Alinsky and Obama in order to portray him as an extremist.⁴

Hillary Clinton was also linked to Saul Alinsky in 2016, because she had interviewed Alinsky when she wrote a college thesis about his work. During a Republican primary debate in 2016, I remember Ben Carson accusing Hillary Clinton of being someone who “has, as their role model, somebody who acknowledges Lucifer” (a reference to a tongue-in-cheek section of Saul Alinsky’s book Rules For Radicals). The ‘Saul Alinsky connection’ to Clinton and Obama was frequently used as evidence that both were secretly far-left radicals (a claim that any real far-left radical would scoff at), despite the fact that Alinsky was not even committed to far-left politics himself. He was apprehensive of big government, did not like the abundance of welfare programs in LBJ’s War On Poverty, and even had concerns about the 1964 Civil Rights Act.⁵

It’s important to realize that the 2008 ACORN scandal did not lead to any actual voter fraud, it just resulted in massive numbers of fraudulent voter registrations. I think this is a key point, because in nearly all the cases of “voter fraud” that I have heard conservatives bring up over the years — over and over, when I dig into their claims it inevitably turns out that they are actually talking about voter registration fraud, not any actual fraudulent votes. For years, Republicans and right-wing commentators have encouraged their constituents to conflate the two as being the same thing. This may be because they truly don’t understand the difference; or it may be because they see the bad registrations as an inevitable first-step toward actual voter fraud; or it may be that they are just purposely misleading their audiences.

What happened in 2008 was that ACORN had been recruited to do voter registration drives, and a significant number of the forms ACORN’s employees turned in had completely made-up information on them. Some of the more notorious examples of fake names included “Mickey Mouse,” “Jimmy Johns,” and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. This understandably set off massive alarm bells among Republicans. However, these low-level workers were just doing this in order to meet their quotas. ACORN required them to hit a certain number of registrations during their shift and many complained that the demand was too high — although it is also possible that (in the words of Factcheck.org) that they were also just “trying to get paid by ACORN for doing no work.” Still, the fact that this problem occurred at such a large scale, and in numerous states, would indicate that ACORN was not blameless in causing this scandal to become such a shit-show.

In truth, these ACORN employees could not have committed voter fraud even if they wanted to, since the forms they submitted were promptly rejected by state offices for being inaccurate. In fact, many of the bad forms were flagged by ACORN itself as being suspect, but ACORN claimed they were often required by law to turn the forms into the state for review anyway. Regardless, this incident became a huge rallying cry for people on the right who saw this as proof that the Democrats had schemes to commit massive voter fraud in the upcoming 2008 election. And I lament to say that the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain (who I am otherwise fond of), absolutely fanned the flames of these narratives — even as he promptly put down other baseless attacks against Obama by his own supporters. A McCain campaign ad specifically mislabeled ACORN’s wrongdoings as massive “nationwide voter fraud,” and during the final debate McCain stated that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

There were also other scandals that plagued ACORN around this time. Earlier in 2008, founder Wade Rathke had to fire his brother, Dale, after it came out that Dale had embezzled almost $1 million of the organization’s funds back in 2000. Wade had covered it up and hid the embezzlement from the organization’s board members (although he did pay the money back before anyone noticed), and he even kept his brother on the payroll until he was forced to fire him when the story went public.

Then in 2009, the founder of the notorious Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, put out a hidden-camera video that purported to show ACORN employees “offering advice to O'Keefe and [his partner Hannah] Giles on how to skirt tax laws and avoid detection by authorities while operating a brothel.” The uproar caused by the video was enough to get ACORN’s federal funding cut, and it eventually led to the downfall of the organization entirely. It also introduced a new phenomenon into American politics: the rise of “right-wing provocateur.” And the irony was that these “right-wing provocateurs” seemed to adhere far more to the radical principles of Saul Alinsky than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ever did.⁶

The left-wing narrative about ACORN’s downfall was that the whole thing was much ado about nothing, and that the group had been unfairly driven out of business by a right-wing witch hunt. They claimed that James O’Keefe had turned out to be a liar and a charlatan who doctored the footage to mislead people. Indeed, Project Veritas is not known for anything close to journalistic integrity and many of Project Veritas’ “sting operations” have blown up in their faces before. Earlier this year, a lawsuit settled by O’Keefe forced him to admit that Project Veritas had no evidence to back up its claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election; and in another ironic twist to the story, James O’Keefe was driven out of his own organization in 2023 just as he drove ACORN out of business in 2009. He was accused by his staff of becoming “a power-drunk tyrant” that “is exactly who he pontificates on who we should be exposing.” His behavior, coupled with accusations of his misuse of the organization’s funds, led to CEO Hannah Giles (his co-star in the 2009 ACORN videos) to force him to resign.

I won’t attempt to testify too forcefully on who was more right in regards to the characterization of the 2009 ACORN videos specifically, since I don’t have the stamina to watch all the videos and scrutinize their editing and content closely. As far as I know, Project Veritas does not release the full, unedited footage from their any of their “stings” anyway. I did watch some of the footage, and I will admit that ACORN certainly does not come out looking good in it. So, I personally will not be shedding any tears for the downfall of ACORN — any more than I will be shedding tears for the downfall of James O’Keefe. At the very least, those 2009 ACORN videos did display a profound level of incompetence at the organization. However, I would also argue that the championing of Project Veritas by conservatives — to include Donald Trump himself — has displayed a profound lack of judgment on their part as well.

1. I will note that Democrats have argued that these laws were often implemented (in some states) in ways that they felt unfairly targeted Democratic constituencies. I’m not sure how true that actually is (as I have not dissected each individual state’s thoroughly), but I do remember that in my state of Texas, Democrats were upset that they allowed handgun licenses to be a legitimate form of identification for voting but not college IDs. However, I also remember hearing that the reason Republicans opposed college IDs was because university students without a valid state ID can still be registered in their home state and it’s harder to catch “two-state voters.” Personally, I think it would be better to not get lost in the weeds and just require a state ID or driver's license for all voters (as long as the state also provides assistance for those who have trouble obtaining one). I personally think the biggest disservice Democrats did to themselves on this issue was their early and forceful opposition to voter ID laws.

2. Despite the fact that he stood tall in opposing the accusations of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election, Karl Rove was far more comfortable with such narratives during the Bush-43 administration. On April 7, 2006, Rove gave a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association where he said, “We are, in some parts of the country, I’m afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.” Later during the Q&A session, Rove was asked a question that opened with, “The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud.” Rove did not push back on this statement but instead said, “But yes, this is a real problem. What is it — five wards in the city of Milwaukee have more voters than adults? … I do not believe that 100 percent of the living adults in this city of Philadelphia are registered, which is what election statistics would lead you to believe. I mean, there are parts of Texas where we haven’t been able to pull that thing off. And we’ve been after it for a great many years. So I mean, this is a growing problem.”

3. The “TEA” in the Tea Party was said to stand for “Taxed Enough Already.” Today, the Tea Party often gets credited with starting the populist movement that ultimately led to Trump, but compared to Trump’s vision of the Republican Party, it had a very different set of goals in mind. The BBC article described it as having “three central tenets: fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets” — all of which sound very, very out of sync with the Republican Party now controlled by Donald Trump. However, the Tea Party does sound more like modern-day Republicans when its other “defining characteristics” are described as “vociferous anger at Congress and the White House” and a deep “mistrust of politicians, government and the media.” It’s fair to say that that part of the movement has held strong.

4. I recently heard Jonah Goldberg (who I am a fan of) in an interview admit that he was one of the conservative commentators who helped pioneer the ‘Obama-Alinsky connection’ as a talking point among the right (Goldberg is now ostracized from the right for remaining committed to his conservative principles and not embracing Trump’s Republican Party). When asked if he regrets comparing people like Clinton and Obama with the “radicals” he hesitatingly said that he would probably rethink many of his arguments if he had to rewrite them today, but he also openly admitted that back in those days, “I was a partisan.” It reminded me of watching old clips of Ezra Klein (who I am equally a fan of) from the 2000s and realizing that he too had an earlier time when he was not the measured (but still committed) progressive I know today — but was himself very much a partisan for the left.

5. Nicholas von Hoffman was a friend and biographer of Saul Alinsky who wrote in his book Radical: “Although Alinsky is described as some kind of liberal left-winger in actuality big government worried him. He had no use for President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society with its War on Poverty. He used to say that if Washington was going to spend that kind of dough the government might as well station people on the ghetto street corners and hand out hundred-dollar bills to the passing pedestrians. For him governmental action was the last resort, not the ideal one. He felt that when the government, via one or another of its poverty programs, put the smartest and most energetic on its payroll it made an independent civic life next to impossible. He would point out that it opened up avenues of social and political control that could be used by government to stifle independent action. In the worst case the thousands of government-paid organizers could be turned into police spies… He feared the gigantism of government, corporation, and even labor unions. The hope of his life was democratic organizations which could pose countervailing power against modern bureaucracies… For him, as he would often say, it was the struggle of the little man against big structures… For these reasons he was less than enthusiastic about civil rights legislation, although he kept his misgivings to himself. Around the time of Barry Goldwater’s run for the presidency he was contacted by the senator and the two men had at least one meeting. [Goldwater was the Republican candidate against LBJ in 1964 and was popularly known as “Mr. Conservative” for his right-wing positions. He also opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act on constitutional grounds.] … Saul shared the conservative misgivings about the mischief such laws could cause if abused, but he told Goldwater that he should not morally and could not politically oppose the legislation unless he had a better idea himself. The country was blowing up over civil rights… The one position that was inadmissible, Saul believed, was to stand aside and let the racial status quo remain unchallenged and unchanged.”

6. There’s been lots of these types of “right-wing provocateur” figures that come and go over the years. One of those that immediately comes to mind is Milo Yiannopoulos, who worked at Breitbart and eventually got brought down by his comments that came off to many as advocating pedophiliac relationships between older men and young boys. (Breitbart’s founder Andrew Breitbart also sponsored James O’Keefe’s work when he first came into the spotlight with the ACORN videos.) Then there was Steven Crowder, who I believe is still around, although I don’t think he’s as prominent as he used to be. He was another big promoter of the voter fraud conspiracies in 2020. In fact, a friend of mine was curious about his claims back in 2021, so I listened to Crowder’s podcast episode on it (I don’t remember the exact episode so I cannot provide the link here). Not surprisingly, I was unable to understand exactly what methodology Crowder used, but even though he kept saying “these are actual votes” that are “canceling out real votes,” when his co-hosts asked him about the details it sounded like he was describing yet another case of bad voter registrations not actual votes. And the latest right-wing provocateur to dominate the headlines is Laura Loomer, who is making waves today because she has been shadowing Donald Trump a lot lately — including at the presidential debate and during an official 9/11 memorial event. The latter was considered controversial because she had previously shared a video on X (Twitter) with the comment, “9/11 was an Inside Job!”