My casual search for information about ACORN fraud has basically concluded the following: Yes, some of the voter registration info they submit is fraudulent, perhaps as much as 1%. The fraudulence involves the names of dead people, baby names, or entirely fake registrant names like Mickey Mouse.
This happens because the organizers who collect the registration information are compensated per voter registered, so they have an incentive to make shit up, and some of that shit goes through.
However, there is negligible evidence that any of these fake registrations actually vote, i.e. ballots aren't actually cast. They are just made-up registrations from organizers trying to make their quotas; unused lines in a precinct's voter books.
To focus on the 1% of fake registrations that have no bearing on the election and which ACORN does good-faith efforts to catch (since their GOAL is to register real people who will actually VOTE) -- and to ignore the large 99% of valid registrations, many of which do vote -- is quite disingenuous.
You can rile up a lot of anti-ACORN hate by rousing people with the screed that -- oh my gosh! -- DEAD PEOPLE HAVE BEEN REGISTERED TO VOTE!
Now, Republicans are understandably annoyed by ACORN, because the low-income voters it registers tend to vote Democratic. But such annoyance does not take away the fact that ACORN is a legitimate voter-drive organization that is a legitimate part of our democratic process.
Personally, I'm in favor of letting anyone with a valid driver's license vote (or for nondrivers, state ID cards). If a driver's license needs to be given to a nonvoter (i.e. felon or foreign national) then mark it in some way that disqualifies them from voting.
Then you don't need all this pointless registration paperwork which largely doesn't exist in the rest of the free world and they seem to do just fine.
UPDATE: after writing this I found that TPM had basically said the same thing, albeit much better than me.
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