ACORN Takedown Campaign Overblown, Misguided

The conservative campaign against ACORN—which has now, thanks to a few video “sting” operations, lost its federal funding—is built on an outrageous set of exaggerations and falsehoods, writes Joe Conason for Salon. “No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a ‘pimp and ho,’ but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families.”

Claims that ACORN perpetrated massive voter fraud are likewise ridiculous. Only a handful of workers falsified registrations—in 2004, for example, six workers faked fewer than 24 registrations, out of more than a million registered that cycle. Judging the whole organization on the actions of a few workers is like condemning the Republican Party for the actions of, say, prostitute clients David Vitter and Ken Calvert. “Nobody is cutting off their federal funding,” Conason observes. (More Acorn stories.)