Out to Get ACORN

John Atlas

June 11, 2007

John Atlas is co-author of Saving Affordable Housing, and is currently writing a book on politics, democracy and poverty through the lens of ACORN. He was formerly executive director of the nationally-recognized Passaic County Legal Aid Society.

If you think it's safe to do your civic duty in George Bush's America, ask Matt Henderson. Henderson, the head organizer for ACORN in New Mexico, believed his grassroots group's effort to register poor, minority voters was a time-honored way of bringing disenfranchised people into the American democratic process. It almost got him indicted in October 2004, when it put him squarely in the crosshairs of a protracted fight between the Republican Party and ACORN over voting rights. It's a struggle that is likely to continue into the 2008 election.

ACORN, a little known, but very successful national grass-roots anti-poverty organization, came under White House fire after registering more than 1.6 million voters in the past two national elections: mostly poor and minority people who tend to vote Democratic, and mostly in swing states. Republican operatives went after ACORN hard, with a media smear campaign, trumped-up lawsuits in Florida, New Mexico and Ohio and pressure on state law-enforcement officials to file criminal charges against the group. Days before the 2006 election, a U.S. attorney in Kansas City brought a voter-fraud indictment against four people registering voters for ACORN, spurring a congressional investigation led by Iowa's Republican Senator Charles Grassley.