What the GOP sees in ACORN

What are ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) canvassers thinking? asked The Washington Times in an editorial. In Nevada, the group's voter registration workers handed in "fraudulent" papers that included false names "and the entire starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys." ACORN "must be made to answer" for this, especially since it collected $800,000 from Barack Obama to register new voters during the Democratic primaries.

"Voter fraud is a serious issue," said The Baltimore Sun, but it happens at the polls, "not when new voters try to register." ACORN is required by law to submit every application it receives. It flags suspect papers and fires workers "caught trying to game the system"—how is that cheating?

It's hard to see what ACORN has done in Pennsylvania as anything else, said Jeffrey Lord in The American Spectator. The fraudulent registrations the supposedly non-partisan group has submitted—"those at least that have been detected"—would help pro-Obama Philadelphia outweigh pro-McCain suburbs. In a tight election, tipping one big swing state could make the difference.

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If anyone's stealing something here, said Tom Matzzie in The Huffington Post, it's the Republicans. By challenging ACORN's work in battleground states, they're creating the myth that ACORN and Obama "stole the election." It's part of a GOP bid to "steal the legitimacy of what is looking like a massive repudiation of Bush, conservatives, and the Republican Party."