Griffin on ACORN: CNN 10/16/08

Drew Griffin on ACORN
"CNN Newsroom" 12.13
Interview

TOPIC: Drew Griffin discusses ACORN with Bertha Lewis

TRANSCRIPT: BERTHA LEWIS: My concern is that despite us registering 1.3 million people, having 13,000 workers, actually turning in every single card that we collected, as well as turning in folks that we might have suspected bad behavior year after year, time after time these allegations continue to be visited upon us especially at a time when it is a political season, and we just think that there's never been a time where it's been proven that we have ever committed registration or voter fraud. I just think it's very peculiar that the Republicans are attacking us like this, but...

DREW GRIFFIN: [...] Ms. Lewis, Did you say that no one in ACORN has ever been found to have committed registration fraud? No worker for ACORN?

LEWIS:[...] ACORN. The accusations are against my organization, ACORN.
GRIFFIN: Who hires people to
LEWIS: People that we hire
GRIFFIN: fill out registrations. And people who fill out voter registrations for ACORN you admit, have been in trouble in the past for committing fraud.
LEWIS: We've actually turned those people in and helped to prosecute individuals that commit voter registration fraud. So, there's never been any case, period, even the RNC's general counsel that says, there's never been one single case where some one has voted fraudulently, because of an organized voter registration effort.
GRIFFIN: So, just to be clear, we're talking about two different things now. Because what we're reporting about is the voter registration drive conducted by ACORN, which has turned in thousands and thousands of fraudulently filled out registration forms.
(SIMULTANEOUSLY)
LEWIS: We've registered 1.3 million new voters and we have 13 thousand workers and, just let me answer the question.
GRIFFIN: Do you know how many of those 1.3 million are fraud?
LEWIS: It's less than 1% that you're talking about out of 1.3 million registrations, and you know that we're supposed to turn in each and every card. We've flagged, we've tagged suspicious cards, and we also turned in any canvasser that we suspect of bad behavior.
GRIFFIN: In Lake County, Indiana, which I know you know I've been, they said that they weren't flagged. The first 500 came in and they actually had to call back ACORN and say "What's going on here?" Did you turn in any of the people who turned in those fraudulent registration forms? [...]
LEWIS: Again, This is exactly what we do, our quality control systems worked. We work with the elected officials and we say to them, "Listen, if you've picked up a card that we might have missed, here, we'll let you know who the canvasser is, we give them that information. We've been doing this for years.
(SIMULTANEOUSLY)
[]
LEWIS: No, I'm gonna talk about a Republican in Florida that just said there is no problem, no problem. And in Texas, no problem, now in Indiana, if those officials feel as though they weren't getting enough attention from us, which is untrue, we'd be happy to sit down with them and give them every single person that ever worked for us there. That's what we do, we don't want people to be fraudulently registering, of course not. And, it's never ever been proven that we've done such a thing. I mean when Alberto Gonzales came after us, he was never able to prove it.
TONY HARRIS: Bertha [...] you feel like you had your say?
LEWIS: I feel like we just want to get the facts out, and you know what, an allegation and a lie doesn't make it true we've been doing this, we know how to do it and we've got a million new voters.
[...]
GRIFFIN: The big problem the election officials tell me is they pay, they pay to register people and it creates fraud. I want to show our viewers, listen, I went to Gary, Indiana, the Gary, Indiana person for ACORN never called me back, then I went to Milwaukee, WI, because I was told, in fact, the state director works out of ACORN, her name is Miss. Castore, Miss Castore said she's call me back in 20 minutes, never called me back. Then I got a call from a guy in Miami, who said he was the public relations director or media coordinator for ACORN he would be handling this, a couple days went by, he never called me back, then he called me back and sends me to an attorney in Boston. The attorney in Boston we interviewed, and we talked about all these concerns that Ms. Lewis is talking about. [...]
LABEL: DG DG CNN 10-16-08 12.15 (LAD#21)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ACORN
• Bertha
• Lewis
• Voter
• Registration

[traffic848cop]

Fuck that cunt bertha lewis

[mailman63155]

One strategy of ACORN is to monkey-wrench the system by flooding it with fraudulent registration forms, whether the intent is to actually vote fraudulently. Merely flooding with questionable forms is enough.

[theedge202]

Gotcha Journalism - Isn't that what Micheal Moore does?!

Left-wing hypocrisy yet again.

The brave whitsleblowers should be thanked for revealing to the American taxpayers how their money is being funded to corrupt organizations.

If you listen to this pathetic CNN report they're afraid of the truth, They're afraid of independent journalism . They only want coporate institutionalized propgandist that refer to themselves as journalist.

[illhavemine]

ACORN a corrupt organization. The census bureau cut ties with them after FOX news broke the story of ACORN's employees at 5 offices giving advice on setting up a brothel and illegally bringing in under age girls from el salvador for prostitution purposes and avoiding taxes. Congress has cut all funding to ACORN, the State of Louisiana has started an investigation of ACORN, and congress has also directed a investigation of ACORN begin...ACORN should be finished

[obsday]

you go girl!

[obsday]

bipartisan organizations endorse candidates if they'll pass laws that they want to see passed. Fail!

[miamiboarder]

I so want to see the results from that meeting!!!! BTW - she is an Obama supporter as she publically said in an interview last week, telling people to go out and vote for Obama. She should know that she cannot speak her mind about the candidates if she runs a "bipartisan" organization. Fail!

[azndude001]

im naked ;D

jajajajaja pW

[AntiACORN]

Oh please she cant even name one Canvaser from her own office in Brooklyn.