Even After Obama Victory, Hard Lessons from the ACORN Smear Campaign

Research support for this article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.

Despite Obama's ultimate victory, incidents of voter suppression mounted daily through Election Day -- from deceptive fliers and robo-calls to registrars thwarting eligible voters from casting their ballots -- so the GOP's overheated attacks about the specter of voter fraud and the menace of the community group ACORN bore fruit. As a top organizer for Arizona ACORN, Monica Sandschafer contended, "Senator McCain has been running a dirty campaign filled with false accusations about my organization, ACORN, and using these threats to try to suppress the votes of minority voters."

Only a concerted effort by attorneys affiliated with such non-profit groups as ACORN, NYU's Brennan Center and the Advancement Project helped thwart last-minute and ongoing GOP legal efforts seeking mass purgings and challenges, justified as fighting voter fraud.

Now, voting rights attorneys, including the Advancement Project's Judith Browne-Dianiss, worry about the impact at the state level on voting rights and non-profit registration drives because of the spate of fear-mongering targeting ACORN. "We're going to see a slew of retrogressive legislation coming out in the wake of all the ACORN stuff," she predicts.

Ugly attacks against ACORN were a central element in the vote-limiting strategy that was a key to McCain's last-resort hopes for a Republican victory. Indeed, a little over two weeks ago, Wade Henderson, the president of the Leadership Council of Civil Rights, worked with other civil and voting rights groups to ask John McCain to tone down the rhetoric that could incite violence and increase vote suppression. On Monday, he joined with other Election Protection leaders to warn: "When you have hotly contested elections with a significant increase in voter registration, it creates a perfect storm of voter manipulation and vote suppression in swing states."

He declared, "Some of these tactics would make an anti-democrat like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe proud."

The smears and attacks against ACORN helped make it all possible, with ACORN workers becoming collateral damage in the PR and legal blitz against mythical voter fraud.

Take what happened to Barbara Clark, chief organizer in Columbus, Ohio for the community organizing group ACORN, who at first simply deleted the bigoted emails that referred to "niggers" who "cheated" for Obama.

When she checked her voice mail on October 9 and heard a caller masquerading as an IRS agent claiming he was going to visit ACORN's downtown office to "investigate your black ass," she began to worry.

"The scary part was: how'd this person get my cell phone number?" Clark recalled in a recent interview.

When the attacks on ACORN from conservative blogs and Fox News culminated in John McCain's accusation in the October 15 presidential debate that the community organizing group was "destroying the fabric of democracy" Clark became more frightened.

So when a motorcyclist followed her car on her drive home the next day, she waited until he rounded a corner until she dared to sprint to the door. She says she could still hear the motorcycle idling nearby, while she prayed inside. Ultimately, she called a friend to pick her up and take her to the friend's house.

That was followed on Oct. 21 by an email with a death threat aimed at all ACORN staffers: "Your days are numberedfuck off and die." The next day Clark filed a police report.

"It kind of disturbs me, and what flashes back are the churches burning, students being killed, civil rights," Clark said. "A lot of people are influenced by what they see on TV, and when they hear these negative ads, it makes some people feel: I can't stand ACORN and I'm going to get them."