With Friends Like These …

Before it takes a couple of days off to stuff itself with white meat, the Strip has some post-election leftovers to digest. This contentious cutlet couldn’t let November end without slapping around a few wayward lefties — specifically the local chapter of ACORN, a national group that fights for the rights of poor people.

Before this month’s vote, ACORN hired extra manpower to scour the city and register new voters in an effort to pass the minimum-wage raise that was on the Missouri ballot. On November 7, that question passed by a 3-to-1 margin — a shining example of bipartisan cooperation in the Show-Me State.

Now, this hardworking hamburger is all for giving people a raise. But ACORN’s attempt to help made the Strip think that these liberal do-gooders would have been better off making like George W. Bush and distancing themselves from any campaign they actually wanted to win.

In the weeks before the vote, election officials in Kansas City and St. Louis complained that ACORN had turned in thousands of registrations with various problems. The word fraudulent appeared in the state’s major newspapers. Subpoenas were issued.

Then, on November 1, a federal grand jury in Kansas City indicted four former ACORN workers on charges of submitting false registrations. (Last week, the U.S. Attorney moved to dismiss the indictment returned against one person.)

By then, this snoopy sirloin had already paid a visit to the Kansas City Election Board. A few weeks before the vote, Director of Elections Ray James led the Strip to a stack of mail trays that contained thousands of registration cards that bore discrepancies of some kind. Most, he said, had come from ACORN.

James, a Republican, was quick to point out that problem registrations are usually innocent. People apparently forget that they’re already registered and fill out new cards. Sometimes, they screw up their own Social Security numbers. Or their handwriting is illegible.

But James also provided examples of obvious frauds. He pulled out one example on which the same woman had tried to register with three different middle names. James said the rolls were loaded with phonies. “Legitimate people have rights, too,” he added.

The Strip took what James said with a grain of salt. After all, he’s a political appointee who keeps pictures of John Ashcroft and Pope Benedict XVI in his office. It’s practically in his job description to be partisan. (His Democratic counterpart at the Kansas City Election Board is the more media-shy Sharon Turner-Buie.)

But the Strip had a hard time forgetting about those mail trays. One staffer told the Strip that when the election board tried to call someone who had submitted a questionable ballot, the phone number was worthless nine times out of 10.

ACORN takes credit for registering more than 1.6 million Americans since 2004. The Kansas City chapter submitted about 35,000 registrations to the Kansas City Election Board this summer. The organization relies on paid help to gather the registrations. Workers make $8 an hour.

ACORN officials defend their practices. Spokesman Kevin Whelan tells the Strip that the law requires ACORN to turn in every card it receives, even when some smart-ass tries to register Mickey Mouse. He says his group tries really, really hard to pay attention to quality control, that ACORN reps meet regularly with election officials and that they sort the complete registrations from the incomplete ones. “The fact is, if you register a lot of people, there will be some missing information or bad handwriting or duplicates,” Whelan tells this skeptical sizzler.

Whelan and other ACORNers believe that election officials complain because the registration drives create extra work. “The board of election, they knew from 2004 that this was going to happen,” says Claudie Harris, the board president of Kansas City ACORN. “So why not hire extra people to get the extra work done?”

The real story, ACORN folks say, was the addition of thousands of voters to the rolls — not a handful of inconvenienced bureaucrats.

The Strip gets that. It also understands that any fraud that took place was less about rigging elections than it was about people goofing off on the job.

Whelan says the bogus registrations were likely submitted by people “trying to pretend they worked longer than they did.” ACORN workers aren’t paid by the number of voters they register, but the hourly workers are expected to produce when they’re on the clock. Registering a 16-year-old niece is an easy way to make it look like you were hustling for new voters when you were really taking a two-hour smoke break.

In fact, ACORN officials turned in three of their own workers who were ultimately indicted. “We want them prosecuted because they were interfering with our work to help enfranchise voters,” Whelan says.

But it’s all about perception, people. The problem is that a few lazy workers — and the apparent inability of thousands of people to correctly fill out a form — made ACORN look like a rogue organization.

ACORN’s registration problems gave area Democrats a queasy feeling. Phil LeVota, executive director of the Jackson County Democratic Party, says he applauds ACORN’s efforts, but he can’t shake the notion that ACORN has teed up a hole-in-one for cranky types who want to make it harder for people to vote — for example, by requiring photo IDs. “The sound bite is great: It’s like they’re registering Elmwood Cemetery!”

Patrick McInerney, a Kansas City lawyer who helped Democrats watch to make sure this election was clean, rolled his eyes when the Strip ran into him on Election Day and mentioned ACORN. “It’s one thing when you shoot yourself in the foot,” he said. “It’s another thing when you aim. And that’s what happened here.”

Voter-fraud bogeyman sightings have already been reported. A week before the election, Michael Jensen, the publisher of the Standard Democrat in Sikeston, Missouri, wrote that the indictment of the former ACORN workers represented “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Rest assured, Jensen told his readers, “There will be a law on the books to address this issue before the next election rolls around.”

Sad thing is, the Strip believes him.