A local Harris County activist group named The The King Street Patriots built the True The Vote Summit upon their experiences of attempting to “true” the 2010 election in Harris County, Texas.

Back before the recent election, the KSP got together to try and find out what sort of shape the voting rolls were in Harris County, Texas were. What they found was shocking. Due to its investigation, an ACORN organizer was exposed for having registered over 23,000 fake voters in the county. The story made national news.

With that success under their belts the KSPers and their chief Catherine Engelbrecht decided to step it up a notch. And so, during the 2010 midterm election, the group set out to organize citizen poll watchers to monitor every polling place in Harris County. The goal was to make sure that what went on in each polling place followed the letter of the law, was free of cheating and fraud, and was open and welcoming for every voter.

Naturally the floodgates of hate were opened upon them. Leftist agitators let loose a smear campaign against these patriotic folks calling them haters, racists, and worse. The Black Panthers even came out in force to intimidate both the KSP and the voters they were observing.

The attacks on the True The Vote Summit have also continued unabated by the left today. So we know how the left is worried about this movement. Vote fraud is almost exclusively practiced by Democrats and left-wing activists in this country, so an effort like this threatens their operations.

Despite all the attacks they underwent, the King Street Patriots were buoyed by their success in stopping vote fraud during the 2010 elections and with that experience to guide them they now want to offer their assistance and to relay the tools they’ve developed to stop vote fraud to any and every state in the union. The result is the True The Vote Summit to be held March 25 and 26 in Houston, Texas.

According to the event website:

Election fraud attacks the heart of our political system and threatens our rights as citizens.

When True the Vote began monitoring elections last fall in Houston, we were shocked at the fraud we discovered. Precinct judges often failed to check voters IDs, and some even filled out ballots to “help” people vote. These violations are just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.

If you are one of the millions of Americans outraged by corruption at the highest levels of our nation’s government, then you can help us stop fraud where it begins – at the polling place, in the precinct where you live, in the streets of your city.

If you care enough to help, contact us today to become part of our action plan. A commitment of just a few hours is all it takes to help restore truth and integrity to our elections.

Appearing to speak at the True The Vote National Summit will be New Media Mogul Andrew Breitbart, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, former Dept. of Justice attorney and Philadelphia Black Panthers whistleblower J. Christian Adams, ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCreif, former FEC commissioner Hans Von Spakovsky and others.

If you are ready to do your duty as an American to, as in Ben Franklin’s warning, “have our Republic and keep it” make haste to sign up to join the True The Vote Summit this month.

EMBARGOED 12-8-10 DHS IG Report – ACORN Grants

Contacted by Big Government about the report, incoming Chair of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Rep. Darrell Issa, had this comment:

It is really unthinkable that anyone would use the guise of public safety and helping victims of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina as a calculating way to inappropriately obtain taxpayer dollars.  As the discussion over how to reign in government’s growth and spending moves forward, there couldn’t be a more important time to ensure that the grants awarded with taxpayer dollars meet rigorous criteria and are subject to vigilant oversight to ensure that grant recipients are not given access to taxpayer dollars under false pretenses.”

The key things in the DHS IG’s report were:

• “We concluded that the ACORN Institute should not have received these funds, did not fully implement and evaluate the program as approved, and could not substantiate all its grant expenditures.
• “The FEMA did not have sufficient oversight processes to prevent the award or to fully evaluate the use of the grant money.”
• The Technical Evaluation Panel that reviewed ACORN’s grant request recommended it not be funded but “FEMA overrode the panels’ recommendation and awarded the grant without documenting how it addressed the Technical Evaluation Panel’s concerns.”
• ACORN described an Urban Fire Initiative that did not actually exist until they requested the funding:  “the Urban Fire Initiative did not exist prior to the grant application, but was created specifically for activities funded by the FY 2007 Fire Prevention and Safety Grant.  Neither ACORN Institute nor the Urban Fire Initiative was involved in any of the above activities and events.”
• ACORN claimed partnerships with local fire departments but “there was no evidence of these partnerships were in place…”
• FEMA relied on “self certification” and “has no requirement or standard procedure in the evaluation process of the Fire Prevention and Safety grant applications to validate the legitimacy of significant claims and assertions used to qualify an applicant for the grant…”

In response to aSeptember 16, 2009 request by Issa and Senator Collins, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Inspections and Evaluations Division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a report “detailing the results of its investigation of grant funds awarded under HUD’s Housing Counseling Program to ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc. (AHC) of Chicago, now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA).”

“For continued approval as a HUD-approved housing counseling agency and for future awards consideration, AHC (now operating as AHCOA) must bring its operations into full compliance with applicable laws, regulators, and policies governing HUD’s Housing Counseling Program,” the OIG’s report recommends.

“The inability to fully support salary expenses allocated to the HUD grant raises serious concerns about the integrity of those charges, particularly given the millions of Federal and non-Federal dollars made available to AHC in FY 2008 and 2009.  Further, services procured from ACORN “associated” organizations failed to meet the required tests of ‘open and free competition’.  We recommend that HUD’s Office of Single Family Housing, Program Support Division consider placing AHCOA in ‘inactive’ status while its initiatives corrective actions to address the exceptions and recommendations in this report.”

The OIG’s findings included:

• HUD has awarded ACORN more than $19 million in housing counseling grants since 1995.

• ACORN received $3,252,399 in housing counseling grants between 2008 and 2009.  More than $2.544 million (nearly 80%) of the HUD grants were used to pay ACORN’s salaries.

• ACORN may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records.

• • “A determination could not be made as to what activities the employees performed or which grant to charge for those activities.  Consequently, HUD had no assurance that it did not bear more than its fair share of the costs incurred for salary expenses of AHC’s counselors.” (p.10).

• • “Availability of records impeded [HUD’s] attempt to trace AHC’s summary schedules of counselors’ salary expenses to the housing counseling activities that occurred[.]” (p.11).

• ACORN Housing received more than $27.269 million from other Federal and non-Federal sources.

• NeighborWorks, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, provided ACORN with $25,857,000 million.

• • “AHC’s caseload allocation methodology for salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants proved problematic in an environment of multiple funding sources and was unsupported.” (p. 11).

• • NeighborWorks grant funds were misappropriated as well. “The housing counseling service costs were either charged as salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants or as fees to the NeighborWorks’ NFMC [National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling] grants.  For counselors who provided services under both grants, reimbursement of their salary costs for HUD billing purposes was based on a percentage derived from the ration of HUD to NFMC cases as opposed to using the actual number of hours attributable to the HUD counseling grant.” (p. 11).

• “Also, missing was documentation of the actual activities to support the percentages of allocations to the HUD grant.” There was “the risk of inequitable charges when counselors’ time was split between HUD, NFMC, and/or other funding sources.” (p. 11).

• ACORN’s use of grants did not comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-122.

• • ACORN charged the government salary costs for employees after they were terminated (p.12).

• • ACORN charged 2008 salary expenses to a 2009 grant in violation of Article III and Article IX of the HUD grant agreement (p.12-13).

• ACORN violated 24 CFR Part 84 (federal procurement standards) when it obtained accounting and legal services, leased office space, and sought health care and retirement benefits from its affiliated nonprofits.  These services were obtained by ACORN without ensuring open and free competition as required by law.

• Because ACORN failed to comply with 24 CFR Part 84, § 84.43, which requires that “All procurement transactions shall be conducted in a manner to provide . . . open and free competition [without] conflicts of interest as well as noncompetitive practices”, ACORN’s self-dealing served to funnel taxpayer dollars to its affiliates (p.13).

• • Citizens Consulting, Inc., (CCI) an ACORN affiliate, provided AHC’s accounting and legal services and charged $345,174 to HUD.

• • “CCI’s services were essentially a sole source arrangement that lacked an ‘arms length’ basis for demonstrating cost reasonableness.’” (p. 14).

• • AHC leased office space from ACORN-San Jose, ACORN-Sacramento, Elysian Fields Corporation, and New Mexico Organizing and Support Center – all ACORN affiliates – and “Branch office leasing costs were charged directly to the HUD housing counseling grants” (p. 14).

• • AHC obtained health care benefits for its employees from the Council Health Plan and the Community Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), both were identified as ACORN-owned in Elizabeth Kingsley’s June 18, 2008 report on ACORN mismanagement. “The costs of both plans were billed to the HUD counseling grants” (p. 15).

• • ACORN’s retirement funds were managed by ACORN affiliate Council Benefit Association (CBA).  Costs of $460,630 in 2008 and $384,693 in 2009 were billed to HUD (p. 15).

• Unfortunately, ACORN’s money laundering is impossible to track: “Further, cost or price analysis and documentation to support the basis and justification for the services was not readily available.” (p. 13).

A government audit says the advocacy group ACORN should reimburse the government $3.2 million for failing to adequately show that lead removal work was performed at a reasonable cost.

The auditors also say some grant money was spent inappropriately, including for political campaigns and fundraising.

Congress already has cut off ACORN’s federal funding after allegations of voter registration fraud and embezzlement.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general looked at spending designed to eliminate lead poisoning.

About $2 million was questioned because the group didn’t document open competition by contractors. Another $1.2 million was found to have been spent on ineligible activities.

But even with all that recent history, ACORN’s Project Vote is still in operation and one of its main directors is a woman under a cloud of criminal charges in the state of Nevada.

Project Vote is supposed to be separate from ACORN, at least on paper. But as Matthew Vadum writes, “Although legally separate entities, in practice the two are the same, as the congressional testimony of former ACORN/Project Vote employee Anita MonCrief can attest. They share office space, employees, and budgets. Project Vote continues to operate out of ACORN’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.”

Vadum also reports that the ramrod that heads up Project Vote is one Amy Busefink. Busefink is an ACORN employee under indictment for violating election laws in Nevada.

In May 2009, Nevada Atty. Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and Secretary of State Ross Miller, both Democrats, made public charges against two senior ACORN employees—Busefink, ACORN’s deputy regional director at the time, and Christopher Edwards, then ACORN’s Las Vegas field director. Both were implicated in a conspiracy in which they and ACORN as a corporate entity were charged. Edwards pleaded guilty and has turned state’s evidence. The trial of ACORN and Busefink is scheduled to begin on November 26.

The state’s charges list 26 felony counts of voter fraud and 13 of providing unlawful extra compensation to those registering voters, a practice forbidden under Nevada law because it incentivizes fraud. Canvassers were allegedly paid between $8 and $9 an hour and based on a quota of 20 voters per shift.

Yet this woman still has a high profile and important position running an ACORN adjunct voter registration project. Why has ACORN allowed this woman to maintain such a powerful job in its organization?

Vadum also warns that ACORN itself is simply “lying low” and biding its time until it comes back full force. And we can’t forget that ACORN’s buddies in Congress are salivating at the idea of reinstating federal funding for this left-wing criminal organization.

In fact, ACORN funding has not been permanently cutoff as it is. Sure federal funding has been cutoff but only temporarily. It can be reinstated at any time. The defunding ACORN must be re-upped as it were or the temporary ban runs out and funds can again begin flowing into ACORN’s pockets.

Opponents of ACORN must keep vigilant lest Congress quietly slip a renewal of ACORN’s federal funding into a bill here or there as a rider, an earmark, or add-on.

A few days ago we blogged how the Houston voter registrar had a press conference announcing widespread voter fraud and thousands of illegal and phony voter registrations submitted by an ACORN-like organization called “Houston Votes.” Those stories are here and here.

Harris County Tax Assessor Collector [and voter registrar] Leo Vasquez accused the group of submitting thousands of bogus voter registration applications in recent months in what he said appears to be a campaign to taint the voter rolls.

Well this morning Mr. Vasquez’s warehouse containing all of the voting machines, supplies and equipment burned to the ground.

A note of caution: obviously law enforcement officials in Harris County will get to the bottom of this. We are posting this because, for now, Harris County is going to have a mess of an election in November because all of their equipment and supplies have been destroyed.

Anita also rolled out her new website Emerging Corruption. The website will focus on fraud and corruption in ACORN and affiliated groups.

Anita already posted the Obama Donor List on the website as promised.

The documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group in Washington, DC, concern the arrests of eight workers from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, aka ACORN, for violations of election laws and voter fraud in Missouri.

ACORN is a collection of “community organizations” purportedly promoting various social issues relevant to low-income families, and large-scale voter registration drives have been a significant aspect of that outreach since the 1980s. During the 2006 mid-term elections there were numerous reports of voter fraud on the part of ACORN’s canvassers, which led to investigations in numerous states. The 2006 federal investigation of the allegations in Missouri led to several convictions, but after a similar investigation in Connecticut was halted by the Obama Justice Department in 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the documents produced by the earlier investigation.

The result was a collection of FBI documents which included copies of arrest warrants and court documents and over one hundred pages of handwritten notes from the FBI investigators regarding the ACORN employees’ attitudes and actions.

The investigators were told that ACORN had “told employees not to talk to the FBI“, and that “anyone who was against PV (Project Vote) or ACORN’s goals [were] ‘right wing.’” The investigators noted that Project Vote paid ACORN “whether the [voter registration] cards were fake or not” and one of the employees they interviewed “said ‘You treat the cards like $ (cash).’” Despite knowing that submitting fake voter registration cards was against the law, employees detailed several methods for creating fake cards. One explained that they would get “some names…right from the phone book and made up the rest.” Another “thought if she used a completely fake name it would be less like ID theft.”

The Connecticut and Missouri investigations are not stand-alone incidents, however. ACORN has a long history of encouraging falsification of voter registration cards. Between 2004 and 2006, they had been implicated in investigations in 12 states, and in 2007 were involved in the largest instance of voter fraud in Washington state’s history. In 2009, ACORN was investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee which issued an 88 page report which declared that “[t]he weight of evidence against ACORN and its affiliates is astounding.”

Astounding, indeed.  These documents show the need for a national criminal investigation by the Obama Justice Department into ACORN. Is Attorney General Holder doing nothing because of Obama’s close connections to ACORN and Project Vote? The information in these new documents has national implications that cry out for further investigation,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.