In July 2005, the United States Justice Department began investigating Missouri for non-compliance under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Justice was not investigating for failure to register voters; rather the problem was too many voters. About 1/3 of Missouri’s counties had registered voters that exceeded the number of eligible voters. One county’s ratio was upwards of 150%. Justice found that the Missouri Secretary of State (SoS) failed to conduct a general program that made reasonable efforts to clean the voter rolls, and filed a lawsuit.
We would presume that Project Vote conducted a study, found that a nefarious plan to dilute the vote of low-income voters was taking place, and filed an amicus brief in support of the government’s lawsuit. We would be wrong. Government suits do not generate attorney’s fees under NVRA, but more importantly, SoS Robin Carnahan (D) has close ties to the legions of progressive groups. And the government did not stand a chance with Judge Nanette Laughrey (appointed during the governorship of Robin’s father, Mel Carnahan, and a former Carnahan aide-de-camp), who, despite her left-leaning tendencies, managed to deliver a summary judgment that would make any strict constructionist proud. Judge Laughrey writes that Carnahan had no responsibility to actually do anything, other than “coordinate,” which is left up to Carnahan.
Despite the amusement of a liberal judge mimicking a Scalia or Thomas, the district court ruling went too far; even for a panel of judges on the 8th Circuit, composed entirely of W appointees. There are definitely flaws in the NVRA. Former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell pointed them out rather deftly, and Project Vote has utilized these flaws to further a progressive agenda with ACORN. The problem with district court ruling is that it clearly was meant to provide cover for Secretary Carnahan. Even after the 8th Circuit found that SoS Carnahan was still responsible for conducting “reasonable efforts” to comply with the various NVRA provisions, Judge Laughrey white-washed the efforts of Carnahan, belittled the government’s minimal expectations regarding compliance under NVRA, and established a target for Project Vote and ACORN that would be easy prey in later suits.
In March 2007, Project Vote began communicating with SoS Carnahan about Missouri’s compliance under NVRA. Project Vote was quickly informed that the SoS had very little responsibility regarding NVRA, according to the aforementioned case. Of course, SoS Carnahan still had access to all of the relevant information regarding Missouri’s compliance. And since excessive voter registration “clearly” was not a problem in Missouri, progressive focus centered on voter registration at public agencies. The target was Local Election Authorities (LEA’s) and the Department of Social Services (DSS). In Missouri, DSS has direct control over the conduct of local agencies. What followed was standard Project Vote procedure for instigating litigation.
In May 2007, ACORN and Project Vote allegedly visited DSS offices to conduct “secret shopper” evaluations, posing as eligible recipients for DSS services (recall the heavy-handed response to James O’Keefe’s conduct in Louisiana). I say allegedly because it appears that DSS and the other defendants objected to this testimony as hearsay during the hearing on the preliminary injunction. Loose evidentiary rules during the hearing allowed for the testimony, but as the case progressed we only got this information from ACORN’s plaintiff, Dionne O’Neal. What is notable is the lack of detail in all of this. The only real details we get come from Dionne O’Neal. Interestingly, though O’Neal is a member of ACORN, and ACORN spends millions registering low-income voters, O’Neal was not registered to vote at the time. How convenient!
Now that ACORN had its plaintiff, Project Vote had to build the case for non-compliance under NVRA. In September 2007, Project Vote issued a “scientific” study, written by Douglas Hess, alleging everything in the previous paragraph. That same study alleges only 4 out of 53 visitors were offered voter registration services (with no details). This study lays out the numbers regarding registered voters in Missouri, and notes that the number of people registered by DSS has dropped from 143,135 in 1996 to 15,568 in 2006. Of course, nowhere does the study address the excess of voter registrations found by the government in 2005. After proposing four weak hypothetical explanations for the decrease, Project Vote concludes that Missouri must be violating the NVRA.
But neither Missouri nor the SoS was the target. The main targets were DSS and the LEA’s in St. Louis and Kansas City. Project Vote relied on letters from SoS Carnahan to each of the defendants to establish notice of NVRA violations. Which begs the question: if SoS Carnahan was doing such a good job conducting a general program that made reasonable efforts for Missouri’s NVRA compliance, why did she only realize that Project Vote’s targets may have been violating the NVRA after Project Vote suggested it to her? That is a topic for another day, but what is clear is that the defendants were not going to get any help from a SoS working with Project Vote.
They were not going to get any help from the judicial system either. ACORN filed its case in April 2008. In another stroke of “good luck” for ACORN, the case conveniently landed in the lap of Judge Laughrey. A concerted attempt was made to drop ACORN from the case for lack of standing, as argued by former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell, but Judge Laughrey dismissed those efforts. An attempt to join the SoS was also rebuffed by the court. After months of draining litigation, suspecting that the SoS was working against them, and faced with a court unwilling to throw out bogus claims, DSS and the LEA’s settled in 2009.
As a result of that settlement, ACORN and its allies were granted attorney’s fees of $450,000. In response to claims that ACORN stole $450,000 from the state of Missouri, ACORN and its defenders make the claim that the money only went to lawyers, not directly into the coffers of the organization. This may be accurate (although money paid to Project Vote always seemed to find its way back into the hands of ACORN’s national headquarters), but it doesn’t make it any better. These same lawyers now have direct resources to pursue other cases without relying on donations from the Democracy Alliance or the Tides foundation. They also have a track record for other lawyers to consider when joining suits in other states. They attempt to deflect blame from ACORN, but the money will be used for the same purpose – furthering the progressive attack on our electoral process.