An ACORN Correction
In a recent series of posts on a pro-ACORN op-ed by Peter Dreier, I noted a series of errors and omissions and called on the Los Angeles Times to correct them. I obtained one correction — to the silly assertion that only two ACORN offices provided advice to Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe for a purported underage prostitution ring. I noted some other errors and omissions as well. In the course of discussing these with a correspondent, I learned that the American Spectator had gotten a fact wrong as well — and I had repeated it. Namely, the assertion that Darnell Nash was convicted of vote fraud. He was not. He was charged with vote fraud and convicted of vote registration fraud.
I can’t seem to get the American Spectator to correct the record, but I’m correcting it here. I have placed the following UPDATE AND CORRECTION to this post:
UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Since this post was originally published, I have had a chance to look at the actual docket for Darnell Nash’s conviction, and it appears clear that, while he was charged with vote fraud, he was not convicted of vote fraud. Instead, he pled guilty to three counts of false registration. Here are the relevant screenshots:
Click to embiggen.I have sent an e-mail to the author of the American Spectator article that erroneously reported that Nash was convicted of voter fraud, seeking a correction. I have received no response.
The interest of full accuracy demands that I publish this correction. It is nevertheless still quite clear to me that Nash voted illegally, whether he was convicted or not. Also, Dreier should have revealed his ACORN connections in the article, and botched facts familiar to every knowledgeable conservative I know.
I have also included links to this correction in this post and this post.
This does not mean that Dreier got it right. His statement — that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” — is still false and should have been corrected. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the numerous sources I provided, quoting election officials and prosecutors as saying Nash voted after registering illegally.
Also, as I note in the correction above, the paper’s continuing failure to address Dreier’s consulting work for ACORN and his position on the ACORN Advisory Committee is, in my view, a continuing black eye for the paper’s reputation (such as it is) for full transparency and disclosure.
However, the American Spectator got it wrong as well, and I quoted them, so I also got it wrong. Also, the author of the American Spectator article in question is ignoring my request for a correction — which I find every bit as irritating as when Los Angeles Times editors ignore me (which they still do from time to time!). All I can do is correct the record on my blog and undertake efforts to correct it elsewhere.
The lefties will accuse the right of terrible crimes (getting some small detail wrong) while they ignore all sorts of stuff from their allies. I just happened across a piece at Mother Jones by by David Corn accusing Sarah Palin of misrepresenting something. I’ve read the piece twice and can’t figure out what she is supposed to have done wrong. It doesn’t matter. He will quote this as another example of her “lies.”
We follow Marquis of Queensbury rules while the left gouges eyes out. It doesn’t matter.
Mike K (2cf494) — 11/22/2009 @ 9:27 pm[…] (11/23): Contrary to reports, Nash was not convicted of casting a fraudulent ballot. He was charged with doing so, but plea bargained it to fraudulent […]
Hoyt blows another one « Internet Scofflaw (cb35d3) — 11/22/2009 @ 10:33 pmPat, Pat, Pat……how do expect to *ever* be taken as a serious news source when you insist on practicing such outdated concepts as accuracy and integrity?
get with the program or get off teh Intarwebs dud3!
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 11/23/2009 @ 12:22 amMarquis of Queensbury Rules! There are never springs in our shoes for sure. The left deserves a severe pummeling by any rules, boxing or mixed martial arts.
dfbaskwill (2c7f7f) — 11/23/2009 @ 4:57 amYou mean, we should lie about them?
Patterico (64318f) — 11/23/2009 @ 6:59 amNot exactly – but insinuating any number of half – truths would be a good start. What does it matter, when the MSM will spin any attempt at fairness in the most odious way imaginable? Just look at the “tea bagger” obnoxiousness for the latest in this type of character assassination. Fight fire with fire – we’ve been taught that there’s no other way with the Left right now.
Dmac (a964d5) — 11/23/2009 @ 7:03 amI liked being right then. It’s just as nice to know I am right now
timb (449046) — 11/23/2009 @ 7:08 amNo, we should follow the rules! Having just printed up a copy of the Queensbury rules last week as a lark, I was just amused at the thoughts of throwing them to the winds. (We can still pummel them with the truth, at will).
dfbaskwill (aabf1f) — 11/23/2009 @ 7:27 amNot exactly – but insinuating any number of half – truths would be a good start.
This is where we disagree.
Patterico (7fe188) — 11/23/2009 @ 8:15 amI love the Leftie canard that “phony registrations don’t vote”.
But if they don’t/can’t vote, why get a fake registration in the first place?
Techie (217a89) — 11/23/2009 @ 8:41 amIntegrity is key. Let the left deny the value of integrity but let’s us keep ours. That doesn’t mean we have to be genteel. If it did, I would be out in the wind somewhere already (maybe I am but I don’t know it yet). I have no use for genteel (for the most part), but you already know that. However, I also have no use for a lie that is “mostly true” because it is still a lie. And in that, there is no honor.
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 11/23/2009 @ 8:46 am“I’ll stop telling the truth about by opponents, when they stop lying about me!”
AD - RtR/OS! (222944) — 11/23/2009 @ 11:24 amThe Cloward-Piven strategy of fomenting wealth redistribution in America calls for the collapse of the capitalist system through the rising up of poor people demanding support. It seems to me that ACORN, built by C-P strategist Wade Rathke, is dedicated to creating a groundswell of destitute people to overwhelm the system — breaking it down so that the capitalist model can be declared a fatally flawed and failed idea that had it chance and seen its day pass, thus clearing the way for some kind of neo-Marxism.
I believe the reason the ACORNholes were ready and willing to help pimps and prostitutes sell teenage girls is because they have been instructed that nobody (at least, nobody left-of-center) should be turned away, no matter what. Every individual who is put on the back of the system — real or imagined — is one more for whom money is demanded (or at the minimum, budgeted, thus the Census fraud).
I also think that it’s an insurance policy against close Republican victories. There is STILL no logical explanation for the fact that in the Washington gubernatorial election won by Christine Gregoire by 129 votes, there were some precincts in which there were more votes cast than there were registered voters.
L.N. Smithee (d1de1b) — 11/23/2009 @ 12:34 pmHere’s another example: Remember the clicking of tongues when George W. Bush referred to the residents of Grecce as “Grecians”? Here’s The Atlantic‘s James Fallows on Obama’s flub in Vienna earlier this year:
Double your standards, double your fun.
L.N. Smithee (d1de1b) — 11/23/2009 @ 12:42 pmAnd technically, aren’t they Grecians?
Does any place have coverage of the ACORN San Diego press conference from this morning?
carlitos (68257b) — 11/23/2009 @ 12:52 pmComment by L.N. Smithee — 11/23/2009 @ 12:34 pm
I believe there were more than one instance of having more votes cast than there were people according to Census projections, let alone registered voters.
AD - RtR/OS! (222944) — 11/23/2009 @ 1:13 pmACORN is an on-going, criminal enterprise, and should be treated as such.
Whoa, whoa, WHOA! What’s with the part of the order reading “Defendant to receive hormonal medication while in jail?”
Is Darnell(e?) Nash looking to become head of the Police Commission in San Francisco, or something?
L.N. Smithee (e1f2bf) — 11/23/2009 @ 1:47 pmOops. I shouldn’t have referred to Darnell Nash as “Darnelle.” Apparently, he prefers to be called “Serina Gibbs” (presumably no relation to Robert), or by Serina’s nickname, “Sexy Slay.”
I am NOT making that up.
L.N. Smithee (a0b21b) — 11/23/2009 @ 2:15 pmWhile lefty trolls laugh, they don’t realize how angry this particular scandal makes people.
Look, we know this is happening in serious numbers. That there aren’t many prosecutions or convictions on this issue is proof that the issue is much more serious, not that it barely ever happens. Too many elections have more votes than voters. Too many politicians go to bat to send billions to ACORN, or have them involved with vital tasks such as our Census. We know there’s a massive effort to steal elections, and we know that the DoJ is happy to let it occur, in effect a co-conspirator. They will let black panthers wave a nightstick in my face when I want to vote against a democrat, but if Georgia wants to check my ID, the DoJ will force them to stop. If I want to use paper ballots, the DoJ will force me to put up a machine that allows the disabled to vote, and when that machine comes down with a ‘virus’ that reports that the conservative got zero votes, that’s OK with them.
It’s looking like the GOP has a shot to win beyond the margin of democrat cheaters. If they do, they need to fix this.
Dustin (cf255c) — 11/23/2009 @ 2:16 pmFlooding the system with millions of fake registrations makes it impossible to check registrations for the more realistic ones that are used to vote.
It’s one of the many clever tricks. What’s really cute is how they point to the ones that were only meant to flood, and act like that fraud is proof ACORN is innocent. No… it’s fraud. It screwed with our elections and wasted our time and money.
Dustin (cf255c) — 11/23/2009 @ 2:30 pmI don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Breitbart apparently has recovered mountains of documents that ACORN was trying to dump…
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/23/breaking-san-diego-acorn-document-dump-scandal/
“ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.”
“The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs.”
LOL.
Dave Surls (3511d9) — 11/23/2009 @ 4:36 pm[…] of ACORN scandals. You might remember him best from his op-ed piece that the LA Times was forced to issue a correction and update for thanks to the tireless efforts of LA Times watchdog Patrick Frye (Patterico). How interesting […]
Big Government » Blog Archive » Meet ‘Bon Bon’ Hurd: Chatty ACORN Protestor Has Deep Roots in Organization (4556c3) — 11/25/2009 @ 10:34 am[…] have yet to apologize or correct its glaring omission. Yet, Patterico successfully forced “the paper to correct an error” in Dreier’s previous attempts to attempt to rehabilitate ACORN’s reputation using media […]
Big Government » Blog Archive » Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic? (d59464) — 11/25/2009 @ 10:36 am[…] offices. (The documented number was at least five at the time the op-ed appeared.) Dreier also incorrectly claimed that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” […]
Patterico's Pontifications » Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2009 (e4ab32) — 1/1/2010 @ 11:56 am[…] offices. (The documented number was at least five at the time the op-ed appeared.) Dreier also incorrectly claimed that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” […]
Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2009 « Cliftonchadwick's Blog (bd1ac8) — 1/1/2010 @ 8:38 pm[…] offices. (The documented number was at least five at the time the op-ed appeared.) Dreier also incorrectly claimed that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” […]
2009: A bad year for newspapers, especially The Los Angeles Times | The American Culture (e80cef) — 1/1/2010 @ 9:52 pm