Anita MonCrief - Incentives, Quotas and Lies: ACORN’s Voter Registration Program Revealed

Anita MonCrief: "Incentives, Quotas and Lies: ACORN’s Voter Registration Program Revealed"

An article released today by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review provides direct acknowledgment in ACORN's own words of a quota system in ACORN's voter registration drives. ACORN and senior staff were indicted early last month in Nevada amid charges of fostering an environment that led to voter registration fraud (among other things).

"Despite repeated denials of a quota system, a 2004 manual utilized by the activist community organization ACORN advises managers that workers who do not produce a set number of voter registrations per day should be fired.'If a person performs at less than standard have them come to another training, send them out with a team leader. If they still perform poorly then re-train once more, then fire,' the 2004 management document states.

'Anyone who performs at less than three voter registrations per hour SHOULD NOT BE ON THE STAFF,' the directive states.

A quota system for voter registration drives is barred under state law and has been cited as a major factor in pending criminal cases in Pittsburgh. Seven people, all with ties to ACORN, have been charged by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., with violating state election laws and submitting fraudulent voter registration applications. Those cases are pending."

Though ACORN has repeatedly attempted to deflect attention from the organization wide fraud issue, by blaming "rogue employees," officials in other states are also pursing charges:

"Nevada’s attorney general has charged the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which strives to register low-income citizens, with more than two dozen felonies for operating a fraud-infested voter registration drive in the state during the 2008 presidential campaign."

The map below details ACORN's "usual suspects" battleground states where its affiliate Project Vote conducted the drives.

Despite ACORN's claim to the Tribune-Review that memo is out of date, former ACORN employees, state that the practices from the 2004 memo were still being employed during the 2008 Voter Registration drive.The claims that the workers indicted in Pennsylvania are making sound eerily familiar to the documents set forth below.

A startling reversal that should not be lost on the public is the shocking way ACORN has backed away from the claims that there was not a 20 card per day requirement by management:

"Michael McDunnah, a spokesman for ACORN's affiliate Project Vote, which issued the instructions, said in an e-mail response that the 2004 management directive is no longer in effect.

He declined to make the current version public, but acknowledged that canvassers are expected to produce 20 voter registrations per day.

"Based on years of experience conducting community based voter registration drives, Project Vote estimates 20 completed applications per shift as a reasonable performance standard," McDunnah said.

He said 20 per day was "a standard" not a quota.

He declined to make the current version public, but acknowledged that canvassers are expected to produce 20 voter registrations per day.

"Based on years of experience conducting community based voter registration drives, Project Vote estimates 20 completed applications per shift as a reasonable performance standard," McDunnah said.

He said 20 per day was "a standard" not a quota

We will circle back to the "standard" in a moment, but for fun, let's look at what an ACORN spokesperson had to say about the 20 card question last month:

Scott Levenson, an ACORN spokesman, said that the group cooperated in the investigation and that charging the organization is "frightfully absurd."

"We're a bit appalled at the political grandstanding on the part of the attorney general's office," he said. "This individual case is truly a situation where, the organization that was most harmed is the organization that is being charged."

Both he and state officials said that the bonus system was instituted by Edwards, who did not respond to a request for comment Monday. That system was "in violation of ACORN's national policies," Levenson said.

"Incentives, bonus systems, are against any training that we do with our employees," he said. Canvassers do not have to meet a strict quota to keep their jobs, he said.

"You expect someone to work," he said. "If someone walks in every day with 17, their job's secure. If we have a goal for an employee of 20 registrations, and they keep coming in day after day with two, there's going to be an issue."

Why the sudden admission? It may had something to do with a document released last month to the Nevada Attorney General's office that was written by the indicted Amy Busefink in 2006. I attended this meeting which was an ACORN Political Operations Voter Registration debrief, and Amy was the leader of several sessions. The screen shot below is from a document entitled POLOP's [political operations] VR Notes:

It's hard to deny your own internal documents, or to argue that this plan is out of date (it mentions 2007-2008 double voter registration program) so this month ACORN is singing a new tune. In addition to the existence of an obvious 20 card quota, documents released to illustrate that ACORN's/Project Vote's own materials speak of that they like to call "the standard"

From the 2004 Document entitled Daily Staff Management:

ENFORCING STANDARDS

Standard: the number of cards per hour or per shift the average person on the crew is
expected to get

Enforce: To Lay the Voter Registration Smack Down
The average number of cards your staffer produce per shift is a direct function of how well you enforce standards. Anyone who performs at less than three voter registration cards an hour SHOULD NOT BE ON STAFF. If there are people on staff who produce less than three cards per shift it means the director is either an ineffective manager or an ineffective trainer. Allowing the crew to perform below standard compromises the operation because of the money wasted on sub-standard employees and undermines the hard work of the good people of the crew.

ANNOUNCE THE STANDARD
Write the Standard in the job description for observers, regular crew and team leaders

Post the Standard where you do your trainings and where you do your individual
meetings

Not only does ACORN put pressure on its workers to produce a certain number of voter registration card, but the manual goes on to illustrate how team leaders should marginalize and criticize poor performers (see Alinsky's Rules for Radicals)

ENFORCE THE STANDARD
Everyday during individual meetings people who meet standard should be fawned over. People who do not should be critiqued. (emphasis mine)

If a person consistently performs at less than standard have them come to another
training, send them out with a team leader. If they still perform poorly then re-train once more, then fire.

If a person performs at less than half of standard they should be placed on ultimatum.

If a person brings in three cards or fewer per shift, they should be fired.

Remember to give staff a specific goal: a specific number of cards per shift to
reach by a specific date along with pragmatic tips on how to make that happen.

Clearly ACORN appears to be fostering an environment of fear and quotas that make employees desperate to avoid criticism and hang on to their jobs. Worse, they are using tax dollars and tax exempt donations to commit crimes in various states. Project Vote's own voter registration manual states "review numbers at the end of each shift with them, before they go out again and waste your money on another bad shift."

Does this sound like an organization dedicated to helping the poor, and low income minorities? ACORN's callous treatment and regard for its employees often leads to them assisting in the prosecution of employees even after the organization seemed to encouraged fraud.

"Mario Grisom and Ashley Clarke told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the quotas outside a courtroom Friday where preliminary hearings were taking place.

'We definitely had to reach a quota. If we didn't reach a quota we'd lose our jobs,' said Grisom, 28, of Wilkinsburg.

Clarke, 21, of Pittsburgh, said supervisors with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now would sometimes complete partially filled applications. ACORN works to get low-income people to vote and lists offices in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

'The bosses -- if the date of birth wasn't filled out -- they would find it and fill it out for us,' she said."

Other exclusive documents revealed here today also show the existence of an incentive program which would support the charges in Nevada that include allegations of a program known as "blackjack"

"The indictment includes 13 counts each against Acorn and its former Las Vegas field director, Christopher Edwards, who is accused of creating an incentive program called “blackjack” because $5 was paid for signing more than 21 prospective voters."

Today's Tribune-Review article notes that:

"In the e-mail, McDunnah wrote, 'this performance standard does not represent a quota system or payment per registration, but simply a baseline for job performance. Failing to meet this standard did not result in automatic termination.
He said supervisors were given "wide latitude" to set standards on a case-by-case basis."

In another case of ACORN blatantly lying to the American people, the unmodified documents shown below are from a 2005 Citizens Consulting Inc. presentation on payroll and accounting, and they reference incentives twice. Also referenced is payroll allocation forms for incentives. Below are screen shots of these documents. To download the whole set click here for The Harrington Report.

The significance of these documents will not be lost on the Nevada Attorney General's office or the officials in Pennsylvania. ACORN has possibility committed felonies in several of the states where these drives were held. It is time to stop their pattern of bad behavior that conveniently leads to another employee being 'thrown under the bus.' By working in minority communities and having a nationwide practice of hiring some employees with questionable characters or backgrounds, ACORN has created what once was a fail safe defense. Reading between the lines the defense becomes "See we tried to help these people, but you know how they are, they wanted to get paid without doing the work."

Lawmakers and politicians who stand with ACORN should be ashamed of supporting these type of harmful stereotypes; especially considering that ACORN has admitted liability and is under a consent agreement in Washington State for the same type of shenanigans that landed them in hot water in Nevada.