Accused Registration Group Has No Voter Drives Here

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ACORN Responds to Voter Fraud Allegations

ACORN, which advocates for low-income voters, admits there has been voter registration problems. But the group also says there has been success in helping 1.3 million people register to vote nationwide.

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Community Voters Project leaders have said the incidents were isolated cases, and they fired workers engaged in such activity.

Jim Pelura, chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, said his group is keeping a close eye on new registrations in the state. But he said he has seen few problems.

ACORN has been active in past Maryland elections. In 2002, it signed up 22,000 people to vote.

ACORN has also challenged election laws in Maryland that it believed could impede registration efforts. In August, a judge ruled in the group's favor in a case from 2006. The group said the Maryland Transit Administration violated its members' free-speech rights by adopting permit rules that made registering voters at bus and subway stations more difficult.

In 2004, the ACORN group in Prince George's County was a leading proponent of the ballot effort to amend the county charter and expand the size of the county council. ACORN came under some criticism locally because the movement was largely funded by developers, and critics believed it was an effort by then-council member Democrat Thomas R. Hendershot to retain power on the board.

Hendershot, whose home was recently raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into development in the county, was being forced off the council by term limits. Voters chose not to amend the charter, and Hendershot left the council in 2006.

The group was an issue again during February's hard-fought Democratic primary for Congress in Montgomery and Prince George's counties between longtime incumbent Albert R. Wynn and Donna F. Edwards.

In a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, Wynn's campaign accused Edwards of illegally colluding with independent groups supporting her campaign. He cited ACORN as one such group, noting that several organizations supporting Edwards all listed ACORN's New Orleans address.

Independent election law experts who reviewed the complaint at the time said they saw little evidence to support Wynn's complaint. Edwards won the election, and the complaint is still pending at the FEC.

Edwards (D-Md.) dismissed complaints against ACORN and said they will do little to solve other possible problems on Election Day, including long lines and broken machines.

"This is just politics, and it's going to go away," she said.

Staff writer Theola Labbé-DeBose contributed to this report.