Why Aren’t the Feds Using RICO to Go After ACORN? Ummm…because they can’t, at least not with what you are alleging. I’m not exactly sure what it is that you think makes a RICO case, but this doesn’t come close. First of all it’s all the same basic felony here, allegations of election fraud. Trying to make the peripheral stuff separate felonies is a stretch. This just doesn’t fall under the design of racketeering charges. You’re losing sight of the fact that RICO was created to go after vast organizations considered to be ‘continuing criminal enterprises.’ I know that you think ACORN qualifies, I realize that you think they fit the bill of organized crime, but the Feds aren’t going to waste their time with such mickey mouse crap like this. They simply aren’t as big or as important as you seem to think they are. Even if the peripheral (methods of achieving the alleged election frauds, again it really would be a stretch to consider these felonies separate from violations of federal election statutes) stuff could be considered separate predicate acts, ACORN just doesn’t rise to the level of importance reserved for RICO. A bunch of workers filled out obviously bogus forms for pay. It seems hard to believe that most of this was an actual full scale attempt to rig an election.
I know I would have people screaming at me for saying this but consider: 1. if a person is registered 72 times they can still only vote once. 2. if a ten year old registers they won’t be able to vote unless a fake ID was made and if they were going to do that why would they register the ten year old to begin with rather than just use a fake name? 3. If Donald Duck registers Donald Duck would have to show up and vote. Now what poll worker is going let someone claiming to be Donald Duck vote? In most of these cases I tend to believe that it was either pranks or workers looking for extra salary bonuses simply because I doubt any organization would be stupid enough to think any of these tactics would somehow be rationally capable of being turned into spurious votes. I will say that I firmly believe ACORN left themselves open to this outcome and they purposefully ignored their internal vulnerabilities and did little to nothing to safeguard against such risks.
My only point with all of that was not to create a huge argument but to simply point out that no matter how much you all hate ACORN the Feds simply aren’t looking at them as the big threat you think they are. This case just isn’t what RICO is used for. Beyond that, the irony is that you truly fail to grasp what you are arguing for. You want these people punished, immediately, swift absolute justice and I am guessing you want the ball rolling in the next few days to perhaps influence the election. Well RICO would definitely be the wrong way to go to achieve those ends. Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a successful RICO case? First of all it takes a long, long, painfully long time to piece together a case. We are talking about a very complex and excruciatingly detailed legal process, far more so than normal. And that’s just to build the case because the second problem is that you are talking about federal prosecution. You don’t even want to know how long it can sometimes take to get a case into and through the federal courts. Let’s put it this way, if they began a RICO case right now on ACORN, they might get to verdict just before Obama started the last year…of his second term.
