During a late night perusal of some of the NM blogs, I came across Mario Burgos's entry "Who are the REAL Criminals", in which Burgos states that "ACORN encourages fraud in its petition drive practices and then pretends to be innocent." Referencing Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White's recent comments to the abqjournal's Dan McKay, that appeared in a July 26th article, "Suspect in Minimum Wage Petition Forgery Has ACORN Tie," Burgos rails against the community organizing group for providing a financial incentive for petition gatherers to collect as many signatures as possible, regardless of their quality.
My initial response upon reading Burgos' blog was the same as it had been when I first read McKay's article in the journal: Why is Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White investigating an issue involving a city election? Maybe because County Commissioner Tim Cummins had his name supposedly forged? But this is just speculation. I would have thought McKay might have asked White such a question.
My second reaction isn't that different from Burgos'. There is something frustrating about our state's guidelines for the petition process; all it takes is turning in double the number of signatures required, and when you have sufficient funds to pay per signature, though you may end up with a large number of forgeries, the result is almost always the same as having real signatures-getting on the ballot. In fact, this is why the Republicans bank rolled the Nader petition drive and candidacy last summer. The Republicans knew that if they spent enough money on hiring signature collectors and turned in double or more than the number required, even if half were fake (maybe more than half), it wouldn't matter because the Secretary of State wouldn't have the resources to check the validity of each signature. In the case of the city clerk, I'm sure they can't disprove each signature either. Although, it would be to Marty's advantage if the Clerk was able to get the Living Wage off the ballot.
My third thought is where's the Democratic advocate for honesty in the process of collecting signatures? Petition forgery is an issue that bites democrats on as frequent a basis as Republicans, and for some reason there isn't a counter voice to the Sheriff. And when I say counter, I don't mean somebody that would just jump out there to disagree with White, but rather to argue for the integrity of the process from the inclusive philosophy of the Democratic party's viewpoint. In the absence of such a voice, the Dems silence could be interpreted as accepting ACORN's questionable practices simply because the party supports the issue of a fair wage. The question is whether we are willing to get a fair wage through unfair practices?
Comments