Fresh Loaf

Charles Jackson, ACORN’s communications director, sends this prepared statement regarding a resolution filed yesterday by state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chicamauga, urging the IRS yank the grassroots’ organization’s tax-exempt status.

ACORN says there’s just one problem — it doesn’t have such a status. ACORN President Maude Hurd says Mullis “indicates his ignorance” with the resolution.

*ACORN Response to Ga. Senator’s Legislation: Organization has no tax-exempt status *

On Jan. 13, ACORN President Maude Hurd released the following statement on Georgia State Sen. Jeff Mullis’ legislation urging the Internal Revenue Service to no longer allow ACORN to keep its tax exempt status.

“Senator Mullis is just throwing around an old John McCain talking point. He would do better focusing on the issues of working families in Georgia, like jobs or foreclosures.

ACORN is proud of our work to help low and moderate-income citizens become apart of the electoral process. More than 900,000 voters – mostly minority and low-income — have cast ballots since 2004 through ACORN’s voter registration efforts.

ACORN has never been charged with falsifying any voter records. There has been a small fraction of the 13,000 temporary workers we hired to try to defraud ACORN by turning in bogus cards. ACORN has a zero policy for employees deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality control procedures identifies this is happening, the person is fired and turned into elections and law enforcement officials.

As required by law and legal advice, ACORN turned in all signed applications for final verification to be determined by election officials. This extensive Quality Control process held up well in the face of politically-motivated attacks and unprecedented media scrutiny. Though this fact was not always widely reported, most of the forms that Boards of Elections found to be problematic had already been flagged as such by ACORN’s own staff.

Senator Mullis indicates his ignorance by calling for revocation of ACORN’s tax-exempt status; the organization does not have such status.”

(Jim Galloway at the AJC’s Political Insider reminds us that Mullis was one of the earliest supporters of John McCain, the former presidential candidate who accused ACORN of “maybe destroying the fabric of democracy in this country” with its controversial voter registration drives.)

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State Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, filed legislation today that urges the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

If you recall, the grassroots organization pissed off cable news pundits and right-wing Internet trolls during the 2008 presidential election for alleged voter fraud.

From the state Senate press office:

“An organization that chooses to undermine the integrity of our nation’s election process should not be entitled to tax exemption benefits,” said Sen. Mullis. “The excessive amount of evidence against ACORN engaging in fraudulent activity demands that the organization to be held accountable for taking advantage of hardworking taxpayers, and I call on the IRS to ensure that justice is executed in this case.”

The grassroots organization runs a large voter registration drive focused on minority and low-income communities, and during the 2008 presidential election came under fire for submitting voter registrations to 11 states with false information. ACORN has been accused of submitting the names of deceased persons and the names of 15 members of the Dallas Cowboys on registration forms in Nevada. In Ohio, one person stated that he signed 73 voter registration applications over a five-month span through ACORN, and in Connecticut, ACORN submitted a registration card for a seven-year-old girl that contained a false birth date.

Sen. Mullis is calling on the IRS and the Secretary of the Treasury to launch a full-scale investigation into ACORN’s fraudulent activities, and is urging the IRS to remove the organization’s tax exemption status.

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