ACORN's record: clean up or shut down

The ACORN case — what Secretary of State Sam Reed called "the largest case of voter-registration fraud in the state's history" — has resulted in a settlement that looks at first like a slap on the hand. It is more than that when the details are examined. ACORN has done things similar in other states, and it needs to be cleaned up or shut down.

ACORN is an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that promotes left-wing and progressive causes. Its aim clearly is to change the outcome of elections. The effort here, apparently, was lower and sleazier than that: A group of employees tried to keep their $8-an-hour jobs without doing the work. Their task was to go into the community, find eligible citizens and help them fill out voter-registration cards. What they actually did was go to the library, or sit at home, and fill out hundreds of voter-registration cards with names like Tom Tancredo, Dennis Hastert, Fruito Boy Crispila and Leon Spinks, usually giving the addresses of homeless shelters.

All this was supposed to fool elections workers. It didn't.

The registrations were accepted for a while. Officials watched to see if anyone voted claiming to be Fruito Boy or his friends. No one did. If anyone had, it would have been an effort to corrupt an election. Still, the mass filing of fake registrations could be a first step in corrupting an election.

The King County Canvassing Board has invalidated 1,762 ACORN registrations, and another 55 have been tagged in Pierce County. Felony charges have been filed against seven persons, some of whom have criminal records and two of whom are in jail for other things.

Some of them, says King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, "are people you wouldn't want to hire to mow your lawn."

To avoid prosecution, ACORN has agreed to pay $25,000. It has agreed to train paid canvassers to state specifications and sign every registration they turn in, to have a paid supervisor responsible for their conduct, and to notify county prosecutors when they're coming.

All this puts ACORN under a public microscope — which, as its conduct shows, is where it belongs.