You aren’t gonna believe this video. Jamie Colby sat in for Greta van Susteren on Friday night’s On the Record. She interviewed Scott Levenson of ACORN. If you watch no other video all weekend, this is the one you’d better not miss. Check this out:

Here’s a partial transcript of the conversation:

JAMIE COLBY: There is more breaking news that affects all of us: your vote. For the past few days, we’ve been reporting about a group called ACORN. Their members hit the streets to register low income voters. The organization is currently under investigation for voter fraud or registration irregularities in at least 13 states.

There also questions that have arisen about Sen. Obama’s possible ties to this group. Well, joining us now on the record in exclusively in his first interview is Scott Levenson. Scott Levenson is the national spokesperson for ACORN & Scott, thank you very much for choosing us to talk to us about this.

First of all, tell me about these investigations into ACORN. Every day, we hear new information who can’t even remember how many times they were encouraged to register by ACORN representatives.

LEVENSON: Let’s talk about what the real story is because it’s actually a great story. ACORN, along with Project Vote, registered 1.3 million folks over the last year. We saw record numbers of people interested in and excited about this election in ways that we never saw before. There were poor people and young people participating in this election in ways they never participated in before. That’s our mission. Our mission is to enfranchise the disenfranchised and empower the disempowered.

CROSSTALK

COLBY: You have registered alot of voters. I’m not sure you can personally answer but if you can, how many of them are legal voters and have the right to vote? Why just the poor and the disenfranchised because perhaps that benefits one party or antoher or one candidate or another because there are alot of wealthy people who are apathetic and who might not vote? Why don’t you do a general get out the vote?

LEVENSON: In fact, we are nonpartisan. We don’t ask people about their income level. We don’t ask people who they’re voting for. We don’t ask people what party they belong to when we register them to vote. And we’ve entered a bit of the silly season in politics. You know, all these stories that have come out over the last week.

COLBY: About raids on your offices.

LEVENSON: But the real story here is because we, by law, are required to hold onto and turn over every single voter registration form that’s filled out.

COLBY: And your position is that the election boards and commissions should be responsible for checking out these out and that your job is just to…

LEVENSON: Let me jump in here because it’s really important for the public to understand what’s gone on here. We spot, proactively, by ourselves, any questionable voter registration forms and proactively notify the appropriate authorities at the time that we collect it. We have been turning over registration forms to the authorities in these states weekly.

CROSSTALK

COLBY: But to do your job properly…

LEVENSON: I’m sorry, just one more point. The timing of this is so curious when we’ve been turning over these forms and there’ve been investigations in state after state…

I knew this was a spin job right at the outset. When Mr. Levenson said that “the real story” was that ACORN had registered 1.3 million voters, I knew that the rest of what he said would be of questionable truthfulness. When Mr. Levenson said “We spot, proactively, by ourselves, any questionable voter registration forms and proactively notify the appropriate authorities at the time that we collect it”, I felt insulted. That’s the biggest pile of BS I’ve heard in ages.

It isn’t possible for ACORN to “spot, proactively, by ourselves” “questionable voter registration forms” and “proactively notify the appropriate authorities” if the bipartisan Lake County, Indiana Elections Board spotted 2,100 fraudulent registrations out of the 5,000 registrations ACORN turned into them.

That storyline doesn’t fit with the Nevada Secretary of State’s investigation into ACORN and their seizing of documents and computers from ACORN’s Las Vegas office. Judges aren’t in the habit of issuing warrants just on a ‘trust me’ assurance. They won’t issue a search warrant unless law enforcemnt gives them ample documentation.

This is the lamest spin I’ve heard in ages:

It is difficult for voter registration operations to fully protect themselves against fraud by some of their employees or volunteers, because of the nature of the work they do, Ms. Hayden said.

“We hire people directly from the communities we serve, and we at ACORN pay them $8 an hour and ask them to collect between 15 and 20 signed voter registration cards in five hours,” she said. The problem arises “when you have some lazy people who might choose to sit at a McDonald’s and fill out the forms themselves instead of hitting the pavement and collecting good registration signatures from people,” Ms. Hayden said.

Organizations have supervisory staff. How difficult is it for those supervisors to spot 2,100 voter registrations whose signatures appear to be identical?

Thanks to Mr. Levenson’s going On The Record and thanks to Jamie Colby’s interview skills, we now have video of ACORN’s spin. We should always be that fortunate.

Technorati Tags: ACORN, Voter Fraud, Scott Levenson, On The Record, Inerview, Investigations, Law Enforcement, Jamie Colby, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. It’s ok. You can use ACORN as an excuse when Obama becomes president.

   Comment by Liem — October 11, 2008 @ 8:17 am

2. The ACORN doesn’t fall far from the tree…

   Comment by Pasadena Closet Conservative — October 12, 2008 @ 5:42 am