It's a beginning

ACORN is out of Ohio's elections
In legal settlement, group agrees not to return to state

By James Nash

ACORN, the liberal group notorious for allegedly trying to inflate voter rolls through fraudulent practices, has seen its last election in Ohio.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now will permanently surrender its Ohio business license by June1 as part of a legal settlement with the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, both sides said yesterday.
ACORN was active in Ohio in the 2006 and 2008 elections, working to register thousands of low-income people to vote and get them to the polls. The group's efforts were marred by irregularities, including one case in which ACORN workers allegedly induced a Cleveland man to register to vote 72 times, offering cigarettes as an incentive.
The Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law teamed with two Warren County residents to sue ACORN in Warren County Common Pleas Court just before the 2008 election. The residents alleged that their rights were abridged by thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, each representing "a potential illegal vote that has the capacity to dilute (legitimate) votes."
The case was moved to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Yesterday's settlement is mostly confidential, said Maurice A. Thompson, the conservative group's attorney.
"They will surrender their business license by June 1 and cease to operate in Ohio and cease to support or enable other groups to do what they do," Thompson said.
Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, the attorney for ACORN in Ohio, said the organization already has left Ohio "for reasons that are unrelated to this litigation." After the 2008 election, in which some credited or blamed ACORN for the election of Barack Obama as president, ACORN has dialed back its political activity across the country.
ACORN continues to deny any wrongdoing in Ohio, Gerhardstein said. The settlement doesn't award court costs or attorney's fees to either side, he said.
"They've already stopped (working in Ohio), and they're going to formalize that by June 1, 2010," Gerhardstein said.