Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn’t, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.
“Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day,” said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.
“We had meetings every morning where they’d go over your quota; they’d yell at you if you were low,” said Elder, 21. “They’d sit us down and say if you didn’t do better, they’d suspend you. They’d say, ‘Try harder next time,’ [and] if you didn’t get it, you’d be fired.”
Desperate canvassers sometimes resorted to trading cigarettes, cash and food in exchange for registrations, according to Elder and two other former ACORN workers, Jaymes Sanford, 18, and Selvin Cunningham, 23.
Some voters were signed up more than once, and said that worried – or lazy – canvassers sometimes filled out bogus cards.
The three workers were all fired after they and a dozen other canvassers were identified in a Cuyahoga County Election Board probe as having turned in multiple registrations for the same voters.
The board, which estimates it got more than 8,700 suspect cards – with multiple registrations, bad addresses or phony information – from ACORN has turned the matter over to local prosecutors.
“It was just little stuff – a dollar, a cigarette – given to people so that they’d register,” said Sanford, a former team leader.
“People are scared of not making their quotas,” he said. “I didn’t do it, but it’s the way it worked.”
Elder added, “I’ve got no money to give out. I don’t smoke, so I had no cigarettes to offer. But other people did, and the pressure you were under forced you to.”
Cunningham, who also had been a team leader, said, “They’re pretty lenient if you’re off [quota] by just a few names. But if you’re repeatedly missing your quota, if you only had three or four [people signed up], then you might start paying people.”
Anyone caught offering bribes, Cunningham said, was supposed to be fired.
But a woman with Cunningham who identified herself as a current ACORN director said not all rogue canvassers are shown the door.
“Those guys are still working at ACORN,” said the director, who asked not to be identified. “We know who they are; we’ve told them not to do it. But they weren’t among the people fired.”
The director also confirmed the ousted workers’ quota claims: team leaders, who are paid $9 an hour, are required to get 26 registrations a day. Canvassers, who make $8 an hour, need 22 sign-ups.
Sanford, who estimates he registered 500 to 1,000 voters, and Cunningham, who signed up about 1,500, said its hard not to get multiple registrations.
“When you’re asking 1,000 people a day if they registered, you don’t remember every face,” Cunningham said.