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Claire McCaskill rolled her blue campaign RV to north St. Louis today capping off nearly 24 hours of straight campaigning.
The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate stopped by an event hosted by St. Louis Congressmen Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan at the Gateway Classic Building near downtown. She said she had campaigned through the night, stopping at all-night diners, firehouses and factories talking to workers on the night shift.
"I listened and realized how much we have to do to make sure they have health care, that they have a living wage, that they have an opportunity to send their kids to college, that they have the opportunity to live the American dream," said McCaskill.
Several other elected officials were in attendance, including Comptroller Darlene Green, License Collector Gregg Daly, State Reps. Rodney Hubbard, Robin Wright Jones, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Jamilah Nasheed, and Talibdin El-Amin, Aldermen Greg Carter and Jeffrey Boyd, former Ald. Irv Clay, Committeeman Joe Palm, and surely others that we didn't spot.
Mike Jones, aide to County Executive Charlie Dooley, spoke on behalf of his boss. And Gateway Classic founder Earl Wilson played host to the nearly 80 people in attendance.
Because of Iraq we are less secure, says General and former Presidential candidate Wesley Clark in a new commercial by VoteVets.org, the same group behind earlier ads attacking Republican Senators Jim Talent, George Allen in Virginia, Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, and Conrad Burns in Montana.
Supporters of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill will be gathering on Election Night on the eastern side of the state in downtown St. Louis and on the western side of the state in downtown Kansas City.
In St. Louis, in the Majestic Ballroom of the Renaissance Grand Hotel, 800 Washington Ave. In K.C., in the Count Basie Ballroom of the Downtown Marriott, 200 W. 12th Street.
A report by the blog ePluribus Media outlines over $30,000 in campaign contributions from executives and political action committees related to UniGroup, Inc., a Fenton-based firm that owns some of the nation's largest moving companies and which has millions of dollars in federal contracts.
According to campaign finance reports, Richard McClure, the firm's CEO and the former chief of staff for then-Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft, has given $4,000 to Talent's Senate campaign. His wife, Sharon, gave another $2,000.
What's wrong with that? Well, according to ePluribus, the Senate Ethics Manual bars contributions from federal government contractors. Not exactly.
While the rules fordid contractors like UniGroup, Inc. from giving to candidates, its employees and executives are free to give as much money as is legally allowed for anyone else.
Now whether it's ethical for politicians to accept campaign contributions from people whose employers are affected by legislation overseen by those legislators is another deal altogether.
But if that was outlawed, who would fund all the citywide campaigns in St. Louis?
BUSH IN THE STICKS -- Air Force One landed at the Springfield-Branson Airport yesterday at 6:55 p.m. carrying President George W. Bush, Karl Rove and the gang. According to Springfield's KY3, he is scheduled to speak at a campaign rally for Jim Talent at 9:20 this morning. The two will then head to an invitation-only rally at noon at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.
JUDGE GETS A BREAK -- According to the Post-Dispatch, U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw has been cleared in a complaint filed earlier this year alleging he told 314 people at a local naturalization ceremony to vote for Congressman Lacy Clay. The Appeals Court ruled that there was not "sufficient evidence" to believe the incident actually happened.
Apparently the word of a Post reporter and 314 new Americans just doesn't cut the mustard.
THE MAYOR, THE CHIEF, and "THE SYSTEM" -- The Mayor and Police Chief Joe Mokwa were side-by-side this week defending their city's honor (if not their streets) from the label of "Most Dangerous City". But as the American Spectator observed yesterday, just a few days before, Mokwa was trying to explain why his department can't seem to keep this city safe -- it's the judges' fault!
Mokwa complained to the Police Board that his officers "keep re-arresting the same habitual criminals, whose presence keeps some neighborhoods in a crime rut and makes the job of officers more difficult and dangerous."
No wonder, the chief continued, "that it's difficult to make an impact on crime while there are so many predators on probation"...
The problem -- and more important, the solution -- is plain, noted one beleaguered police commissioner: "The police are doing desperate work on a nightly basis....The neighborhoods are crying out, but the judicial system is turning its back to them....We've got to demand stronger sentencing, stronger results. It's our judicial system that's letting the people down."
The police board blaming the judges? You know, in a place where elected officials were more accountable to the people, a police chief would be taking heat from his boss, the mayor. Or the circuit attorney would be taking heat from her boss, the people, for not getting tough sentences for hard offenders.
But in the City of St. Louis, "the man" blames "the system" for our dangerous predicament. And we just watch.
Over the next few days we'll be discussing Constitutional Amendment 2, the Stem Cell Research Initiative. Believe us, we're just as confused as you are. Feel free to leave your two cents.
Last week on the Charlie Brennan Show on KMOX, representatives from both sides of this debate made their cases. In the end it all came down to this question: Is Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer cloning?
The supporter of Amendment 2 said no. The opponent said yes.
Our research shows that they were both right.
The Association of American Medical Colleges, as well as dozens of other resources on the Web, defines Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer as "Therapeutic Cloning". A definition on the website of Princeton University's Department of Molecular Biology includes this warning: "Because SCNT involves cloning, there are many ethical concerns in using this technique in humans. For this reason, experiments of this nature have only been conducted in mice."
Until now.
So the opponents are right, Amendment 2 does allow cloning. But the supporters are right too.
The language of Amendment 2 clearly states: "No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being". It then goes on to provide this layman's definition of cloning:
"Clone or attempt to clone a human being" means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.
While that is clearly not the medical definition of cloning, which does include SCNT, it probably meets the definition of cloning as most of the people who will be voting on this question think of it.
So what do you think? Does Amendment 2 allow cloning or not?
PUB DEF has confirmed that four ACORN workers have been indicted today in Kansas City in a case of voter registration fraud similar to those currently being investigated by the U.S. Attorney in St. Louis.
More details to come...
UPDATE: The four indicted workers are Kwaim A. Stenson, age 19; Stephanie L. Davis (aka Latisha Reed), age 39; Brian Gardner, age 40; and Dale D. Franklin, age 44. Each are charged with two Class D felonies relating to submitting voter registration cards with false names and/or addresses.
Leaders of the community group ACORN today applauded the FBI for the steps it is taking to investigate individuals suspected in several cases of possible voter registration fraud that the group reported to authorities during a recent ACORN voter registration drive in the Kansas City area.
The individuals under investigation were temporary workers, hired--and later fired—by Kansas City ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to help in its large-scale voter registration drive, which helps thousands of Kansas City residents register to vote.
ACORN took the initiative on October 11 to contact the Kansas City Board of Elections and the Jackson County Prosecutor when the organization’s standard review process identified suspicious voter registration applications. ACORN provided to the Board and the prosecutor a letter with the name and contact information of the former employees who had collected the suspicious application. ACORN then facilitated the subsequent FBI inquiry by providing internal records documenting ACORN’s suspicion and other information as requested.. ACORN will continue to provide its full support and cooperation in the investigation.
"When we caught this misconduct, we reporter [sic] it to the authorities. Now we want to see these folks prosecuted to the full extent of the law, because they have defrauded our organization, and, worse, detracted from our mission of ensuring that citizens in our community participate in the democratic process," said Claudia Harris, Chairperson of Kansas City ACORN
"Like the FBI, ACORN considers any interference in the voting process to be a very serious matter," Harris continued. "Across the state our attorneys today reached a settlement with the St. Louis Board of Elections to issue a retraction of the intimidating letter they sent out to thousands of voters we registered. Vigilance is needed to make sure that Scott Leindecker's St. Louis Board of Elections does not engage in any other dirty tricks to suppress the African American vote."
The Missouri council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) today called on Republican election director Scott Leiendecker to resign from the St. Louis City election board.
"Recent letters signed and sent by Leiendecker had the sole intent of causing eligible new voters to think that they have done something wrong or that they need to meet some higher standard in order to vote," wrote AFSCME council director Ken Jacob in a press release today.
"It is clear that this was a transparent attempt to suppress the number of St. Louis citizens who go to the polls," said Jacob.
"Hundreds of the public servants whom we at AFSCME represent live in St. Louis, and many of them may have been disenfranchised or needlessly confused about their rights because of the acts of Leiendecker as director of elections," Jacob added.
Last week, Leiendecker and his Democratic counterpart, Mary Wheeler-Jones, sent a letter to thousands of people whose names were on suspect voter registration cards turned in by ACORN. Those cards, according to Leiendecker, are now at the U.S. Attorney's office being investigated for fraud.
He said the letter was meant to insure that no legitimate voter would go unregistered simply because their card got mixed up with those suspected of being fraudulent.
"There will not be one living person turned away on Election Day," Leiendecker told PUB DEF this evening. He said the problem is that many of the names on those suspect cards, and therefore who the Board's letter was addressed to, are not alive. Many, he said, are dead, or underage, or clearly had their signatures forged.
The U.S. Attorney is currently investigating these allegations. Leiendecker said he nor Wheeler-Jones have any intentions of resigning ahead of Election Day.
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office has contacted the directors of the St. Louis City Election Board and told them that a letter they sent out last week to thousands of new voters registered by workers from ACORN was illegal.
In a letter dated October 30, Betsy Byers and Kay Dinolfo, co-directors of elections in Carnahan's office, told Scott Leiendecker and Mary Wheeler-Jones (the Republican and Democratic directors respectively) that "these steps outlined in your letter are additional registration requirements in violation of Missouri law."
As we reported earlier, the letter asked the new voters to call the Board of Elections to confirm their registration.
An official with the election board said Carnahan's office "doesn't have all the facts" and they would be responding to her letter this week. The election board is also sending out today a second letter, written with the help of representatives from the Advancement Project, a DC-based civil rights organization, which is meant to clear up any confusion from the first letter.
UPDATE: According to ACORN that new letter states:
"You received the notice of October 24 because the voter registration application was incomplete or required additional information. The Board did not intend to impose additional requirements on the application because it was submitted to our office by the community organization ACORN. Although the notice contained a reference to allegations of wrongdoing that were reported in the media, please be assured that you are not the target of any investigation by the St. Louis Board of Election commissioners."
The letter continues, "You do not need to take any additional steps, including phoning the Board or sending us a signed copy of the notice, in order for the voter registration application to be processed…"
Over the next few days we'd like to start a dialogue on Constitutional Amendment 2, the Stem Cell Research Initiative. Feel free to comment.
Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and St. Louis' KFTK radio host Jamie Allman asked a good question recently: Why isn't it reported more often that Jim and Virginia Stowers, the Kansas City couple who have spent $28 million of their own money to get Amendment 2 passed, also own BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc., a for-profit company, which could stand to make "billions" from stem cell research?
Sounds like a fair question considering if Constitutional Amendment 2 passes there won't be very many chances for anyone -- including elected officials -- to ever ask a question again, because the amendment's language specifically states "no state or local governmental body or official shall eliminate, reduce, deny, or withhold any public funds" at any time from any firm or institution performing stem cell research.
It also says "all state and local laws, regulations, rules, charters, ordinances, and other governmental actions shall be construed in favor of the conduct of stem cell research and the provision of stem cell therapies" and no law or other governmental action shall "prevent, restrict, obstruct, or discourage any stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures that are permitted by this section to be conducted or provided, or create disincentives for any person to engage in or otherwise associate with such research or therapies and cures."
Is there any other kind of government expenditure that has such limits placed on it? Is this the best way to make laws -- especially such a complicated one. Do legislators who support Amendment 2 even know that they are giving up their legislative power to amend this law 5, 10 or even 100 years in the future?
These are just honest questions, ones that we're sure other undecided voters have too. Anyone have some answers out there?
The very popular Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) will be in St. Louis again this weekend to support fellow Democrat Claire McCaskill in her very tight campaign against incumbent Sen. Jim Talent.
There will be a public rally at the World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park on Sunday at 4:00 p.m. Tickets can be requested from McCaskill's website.
Exactly one week before Election Day, a new CNN poll shows the race between Republican Jim Talent and Democrat Claire McCaskill tied.
Of 565 Likely Voters: Jim Talent - 49% Claire McCaskill - 49% (Sampling Error: +/- 4%)
Of the larger pool of 1,004 registered voters, McCaskill led with 51% to Talent's 43%. Click here to download the PDF of the 3-page report from CNN's polls of Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia voters.
A new television ad attacking Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill features photos of Hispanic men and women carrying Mexican flags with a female voice delivering the following message:
Between 10 and 12 million illegal immigrants reside in America costing taxpayers more than $45 billion a year. How did so many illegal immigrants get here? They walked right in.
Claire McCaskill does not favor restrictive measures to protect our security, like a border fence.
If Claire McCaskill's view prevails, America won't be America anymore.
The ad is paid for by a group called Americans for Honesty on Issues. The group's Web site does not give an address or phone number, nor does it list any of the officers or sponsors. It says only, "Americans for Honesty on Issues is organized to engage in political issue communications in compliance with federal and state laws."
According to Wikipedia, the group is a Houston, Texas based "527" that has spent over one million dollars on television advertisements, critical of Democratic candidates.
"527" groups are tax-exempt organizations that participate in political activities, typically via soft money contributions, which have no legal limit. By federal law, they are not allowed to coordinate their efforts with political campaigns. According to the New York Times, if past trends hold, the total raised and spent by such groups on this election will surpass $300 million, eclipsing the $258 million spent by such groups in the last midterm election, in 2002.
Again according to Wikipedia, Bob J. Perry, a Houston construction firm owner, appears to be the sole funder of AHI. Perry was the major funder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who ran a campaign against John Kerry in the 2004 election.
Sue Walden, a Houston business owner, is the president of AHI. Walden was a lobbyist for Enron and is considered a close ally of the former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was forced to resign from Congress amid ethics scandals. Walden has been a Minor League Pioneer fundraiser for George W. Bush, raising $43,000, and was an adviser to Kenneth L. Lay, the former chief executive of Enron.
We'll try to post the video as soon as we can find a version on the Web.
After losing his latest campaign for the Republican nomination for Congress, Leslie Farr says he is now a Democrat.
"I came to a point where I had to ask myself if the Republican Party was right for me and obviously that answer was no," wrote Farr in an email to the media and supporters.
"For five years, I served the Republican Party and my reward was a Primary loss to a person that had only been in the Party for three months. There is obviously no loyalty to African-American people from certain people within the Republican Party," said Farr.
Maybe Farr should ask a few black elected Dems about their party's loyalty before he hops on the donkey.
You know, you don't have to register with a party to vote in Missouri, Leslie.
The Associated Press is reporting that President George W. Bush will be coming to Missouri on Friday to stump for Sen. Jim Talent. Details are still not available, but such a public event would mark a shift from a perceived distancing from the president by the Talent campaign.
We hope you enjoy our new "mini theater" on the left side of the page. Now you can play several of PUB DEF's most recent interviews and exclusive videos from any page on the site.
You can even create "remixes" on the fly by playing two videos at once. To enlarge the video, simply click on the YouTube logo. Enjoy.
UPDATE:ACORN representatives tell us today's press conference has been cancelled because of "new information" regarding a possible agreement between the group and the Board of Elections on the recent letters mailed to voters registered by ACORN workers.
Representatives from the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) will hold a press conference at noon today in front of the St. Louis Board of Elections to address recent allegations made by election officials in St. Louis City, County, and Kansas City.
Check back later for details...
And as we predicted over the weekend, a letter sent last week from the Board of Elections to thousands of people that were registered to vote by ACORN workers has indeed sparked criticism from civil rights groups.
Denise Lieberman, the former legal director for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri and the current voter protection coordinator for the Advancement Project, a DC-based civil rights organization, told KSDK yesterday, "The cards that were subject of this letter were based on a registration that was targeted to the African-American community."
She told Channel 5 reporter Rebecca Wu, "Our concern was the letter was suggestive to voters was that if they failed to place a phone call to the election board and to sign the bottom of that letter, in fact their application would not be processed."
The Board has drafted a second letter, with the help of the Advancement Project, that aims to clear up the confusion. It will be mailed out today.
I'll be a guest on "Collateral Damage" tonight discussing the various amendments and propositions on next week's ballot with Dave Drebes of the Arch City Chronicle and hosts D.J. Wilson and Fred Hessel. The show starts at 7:00 and can be heard on KDHX 88.1 FM or online at www.kdhx.org.
UPDATE: Oops, it seems Fred and I got our wires crossed. I'll be on next week. KWMU's Tom Weber joined Drebes tonight.
We observed back in January that the 20% increase in St. Louis' crime rate coincidently matched the proposed pay increase for Police Chief Joe Mokwa. Perhaps now that St. Louis has once again been crowned the most dangerous place to live in America, the Mayor and his fellow police board members will pay more attention to how and where Mokwa assigns St. Louis' finest.
St. Louis is more than just downtown. There are places in our city that have been completely left out of the revitalization occurring just a few miles away. And it is no coincidence at all that these are also the places where most of our young people are dying.
Also back in January, Mayor Francis Slay wrote on his blog, "as most of you know, many neighborhoods in the City are very safe places today. However, as the stats make too clear, a few neighborhoods are not."
Wouldn't it make sense then in the 10 months since those words were written that those "unsafe areas" would have seen a surge of police patrols, a strong and permanent presence of officers to show both residents and criminals that crime would no longer be tolerated?
But ask anyone who lives in the 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th districts and they will tell you that has not happened.
Maybe it's as they say in national politics: We'd rather fight them over there than over here.
Could it be that the spirit of the Team Four Plan still exists in St. Louis? When faced with limited resources, protect downtown and the southern neighborhoods first?
True or not, when it comes to politics, crime, home-buying, home-building, and property values -- perception is reality. And the numbers don't lie.
What remains to be seen is who will accept responsibility and if the problem of "a few neighborhoods" will be seen as the problem of the entire city -- and indeed the entire region. Because it is.
UPDATE: Police Chief Mokwa was on the news Monday night responding to this "Most Dangerous" label. He said if you asked his officers, they would tell you St. Louis was a safe place to live.
Maybe he's forgotten those public meetings earlier this year on the issue of lifting the civilian residency requirement. Just behind the city's schools and affordable housing, "crime" was one of the most cited reasons Police Department employees gave for wanting to move out of the city.
We need a little help. A minor, but annoying, bug in our site has been eating away at us for way too long.
We use Macs mostly and if we have to use a PC, we use Firefox to surf the Web. So we rarely get to see the bug ourselves. But last week we were reminded of the less-that-perfect experience of PC owners who use Microsoft's incredibly unsafe Internet Explorer when our site was featured on Fox News.
There we were on TV in all our orange and black glory, but then as the reporter scrolled to the top of our page (gasp) we were shockingly incomplete.
The problem is that in most modern browsers (Safari and Firefox) we look like this. But in IE we look like this. Notice the difference? A piece of our background image doesn't show up, instead revealing a thick chuck of our orange background.
Any of you techies have a clue how we can fix that?
Sometimes elections come down to which flavor of hubris leaves less of a bad taste in your mouth: the hubris of political dynasty, where a candidate waltzes in with the pedigree of a last name; or the hubris of ego, where a candidate says hey, I'm trying really hard, that's enough for your money and your vote, right?
The title of Frank Popper's new documentary "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" is a play on the 1939 Frank Capra film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The new movie follows a young buck named Jeff Smith who, in 2004, ran for the House of Representatives to replace the outgoing Richard Gephardt. Smith was 29 at the time, and the film shows him barreling into his campaign despite the skepticism he faces even from his own mother, who thought the whole idea "just seemed like an off-the-wall notion."
Smith seems to be a decent guy -- he cofounded the Confluence Academy, a St. Louis charter school that serves primarily minority students -- even if he never is fazed by his complete lack of previous public service.
He looks and sounds like Al Franken doing his Stuart Smalley bit, and one of his own campaign staffers concedes that Smith is "short, looks like he's 12, and sounds like he's castrated." That makes it all the more entertaining to see Smith go from zero name recognition to serious contender in a primary field that includes Russ Carnahan, the Missouri equivalent of a Kennedy...
St. Louis Congressman Lacy Clay recently suggested Republican Sen. Jim Talent may be doing a better job than his Democratic challenger, Claire McCaskill, of addressing African-American campaign issues.
From a story in Sunday's U.S. News & World Report:
But some Democratic candidates are facing their own base motivation problems, with recent polls showing lower-than-normal black support for Democratic Senate candidates like Missouri's McCaskill, who wasn't cracking 50 percent black support in a poll earlier this month. Other polls show African-Americans more likely than whites to doubt that their votes will be counted because of voting controversies in recent years.
"I hear Talent really trying to address some issues near and dear to the African community," says St. Louis Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Democrat. "I don't hear the same drumbeat from the McCaskill camp."
While acknowledging McCaskill's ties to the black community, St. Louis NAACP Vice President Claude Brown says Talent "has done a tremendous job recruiting African-Americans." But, he adds, "people are really angry. If nothing else gets African-Americans to the polls, it's anger." If that's still not enough, perhaps a call from one of the two parties will do the trick.
In a room on the 18th floor of Bank of America Plaza on a rainy Friday afternoon, just hours before the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Championship, the team's owners, their developer, and Mayor Francis Slay held a press conference which was as void of details as the day was of sunshine.
Maybe it was all about timing. Just seven days after saying they were "not there yet", the three sides were all smiles Friday saying they had reached an agreement "in principle" on the nearly $400 million new Ballpark Village plan.
In their own words:
Mayor Francis Slay...
Dave Cordish of The Cordish Group...
Bill DeWitt, Jr., chairman of the Cardinals...
$271.2 million of the $387 million project will be coming from Cordish directly. The remaining $116 million will come from bonds which will be paid back through the following mechanisms from new tax money generated by the project:
$56 million from tax increment financing (a TIF) from the City of St. Louis
$29 million in tax money from the Missouri Downtown Economic Stimulus Act (MODESA)
$26 million from a special tax district created around the development (it'll add 1 percent to the existing sales tax for purchases made within the district and a extra $1 to the price of tickets to attractions within the district)
$5 million in public bonds to be bought by the Cardinals and Cordish
All of this must still be approved by several state and local boards, including the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and the three-member Board of Estimate and Apportionment (E&A).
Election Board Hires Perkins, Asks New Registered Voters For More Info
By Antonio D. French
A story in today's Post-Dispatch recounts much of what has already been reported on this and other websites about allegations of fraud, poor management and collusion by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). But reporter Jeremy Kohler's article does add one new piece of information.
"In a twist, [Josephine Perkins, the fired ACORN worker featured in PUB DEF's Oct. 4 exclusive video report] was hired days later as a temporary worker by the city's Republican elections director, Scott Leiendecker, an outspoken ACORN critic," wrote Kohler, putting Perkins' credibility in question and apparently suggesting the Republican-controlled Election Board was rewarding Perkins for publicly alleging that ACORN managers instructed employees to get out the vote for Democrat Claire McCaskill.
The Post did not mention that the job Leiendecker gave Perkins pays just $7.25 an hour (75 cents less than ACORN pays) and lasts only two weeks.
Leiendecker told PUB DEF in a phone interview yesterday that he felt sorry for Perkins, who came to his office last week nearly a month after being fired by an ACORN manager who she and other workers identified as telling them to GOTV for the Democratic candidate. ACORN maintains they fired Perkins for stealing a purse, a charge she vehemently denies.
Leiendecker said he respected her spirit and decades of experience in northside organizing. After also being interviewed by Democratic Director of Elections Mary Wheeler-Jones, Leiendecker said Perkins was offered a temporary job helping the Board prepare for the Nov. 7 election.
In related news, Leiendecker and Jones sent letters last week to hundreds of people that were registered to vote by ACORN workers, asking them to call the Board of Elections to confirm their registration.
This appears to add an additional hurdle to the voter registration process, one that civil rights organizations may soon jump on.
"Due to concerns about a number of the Applications submitted by ACORN, as reported recently in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, we are asking that you contact the Election Board so that we can confirm your voter registration information and complete the registration process," states the letter dated Oct. 24.
