There are two major controversies revolving around the American people's voting rights. One being the case of ACORN and the other being the case of the potential vote-suppression.
The ACORN controversy is one that isn't much of a controversy, at least it shouldn't be. Really all what ACORN did was turn in registration forms, which they were legally obliged to do. Every registration form they receive, they legally have to give to the election officials. Because ACORN saw that many forms had strange names such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, they flagged many registration forms before turning them into the officials. Now it's being said that ACORN knowingly turned in those forms and tried to register fake people.
According to the New York Times, "Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities." ACORN is supposedly responsible for registering thousands of fake voters under names such as Princess Nudleman, a goldfish in the state of Illinois. They registered hundreds of people to vote and gave money to both candidates. In the third debate McCain kept saying that ACORN gave tons of money to the Obama campaign but according to Factcheck.org both candidates got money from the corporation. McCain said, "“is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” McCain believes that the ACORN fraud may lead to the end of democracy because they are faking voter registration.
In the case of Voter Suppression, it's been around for years, but always seems to be on the loose during election years. With voter intimidation and misguided voter information, not to mention the never ending technical problems with ballots. People are being misguided and intimidated everyday, they are told that they aren't eligable to vote because their information doesn't exactly match. Some people are being tricked into thinking that the election is another day, in Virginia, "A phony State Board of Elections flier has been posted around the Hampton Roads area, stating that Republicans vote on Tuesday, November 4th, and Democrats vote on Wednesday, November 5th."
Many people's citizenship is being questioned during the election; according to the Jackson Free Press a woman from Georgia was sent a letter saying that she was not a citizen and had no right to vote. When she got the letter she called her mother for her birth certificate and she called to see what was going on, they later said that the same thing happened to 50,000 other voters. According to many people this became a matter of voter suppression and it made people question whether the government was taking the rights of some people away by not letting them vote. Lots of people are scared that this might become a problem in swing states such as Ohio and Florida. Some also say college students are victims of voter suppression and that their vote might be at risk for voter suppression.
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