Man with stash of filled-out voter cards in trunk charged

Man with stash of filled-out voter cards in trunk charged

Posted on Fri, Oct. 15, 2004

Man with stash of filled-out voter cards in trunk charged

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS - A 19-year-old man was charged Friday with a felony for failing to turn in at least 250 complete voter registration cards he collected as part of a new voter drive.

Joshua Reed of St. Louis Park was arrested during a traffic stop for running a stop sign in late September. After determining Reed had no valid licensee, the officer searched his car and found in his trunk 323 voter cards filled out to some degree.

A subsequent investigation determined that 250 of them were fully completed and not turned in to election officials with the 10 days of getting the applicant's signature.

The charge, failure to submit voter registration cards, is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

According to court documents, Reed said he was an ex-employee of Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that has been conducting a voter registration drive in Minnesota for a year.

The liberal group boasts of having registered 1 million voters across the country since last fall, and 36,000 in Minnesota. ACORN said Reed had been fired before the stop.

He told police he missed the deadline so he didn't bother submitting them. 'At that point in time I got lazy and just kept them in the back of my car,' the charging documents quote him as telling authorities.

A phone number for Reed couldn't be found.

Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar said authorities are also investigating evidence that Reed had forged duplicate voter registration cards, which could mean that some people were registered multiple times.

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