PITTSBURGH -- Four former Pittsburgh-area ACORN workers will face trial on charges they forged or otherwise illegally solicited voter registration cards before the November election.
Seven workers are charged in Allegheny County with either forging, illegally soliciting or illegally filling out voter cards in the lead-up to the 2008 elections.
But some of the workers claim they faced losing their jobs unless voter registration quotas were met.
"We did it the way they trained us. Know what I'm saying? So why are we getting picked up, when it should be the people that's above us getting picked up? We only did what they asked us to do," Mario Wyatt Grisom said after a preliminary hearing in municipal court.
The cases against Grisom, Ashley Lucille Clarke, Latasha Leann Kinney and Alexis Givner were sent to trial after their hearings, and Eric Lee Jones' case was waived to trial without a hearing.
Also charged are Eric Eugene Jordan and Bryan Alexander Williams.
Investigators allege the accused forged registration cards to meet quotas. Voter registration canvassers can be paid an hourly wage in Pennsylvania, but quotas are illegal.
One witness testified that she saw wrong ZIP codes, signatures and dates of birth on many forms.
"I received a voter registration card for my wife last November, and she had passed away a year ago March," said another witness, William Jung, of Penn Hills.
FBI Special Agent Sonia Bush testified that Kinney said she submitted false registration forms because she faced the potential loss of her job if she failed to submit 25 per day, according to a report by WTAE Channel 4's news exchange partners at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Public defender Alan Skwarla doesn't deny his three clients helped fill out the cards in question, but said there's no proof that they were responsible for the forged portions.
"Anything could have happened at any point of the process, from beginning to end," Skwarla said. "All three are looking forward to vindicating themselves at trial."
One of allegations against Skwarla's clients involves a single card turned in by a government worker who tried to catch ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, in the act.
An Allegheny County elections office worker, Denise Halliburton, testified she filled out an ACORN card in July. Halliburton said she purposely didn't sign the card or give her Social Security number because she heard ACORN workers sometimes illegally filled in missing information.
"I just wanted to see if they'd put a forgery on it," Halliburton testified.
ACORN officials filed the card. A few weeks later, a co-worker showed Halliburton the card, which by then had a signature and a Social Security number that wasn't Halliburton's, she said.
The canvasser who turned the card in, Alexis Givner, 23, of West Mifflin, rapidly nodded her head as Skwarla suggested on cross-examination that somebody else at ACORN or at the county elections office added the signature and Social Security number.
ACORN has also come under scrutiny for registration irregularities in other states.
District Attorney Stephen Zappala has said that no votes were wrongly cast as a result of the alleged fraud.
Zappala has said his office is still trying to determine whether ACORN officials are criminally culpable.
A county detective testified that Ashley Clarke, 21, of Pittsburgh, turned in six bogus cards after she was encouraged by her ACORN supervisor to have even registered voters fill them out. Clarke was told duplicates would be weeded out by ACORN or the county, the detective said.
ACORN officials have denied using quotas and claim they're being victimized by unscrupulous workers who were generally paid $8 to $10 an hour.
Ian Phillips, legislative director for Pennsylvania ACORN, said Zappala's charges stem from 216 questionable cards the organization itself flagged. County officials would not comment on that claim.
"What it looks like to us from the outside to us is these people obviously committed crimes and they're trying to shift the blame," Phillips said.
Copyright 2009 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
