Ex-ACORN organizer describes bonuses

LAS VEGAS - A former Nevada director for the political advocacy group ACORN testified Tuesday that quotas were common and that he wasn't told he couldn't pay bonuses to encourage voter registration canvassers to work a little harder during last year's presidential campaign.

"No one in ACORN knew that this was illegal, up until December," Christopher Howell Edwards testified during an evidentiary hearing before a judge who'll decide whether the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and a former regional supervisor will stand trial on felony charges.

"I was never told to stop the 'blackjack' program," Edwards said.

Now 33 and unemployed in Las Vegas, Edwards said the first inkling he had that the bonus plan he hatched may have been improper was when he sought advice from an ACORN lawyer the night before a Nevada secretary of state's office criminal investigator appeared at his home at 8:30 a.m. to question him.

Edwards didn't take the advice of the lawyer, Brian Mellor, not to talk to authorities without a lawyer present. Last month, he took a plea deal - pleading guilty to reduced charges and agreeing to be the star witness for the prosecution in return for a promise of probation and a fine.

He told Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen on Tuesday that while he never sought written permission, his ACORN supervisors knew canvassers making $8 per hour were paid bonuses of $5 per shift for exceeding a quota of 20 voter registration cards last August and September.

His regional supervisor, Amy Busefink, initially wanted him to set the bonus mark at 26, he said, but agreed to his idea of 21.

"Hey, it's Las Vegas. It's blackjack," Edwards said.

ACORN faces 13 felony counts of compensation for registration of voters. Busefink, 27, of Seminole, Fla., faces 13 counts of principle to the crime of compensation for registration of voters.

Several other states have investigated allegations that ACORN produced fake voter registration cards during the campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain. But state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, made Nevada the first to file criminal charges. She and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced the criminal case May 4.

ACORN and Busefink are fighting the charges - low-level felonies that each carry the possibility of probation or less than 1 year in jail.

A conviction would threaten ACORN's ability to operate in Nevada and lead to revocation of its nonprofit corporate status, said Conrad Hafen, the chief deputy state attorney general prosecuting the case.

Busefink's lawyer, Kevin Stolworthy, said Busefink was actually employed at the time by the advocacy group Project Vote, a nonprofit voting rights organization that is not named as a party in the criminal case.

Project Vote spokesman Michael McDunnah said his organization will fund Busefink's defense.

Tuesday's hearing was being watched nationally, with ACORN under increasing fire on several fronts after videotapes surfaced showing ACORN employees offering advice to a woman posing as a prostitute and to a man posing as her pimp about cheating on taxes and operating a brothel with underage female immigrants.