Grain Valley, MO - On April Fools Day, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) accused the MoCRI of "fraud," trying to play the media and Missouri voters for fools while knowing full well their own employees had plead guilty to voter fraud. It's true; federal prosecutors announced eight ACORN employee convictions the very next day. St. Louis election officials have said they have had problems with ACORN submissions in past years.

"How can anyone take accusations seriously from a group that has a record of election fraud, not only in Missouri but around the nation?" asks Tim Asher, Executive Director of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative. "ACORN workers have been convicted of election fraud. By accusing MoCRI of like behavior they are hoping to divert attention away from their own record. If they repeat the lie accusing MoCRI behaving like ACORN long enough and loud enough, they hope the truth will be obscured."

"We know ACORN has hired workers to harass and intimidate pedestrians attempting to sign the MoCRI petition, they have admitted it on video," Asher said. Reports of verbal abuse and theft of petitions containing voter signatures by ACORN employees have been cited by MoCRI petitioners in and around the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas. Police reports have been filed. "I wonder if these ACORN employees are willing to go to jail for ACORN as their predecessors have done," Asher mused.

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative is currently collecting signatures statewide to place a ballot initiative before the people in November that would put an end to race preferences in the public sector. Similar initiatives have passed in every state where they have made the ballot. MoCRI organizers, and more importantly the opposition, believe the measure will pass in Missouri as well and this explains the heavy-handed tactics by the opposition to keep it off the ballot.