Tough nut to crack: Ohio ACORN settlement much less than reported (or hyped by conservative blogsphere.)

“Scoop” Keeling gets yet another Ohio news story completely wrong.

Remember how the conservative Buckeye Institute claimed that their private RICO lawsuit forced ACORN into a settlement that kicked it out of Ohio and from any voter registration or GOTV efforts altogether in the State?

Yeah, it turns out that just like the overblown allegations of voter fraud, it was completely meritless.

From the Associated Press, we learn that the settlement agreement did not force ACORN to surrender its business license in Ohio at all:

ACORN also has agreed to surrender its Ohio business license and has ceased operations in Ohio “for reasons unrelated” to the lawsuit, the agreement says.

As ACORN stated last week, it had ALREADY ended its operations in Ohio before the settlement agreement due to budgetary concerns. 

Oh, and as for not engaging in Ohio in the future?  All the settlement agreement requires is that ACORN “refrain in Ohio from supporting or enabling others ‘to engage in the type of unlawful conduct alleged’ in the lawsuit.”

In other words, ACORN is able to come back into the State so long as they or any group they support or enable does not engage in unlawful conduct… which of course, is something they would naturally be obligated to do as an incorporated entity doing business in the State in the first place.  There is absolutely nothing in the reported settlement that prevents ACORN for conducting voter registration drives in Ohio.  Nothing.

In short, this Associated Press story strongly indicates that this “settlement” was a pure “walk away settlement” and the Plaintiff’s suit actually achieved nothing.

The Buckeye Institute just got caught doing an endzone dance in the wrong endzone.