Seattle, Washington FBI Bureau File - Paperless Archives

SHERIFF
Officer ID:
05070
Address:
KING COUNTY
Name (Last, First, Middle):
Johnson, Christopher T.
King County Sheriff's Office
CaseNbr:
07-120588
DateReportTaken:
04/20/07 13:55
To:
Case File
Statement:
Subject:
Phone Interview with Brian Mellor
THE FOLLOWING IS A REPORT OF A PHONE INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN MELLOR ON 04/20/07 AT AROUND
1355 HOURS.
Attended meeting at KCPAO. Present at the meeting were SDPA Hobbs, SA Bennett and myself. We then
connected to AUSA Storm via phone, and to Brian Mellor, ACORN senior counsel, for a phone conference.
Mellor provided background on ACORN and how the organization works as it pertains to the voter registration
drive as it relates to this investigation. During the conversation he answered questions posed by all in attendance.
The following is a summary of the phone conference.
Mellor is senior counsel for ACORN and Project Vote. These entities work together and conduct voter registration
drives in minority and low income communities.
ACORN is a not-for-profit organization which is registered in Louisiana. It has chapters all over the United States.
The Washington chapter of ACORN decided to do a voter registration campaign in 2006. Project Vote retained
ACORN for this purpose.
Project Vote set up an office for ACORN in the Tacoma area. The office was set up around July and closed down
in November. ACORN then hired a Political Organizer (PO), who then hired a Quality Control person (QC). The
PO is paid a salary, and the QC is paid hourly (approximately $10/hour). The PO then hires temporary workers,
who work shifts and are paid hourly (approximately $8-9/hour).
There were around 20 or more temporary employees hired during the 2006 voter registration campaign.
The temporary workers are provided with training. They are shown how the voter registration applications are to
be filled out, and they are observed while interacting with the public to see how they would function in such a role.
The temporary workers are instructed to go to designated sites and get people to complete voter registration
applications.
The temporary workers meet at the office each day and then are given sites to go to. They are not supervised in
the field, and they are suppose to get to their assigned site on their own.
At the end of the day the temporary workers are suppose to bring the completed voter registration applications
back to the office. They then complete a batch sheet which details, among other things, how many registrations
they collected.
The temporary worker then sits down with the PO or a team leader and they go over the registrations.
The batch sheet is put on top of the registrations collected by a specific person, and they are then given to the QC
person, who looks them over closely. The QC looks for handwriting irregularities (i.e., do the signatures appear
that they were done by the same person). The QC also calls the phone numbers on the registrations and confirms
Reporting Officers Name:
Johnson, Christopher T.
ReviewedDate:
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