MARIETTA — A former employee of a controversial community organizers group said Friday that voter fraud may have played a role in last month’s presidential election.

Anita MonCrief, who formerly worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN, told a meeting of the Cobb Republican Women’s Club that Democrats broke voting laws.

“We had people that were coming in from other countries that were being allowed to vote,” she said. “We had poll watchers that were being kicked out of the polls for two and three hours while fraud was occurring.”

Republican poll-watching groups are starting to fight back, MonCrief said.

“We have let Democrats control the electoral system for so long that they set up their own rules,” she said. “Now that we’re trying to put Republicans out there like True the Vote, they are having a fit. True the Vote was attacked every day for 30-plus days leading up to the election … because they are the only organization on the right that’s working toward electoral integrity, which makes them dangerous because the system is rigged.”

MonCrief said Obama lost states that require photo identification to vote.

“That’s including Georgia, where they raised the most noise about photo voter ID, only to find out that more blacks are voting in Georgia that have an ID than before,” she said. “So it’s not disenfranchising anyone. It’s getting more people out to the polls.”

But she said Republicans really lost before election day. MonCrief said falling behind in technology for get-out-the-vote efforts was crucial.

“Our blogosphere, our technology side is great,” she said. “We can’t get that side to work with the establishment side.”

MonCrief, a Birmingham, Ala., native, told the 100 attendees at the Hilton Marietta Conference Center that she joined ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote in 2005 because she wanted to help poor residents of southeast Washington, D.C. But she said she quickly learned the organization had other motives.

“There were really out there in the communities, but it wasn’t about fighting to end poverty,” she said. “The money was in the fighting and as long as you were out there saying that you were helping people, you were getting $30 million for Project Vote, $40 million for ACORN … Across the board, millions and millions of dollars were coming in through these tax-exempt organizations that either the government funds with grants or through private foundations run by far-left liberals like Barbra Streisand.”

Before the 2008 presidential election, MonCrief reported donations to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign to the New York Times. She said organizations like ACORN and the public sector labor unions were encouraging donors who had given the maximum amount allowed by federal laws to give to them in order to get Obama elected.

But she said the stories printed were “watered down,” and the paper backed off covering the stories because it didn’t want to publish a “gamechanger” so close to the election.

“The only network that would touch the story was Fox News,” MonCrief said to applause from the audience.

ACORN fired MonCrief in January 2008, saying she had used one of its credit cards for personal expenses.

The resulting controversy after MonCrief’s claims were among several issues that led to ACORN’s 2010 liquidation and closing.

MonCrief was asked what Republicans can do to win over black voters.

“We have to start putting out positive images of black Republicans,” MonCrief said. “Martin Luther King was a Republican; I don’t care what anybody says. It needs to get out there.”

Janis Walling of east Cobb told MonCrief that she has been “very depressed” since Obama’s re-election.

“Our country is lost, and, honey, I hope you have a bodyguard,” she told MonCrief.

The statement led former county Chairman Bill Byrne to volunteer to serve in that duty.

After the meeting, Walling said she was impressed with the speaker.

“I was really astounded,” she said. “I was surprised at how truly conservative that she is. It was her journey that took her to the conservatism; she wasn’t just born into it. Her journey took her there. I think she’s one of the most brave people I know to be standing up against basically a machine.”

Donna Rowe of east Cobb said MonCrief’s claims of voter fraud should be looked into.

“We do need to be extremely conscientious that there is a high probability of voter fraud, and we’re doing out due diligence to put things in place to make sure it doesn’t happen,” she said.