ACORN // Current

Infor Piece: The Pro-Obama side ObamaAyers story.

For anyone who was wondering why Obama's people went so crazy over a guy that was a terrorist in the 60's ... connection... more

arcticspirit
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Info piece: Ayers-and-Obama America's future?

For anyone who was wondering why Obama's people went so crazy over a guy that was a terrorist in the 60's ... connection... more

arcticspirit
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Check Point On Obama, Acorn and Voter Registration

The group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, has long been a favorite target of conservatives.... more

arcticspirit
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Obama Comments on ACORN Controversy | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Barack Obama
Obama Comments on ACORN Controversy
By Shailagh Murray
TOLEDO, Ohio -- Sen. Barack Obama distanced himself from the voter registration group ACORN but also downplayed the fraud controversy that has embroiled the organization in recent days.

GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin told radio host Rush Limbaugh this afternoon that Obama has a responsibility to "rein in" ACORN, a pro-Obama community organizing group that signs up low-income people to vote. ACORN offices are under scrutiny in numerous states for allegedly having registered thousands of people under fake names, including those of sports stars and other celebrities, along with Disney characters.

Taking a break from debate preparations, Obama told reporters during a brief press conference this afternoon, "My relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward. It's probably 13 years ago when I was still practicing law, I represented ACORN and my partner in that representation was the U.S. Justice Department in having Illinois implement what was called the "motor voter" law, to make sure that people could go to DMVs and driver's license facilities to get registered. It wasn't being implemented. That was my relationship, and is my relationship to ACORN."

He said he had further interactions with the group through its Chicago office, in his capacity as a local elected official. "But they are not advising our campaign," Obama asserted. "We've got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don't need ACORN's help."

He also sought to add some context to ACORN's travails, now a staple of conservative cable and radio shows, as Republicans point to the scandal as a way of casting doubt on the Obama campaign's organizing practices.

"Having run a voter registration drive, I know how problems arise," Obama said, referring to work he did years ago in Illinois. "This is typically a situation where ACORN probably paid people to get registrations and these folks, not wanting to actually register people because that's actually hard work, just went into a phone book or made up names and submitted false registrations to get paid. So there's been fraud perpetrated probably on ACORN if they paid these individuals and they actually didn't do registrations."

But Obama continued, "This isn't a situation where there's actually people who are going to try to vote because these are phony names. It's doubtful Tony Romo is gonna show up in Ohio to vote," he said, referring to the Dallas Cowboys quarterback, whose name surfaced on Nevada ACORN forms.

"So this is another one of these distractions that gets stirred up in the course of a campaign," Obama concluded. "But what I want to make sure of is that this is not used as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression strategies and tactics that we've seen in the past. Let's just make sure everybody is voting, everybody's registered. Let's make sure that everybody's doing it in a lawful way."
Barack Obama Obama Comments on ACORN Controversy By Shailagh Murray TOLEDO, Ohio -- Sen. Barack Obama distanced himself from... more

starr111
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3 months ago

ACORN defends efforts amid voter-fraud allegations

"An activist organization on Tuesday defended its voter registration practices amid new allegations of voter fraud and a call... more

DeliaTheArtist
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0 responses

3 months ago

ACORN and Obama

40% of Acorn is federally funded - then why is this supposedly nonpartisan group openly endorsing Barack Obama for President? Just... more

spooly
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2 responses

2 months ago

Ohio GOP Plays Voter Fraud Card Acorn

Voter fraud was a buzz phrase for the Ohio GOP when it pushed voter identification requirements through the state Legislature in... more

WalKnDude
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1 response

3 months ago

Former NYC top cop Bernard Kerik weighs in on Obama and his "terrorist ties"

So, a few weeks ago I went up to New Jersey to hang out with the man who was almost the head of Homeland Security, Bernard Kerik.... more

elmodernisto
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2 responses

2 months ago

Fox News goes apoplectic over the success of working families and ACORN

ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, with over 400,000 member... more

BuddyP
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6 responses

2 months ago

Countdown: McCain Delivered Keynote for ACORN in 2006

MSNBC's Countdown breaks down ACORN ties to Obama/McCain

pigmonkey
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3 months ago

Mark Winston Griffith: We Are Acorn

We are ACORN. The right wing attack on the community organizing group ACORN is a frontal assault on all of us who fight for social and economic justice. Look, ACORN may alienate many, even those on their left, by their style of organizing, but they are one of us, and we better close ranks around them, because the barrel of the right-wing attack gun is really focused on you and me.

Conservatives are charging that ACORN has been running voter registration fraud rings in states like Ohio and Nevada. I don't know what the facts on the ground in Ohio and Nevada are, but it's clear that the right wing has declared open season on ACORN and all that it stands for, no matter how many lies need to be told to do it. Have you heard the one about how ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 anti-red-lining law, actually forced banks to lower their lending criteria, which then led to the subprime crisis?

Implicated are those of us who used the CRA to get banks to own up to their obligations in disenfranchised neighborhoods, while fighting against subprime predatory lending. Most subprime lenders were not even covered by the CRA. And the suggestion that people of color and low income areas are inherently high risk and unworthy of credit, is patently racist.

And then there's the disparagement of community organizing and the depiction of ACORN as another un-american group linked to Barack Obama. John McCain said, "We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy"

Huh? The real fraud is the notion that organizing and registering people to vote represent anything other than the purest and most effective forms of democratic action.

ACORN has acknowledged its organizational missteps, like the recent embezzlement scandal that forced out their former head organizer. And if there was indeed wide-spread voter registration fraud, ACORN needs to address that aggressively. ACORN is a large and often unwieldy organization. It needs a better system of management and better control over the people who are representing them at all levels of the organization. I've talked to the current head of ACORN, Bertha Lewis, and she knows this.

ACORN routinely confronts powerful people and institutions and holds them accountable. The better job it does, the more it will be hunted down by those who don't like being publically shamed by low-income black and brown people demanding wage increases, fighting for affordable housing, trying to end predatory lending, or registering people in states that will determine the outcome of a historic general election.

As a progressive community, we have an obligation to call out ACORN on their stuff. But we also have an obligation to stick up for one of the most effective grassroots social justice organizations this nation has ever seen, an organization that stands on the frontlines everyday, taking body blows for all of us.

Mark Winston Griffith is a Senior Fellow, Economic Justice, at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.We are ACORN. The right wing attack on the community organizing group ACORN is a frontal assault on all of us who fight for social... more

GRITtv
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3 months ago

Dead goldfish gets voter registration material

CHICAGO - The only "agent of change" Princess ever supported was the person who freshened the water in her fishbowl. So election officials in Chicago's northern suburbs want to know why voter registration material was sent to the dead goldfish.

"I am just stunned at the level of people compromising the integrity of the voting process," said Lake County Clerk Willard Helander, a Republican, who said she has spotted problems with nearly 1,000 voter registrations this year.

Beth Nudelman, who owned the fish, said Princess may have landed on a mailing list because the family once filled in the pet's name when they got a second phone line for a computer.

"There was no fraud involved," said Nudelman, a Democrat who supports Barack Obama. "This person is a dead fish."

The paperwork sent to a "Princess Nudelman" likely came from the "Women's Voices, Women Vote" project, which sent nearly 1 million mailings to Illinois households in August using a list that mistakenly included some pets, said Sarah Johnson, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit group that encourages single women to vote.

The mailing list, purchased from a vendor, included names from warranties, magazine subscriptions and other sources, Johnson said. The group attempted to screen out obvious pet names.

"Fido's not going to be left on there, but if a cat is named is Polly, she may be," Johnson said. Princess could be a person's name, she insisted. "I went to high school with two Princesses."

Fish is ineligible

Nudelman said the only address on the registration card was the Lake County clerk's office. She said she wrote election officials a humorous note explaining why the fish was ineligible to vote.

The Illinois mailing generated 63,500 returned voter applications, Johnson said. Applicants were instructed to fill in a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number so election officials would be able to validate their identity.

"We obviously don't want to add more work for any election official," Johnson said. "At the end of the day, our goal is same as theirs: To give as many people as possible the chance to make voices heard in our democracy."CHICAGO - The only "agent of change" Princess ever supported was the person who freshened the water in her fishbowl. So... more

samanthadian
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2 responses

3 months ago

Political Puppet Barack Obama to Bill Ayers! 10 Things To Know…

John McCain is hammering Barack Obama about his ties to Chicago educator Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, a... more

webgrafix
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3 months ago

Thousands of voter registration forms faked, officials say - CNN.com

More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have... more

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18 responses

3 months ago

ACORN Counters Right Wing Attacks

ACORN isn't the voter frauding spawn of the devil and Bill Ayers?

caseygane
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2 responses

3 months ago

GOP's ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Lie Ramped Up; State Police Raid ACORN Office in Vegas

I had been intending to post an answer to the ongoing -- and quickly escalating -- ACORN smears being issued of late by the GOP... more

WalKnDude
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0 responses

3 months ago

Biden Laughs at News Anchor's Bias

A Florida news anchor poses ridiculous, uniformed questions to Joe Biden. He scoffs at her ignorance.

klaing
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23 responses

2 months ago

ACORN fires back, claims McCain ignored impending crisis

by: Marcus Baram At this point, any half-aware voter knows that ACORN doesn't refer to "a single-seeded,... more

Conniepae
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6 responses

3 months ago

McCain campaign recommends sending criminal lawyers to swing states

John Danforth, former U.S. Senator and Co-Chair of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, described the conduct of... more

Apocalipstick
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2 months ago

Acorn Overblown Scandal

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown - and intended to hobble Acorn's efforts.

The group concedes that some of its hired canvassers have turned in tainted forms, although they say the ones with phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in. The group also says it reviews all of the registration forms that come in. Before delivering the forms to elections offices, its supervisors flag any that appear to have problems.

According to Acorn, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized.

Acorn's critics charge that it is creating phony registrations that ineligible voters could use to cast ballots or that a single voter could use to vote multiple times.

Acorn needs to provide more precise figures about problem forms and needs to do a better job of choosing its canvassers.

But for all of the McCain campaign's manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence - anywhere in the country, going back many elections - of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.

Meanwhile, Republicans aren't saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.

Follow the link to read more...In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid... more