US Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama frequently complains (sometimes legitimately) about political slurs on his candidature, including doubts cast on his association with ACORN.
A body which is currently the subject of an investigation into allegedly improper voter registration in the 2008 national election.
The Bulletin on 26 October 2008:
Nearly 8,000 applications turned in by a group tied to the Barack Obama campaign are problematic according to Philadelphia election officials. Approximately 1,500 have already been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office for investigation of possible voter registration fraud.....
According to Tim Dowling, election finance documents specialist of the Philadelphia Voter Registration Administration, ACORN turned in 78,376 voter applications from April 28, 2008 through Oct. 6, 2008. Of this number, 6,962 have been rejected to date.
This figure does not count duplicate applications, Mr. Dowling said. It has been estimated that 80,000 voter applications were duplicates, but this total was from all sources not just ACORN.
ACORN's voter registration activities have run afoul of the law in other parts of Pennsylvania. Last July 24, Dauphin County detectives offered a $2,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of Luis R. Torres-Serrano, an ACORN worker, who was accused of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registrations.
Delaware County authorities arrested a former ACORN employee Oct. 21 on felony theft and forgery charges for allegedly submitting dozens of phony voter-registration applications.
Jemar Barksdale, 34, of Chester, submitted 18 fraudulent forms using the names of existing voters, and 22 other applications in which the information was "completely fictitious," according to District Attorney G. Michael Green. The Los Angeles Times yesterday:
A similar legal drama could play out in Colorado. Republicans there are charging that the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is loading up the voter rolls with unqualified people. Democrats are asking a federal court to reinstate approximately 30,000 Colorado voters purged from registration lists by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican.
Here from Wikileaks is ACORN's version of its contact with him as found in a Social Policy magazine article of Spring 2004:
Case Study: Chicago - The Barack Obama Campaign
by Toni Foulkes
ACORN'S history of nonpartisan electoral
work (voter registration and
voter turnout) and leadership development
combined during the March. 2004
primary season to make a big difference
in the level of participation of our communities
in that important election.
ACORN is active in experimenting with
methods of increasing voter participation
in our low and moderate income communities
in virtually every election. But in
some elections we get to have our cake
and eat it too: work on nonpartisan voter
registration and GOTV, which also turns
out to benefit the candidate that we hold
dear.
The March primary was not particularly
important for the presidential race, as
Kerry was just in the process of clinching
the Dem presidential nomination. But it
was critical in the U.S. Senate race. On
March 16th. State Senator Barack Obama
won the right to represent the Democratic
Party in the U.S. Senate campaign. Jack
Ryan won the Republican nomination
that day, but went on to self-destruct over
sex club revelations in his divorce
papers. Sen. Obama went on to keynote
the Democratic Convention in July and
was catapulted to the national stage. As
Sen. Obama puts it, how did a skinny kid
with a funny name become the
Democratic candidate for the U.S.
Senate, with 53% of the statewide
Democratic vote in a seven-person field?
Obama started building the base years
before. For instance, ACORN noticed
him when he was organizing on the far
south side of the city with the
Developing Communities Project. He
was a very good organizer. When he
returned from law school, we asked him
to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the
state of Illinois' refusal to abide by the
National Voting Rights Act, also known
as motor voter. Allied only with the state
of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing
to allow mass-based voter registration
according to the new law. Obama look
the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar
(the name of the Republican governor at
the time) and we won. Obama then went
on to run a voter registration project with
Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible
for Carol Moseley Braun to win the
Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered
50,000 newly registered voters in
that campaign (ACORN delivered about
5000 of them).
Since then, we have invited Obama to
our leadership training sessions to run the
session on power every year, and, as a
result, many of our newly developing
leaders got to know him before he ever
ran for office. Thus it was natural for
many of us to be active volunteers in his
first campaign for State Senate and then
his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996.
By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we
were old friends. And along about early
March, we started to see that the African-
American community had made its
move: when Sen. Obama's name was
mentioned at our Southside Summit
meeting with 700 people in attendance
from three southside communities, the
crowd went crazy. With about a week to
go before the election, it was very clear
how the African-American community
would vote. But would they vote in high
enough numbers?
It seemed to us that what Obama needed
in the March primary was what we
always work lo deliver anyway:
increased turnout in our ACORN communities.
ACORN is active on the south
and west sides of Chicago, in the south
suburbs and on the east side of
Springtfield, the state capital. Most of the
turf where we organize in is African
American, with a growing Latino presence
in Chicago's Little Village and the
suburbs......
As it turned out. Obama won the primary
handily, pulling white wards as well as
African American. But no one knew that
that would be the case. In each election
we must act as if our work is critical for
our communities. That is what we did in
the primary, and we learned something in
the process.
Toni Foulkes is a Chicago ACORN leader
and a member of ACORN's National
Association Board.
The Obama campaign's sensitivity to the issues of voter registration and voter fraud is illustrated by the 17 October 7-page legal letter sent to the US Attorney General concerning an investigation into the status of 200,000 Ohio voters and other matters.
As it is increasingly likely that the November presidential election will elevate Obama to the White House, one wonders what the political ramification of these investigations will be if they are not completed before his inauguration.
