Lots of news today:
Investor’s Business Daily:
For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)
What’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.
The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.
Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.
Yesterday, we gave you a run down of Connecticut, Ohio an Wisconsin, now there is more:
Indiana:
LaSota said Monday representatives of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a grassroots activist group conducting registration drives, dropped off 2,000 new voter applications last week in Lake County.
“About 1,100 are no good,” she said.
LaSota said the flawed forms are incomplete or contain unreadable handwriting — similar to hundreds of other forms ACORN produced prior to this week. She said some ACORN vote canvassers apparently pulled names and addresses from telephone books and forged signatures.
Charles Jackson, communications director for ACORN, said Monday its administrators screened out the 1,100 registration forms in question and warned county officials the documents were suspect. He said ACORN left the final decision to discard the forms to county officials.
He said ACORN has fired and reported to law enforcement any employees suspected of vote fraud.
“We consider it stealing from ACORN,” Jackson said.
Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley said Monday the ACORN registration drive is the main reason he opposes the opening of early voting centers in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.
He filed a lawsuit last week in state and federal courts to stop the three branch offices from opening Monday. County officials agreed last week to delay opening the early locations until U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Van Bokkelen rules on the matter later this week.
Curley said opening too many early voting locations would strain the county election staff’s efforts to stop people from using fraudulent registrations.
Jay Kenworth, a spokesman for the Indiana Republican Party said Monday, “We are obviously deeply disturbed by the news of these fraudulent registrations.”
Missouri:
The nonpartisan group works to recruit low-income voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Most polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain with an edge in bellwether Missouri, but Democrat Barack Obama continues to put up a strong fight.
Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn’t done any registrations in Kansas City since late August. He said he was told three weeks ago by election officials that there were only about 135 questionable cards — 85 of them duplicates.
“They keep telling different people different things,” he said. “They gave us a list of 130, then told someone else it was 1,000.”
FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency has been in contact with elections officials about potential voter fraud and plans to investigate.
“It’s a matter we take very seriously,” Patton said. “It is against the law to register someone to vote who does not fall within the parameters to vote, or to put someone on there falsely.”
On Tuesday, authorities in Nevada seized records from ACORN after finding fraudulent registration forms that included the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.
In April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said they submitted cards with false addresses and names, and forged signatures.
Ordower said Wednesday that ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some politicians don’t want that many low-income people having a voice.
“It’s par for the course,” he said. “When you’re doing more registrations than anyone else in the country, some don’t want low-income people being empowered to vote. There are pretty targeted attacks on us, but we’re proud to be out there doing the patriotic thing getting people registered to vote.”
Republicans are among ACORN’s loudest critics. At a campaign stop in Bethlehem, Pa., supporters of John McCain interrupted his remarks Wednesday by shouting, “No more ACORN.”
Keep up to date at hotair and michelle also. This is the story that keeps on giving. It has obviously gotten to the Messiah’s head also. Yesterday, in Indiana, he gaffed “an ACORN doesn’t fall far from the tree.”