Barack Obama talks about ACORN [View All]

[jefferson_dem]

Barack Obama talks about ACORN
from The Swamp by John McCormick

by John McCormick

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Meeting briefly with reporters this afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama was asked about past and present relationships with ACORN, the non-profit organization that has come under Republican attack for voter registration irregularities.

"First of all, my relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward," he said, according to a pool report from outside the resort where he is holding his final debate camp in Oregon, Ohio.

"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 DMV's and driver's license facilities to get registered," Obama said. "It wasn't being implemented. That was my relationship and is my relationship to ACORN."

Obama also said he has had ties to an ACORN chapter in Chicago.

"As an elected official, I've had interactions with them," he said. "But they are not advising our campaign. We've got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don't need ACORN's help."

The Illinois Democrat said he is aware that problems often arise around voter registration drives.

"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," he said. "So there's been fraud perpetrated probably on ACORN, if they paid these individuals and they actually didn't do registrations."

But Obama downplayed the risk to the election system.

"But this isn't a situation where there's actually people who are going to try to vote because these are phony names," he said. "So this is another one of these distractions."

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/10/obama_talks_about_his_acorn.html