Last updated on August 11th, 2014 at 12:00 am
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took a break from preparing for the third presidential debate tomorrow night to explain that he is not involved with the voter registration group ACORN, “We’ve got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.”
As reported by The Trail, Obama said, “”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.”
Obama said that ACORN was victimized by hiring people who didn’t go out and register voters, “Having run a voter registration drive, I know how problems arise. 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.”
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Obama said that is a distraction that must not be used to suppress the vote, “So this is another one of these distractions that gets stirred up in the course of a campaign. 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.”
Voter registration drives are very hard work, and some people are hired or get paid a bonus based on the number of people that they register. In almost every election cycle, there are always some employees of voter registration organizations that try to cheat the system. Republicans are desperate, and are trying to link Obama to anything and everything. It is funny how Republicans fail to mention that McCain spoke in front of the group in 2006, and actually has a more recent personal connection than Obama does. I don’t believe that there is any kind of real scandal here. This is another sad attempt by the Republicans to try to stop Obama.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
