Let's chat about ACORN

One of the smears I've heard against Obama is that he was involved with ACORN and ACORN was involved by association with some fraudulent voter registration applications.

This entry from Obama's Fight the Smears site explains that Obama represented ACORN as a lawyer in Illinois, however he was never on their payroll.  Obama's Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992 was not associated with ACORN, but a separate "get out the vote" initiative.

When Obama worked as a lawyer representing Acorn against the state of Illionis he was working on the same side as the Leauge of Women's Voters and the U.S. Department of Justice.  He was awarded the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995 for this work.

This is an interesting article written by two of the top members of ACORN explaining how the organization works as a non-partisan group to encourage voter registration amongst low income and minority prospective voters.

This New York Times article has some more in depth information about the attempts by the McCain campaign and other right-wingers to associate Obama with Acorn and the question of fraudulent voter registrations.

I've seen a lot of Republican push back against voter registration efforts and I wonder why they seem to think that minority or empoverished voters would be more inclined to vote for Democrats.  It seems to me that if they feel like they have the correct platform and candidates they would be glad to have valid voter registration occur whenever possible.  After all it is our duty as citizens of a democracy to vote and the more people who vote the better.

I am a fim believer in the Leauge of Women's Voters and their non-partisan efforts to get people to register and vote.  I don't think that any get out the vote movement should be reserved for just people who you think are going to vote for the same candidate that you support.  I would gladly drive anyone to the poll, whether they are going to vote for McCain or Obama or even someone else enterly.  In fact my husband and friend have not been Obama supporters and I am very happy that they are going to vote.  I gave my friend some help in how to do an absentee vote since she is going to be out of town on election day as she travels for business.

Here is a quote from the Fight the Smears web site:

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack’s career, check out our Obama bio.)