ICYMI: Obama Camp Downplays Payments to ACORN

Obama Camp Downplays Payments To ACORN

By S.A. Miller
The Washington Times
October 10, 2008

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself Thursday from its $800,000 payment linked to the liberal ACORN organization, which is under investigation in several states where it is suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations.

Federal Election Commission reports show ACORN-affiliated Citizens Services Inc. got $832,598 from the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote work during the primaries. ...

Still, the contributions to Citizens Services draw the Obama campaign closer to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and the growing voter-fraud scandal that this week spread to the battleground state of Ohio.

Citizen Services is inextricably tied to ACORN. Along with nonprofit sister organization Project Vote, Citizens Services and ACORN share the same New Orleans address and the same executive staff while money flows freely between the three entities. In 1996, Project Vote's tax returns show it paid ACORN more than $4.6 million for campaign services and Citizens Services more than $779,000 for legal and administrative services.

The ACORN political action committee endorsed Mr. Obama for president.

Its national voter-registration drive - which is targeting low-income, minority and young voters who tend to vote Democrat and likely favor Mr. Obama at the polls - is implicated in investigations of bogus voter applications in a dozen states, many of them battlegrounds. ...