Obama: Criticism of ACORN Is Meant to Suppress the Vote

We were wondering what took so long for them to spin the massive ACORN voter fraud around and claim it's a cynical ploy to suppress the vote.

The waiting is over. And they shamelessly lie through their teeth.

The Obama campaign was forced to defend their voter registration efforts today, after the McCain campaign continued to the link them to ACORN. Earlier today, the group acknowledged that there has been some voter registration fraud, but that state election officials are required to “weed out” bad applications.

Both campaign manager David Plouffe and general counsel Bob Bauer vehemently denied any connection between ACORN and their voter registration effort. “The case is ludicrous,” Bauer said about the Republican accusations, adding, “this campaign has never paid ACORN to register voters.”

Oh really?

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said it is not unusual for campaigns to amend reports, even regarding large sums of money.

But, said Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: "Barack Obama's failure to accurately report his campaign's financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign's interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud. For a candidate who claims to be practicing 'new' politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the 'old-style' Chicago politics of yesterday."

So Obama never paid ACORN to register voters?

Hmm. Somehow CBS failed to follow up.

He charged that the Republicans are “suppressing” and “intimidating” voters in various states, making it harder for people to vote.

“What this is, is a strategic and cynical ploy to in some ways to denigrate all these people who decided to participate in their democracy, to sow confusion out there in a deliberate attempt to try to decrease turnout,” Plouffe argued.

“This is just the start of what is going to be a deliberate and cynical attempt to try and create confusion, to challenge people inappropriately.”

That part sounds really familiar.

Come election day when GOP officials start blowing the whistle and challenging dubious voters, who likely will be getting paid to vote numerous times, you know what the reaction will be from most media outlets, notably the New York Times: Racism! Voter suppression!

And you know exactly that's what will happen nationwide. Then an army of Obama lawyers will be rushing for injunctions to keep polls open late. Mark it down.

In case the Obama team has a problem linking them with ACORN's voter registration fraud, maybe they can take it up with CNN.

A subsidiary of the group was paid $800,000 by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign to register voters for the 2008 primaries, and ACORN's political wing endorsed Obama back in February.

Seems pretty clear to me who's doing the lying here.

Poor Barry, now he's whining about distractions.

Obama replied: "first of all, 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 US Justice Department in having Illinois implement what was called the 'Motor Voter' law, to make sure that people could go to DMV’s and drivers’ license facilities to get registered.. It wasn’t being implemented. That was my relationship and is my relationship to ACORN.

Figures this stooge was involved in the Auto Fraudo registrations, another boondoggle. He then parrots Plouffe.

"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."

In the past? Where? Like when Al Gore's lawyers suppressed the military votes in Florida?

Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit for the links.