For some reason ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizers for Reform, and the Obama connection does not resonate with most voters. Mention, “the chickens have come home to roost” and the immediate reaction is Rev. Wright, or mention, “bitter voters clinging to their guns and religion” and Pennsylvania immediately pops up. Now, mention Obama and ACORN and the sound you hear is {{crickets}} and the look received is blank stares.

Too many of us (myself included) have been too glib about Obama and his experience as a community organizer. One should consider that this is stealth experience that could blow up on election day and in the faces of the McCain/Palin ticket and its supporters.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

It isn’t as if Obama’s hands are clean or that he hasn’t used voter registration to manipulate an election before. Does the name Alice Palmer sound familiar? That’s the name of Obama’s first political opponent.

He used the voter registration rolls to have her disqualified and ended up winning his first “election” because he ran unopposed. ACORN is just another manipulation tool of the Obama campaign.

It isn’t as if there hasn’t been discussion about ACORN, there has. O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have repeatedly brought the name of the organization up. There are any number of savvy sites that have brought ACORN’s activities into question. We need to keep repeating the Obama/ACORN connection until it starts to resonate and stick in the minds of the voters. We need to remember that “Chicago style politics” is conducted by thugs masquerading as politicians you can trust!

Past as Prologue

In the past they have been tied to illegal voter registration in at least three states. These three states are Washington, Missouri, and North Carolina.

They were fined $25,000 and promised to instruct their paid canvassers on the state election requirements. In 2005, according to the complaint filed with Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, the voter fraud involved the registration of homeless people. ACORN agrees they break the law but said “no one told us”. In 2006, in Kansas City, MO, five low-level operatives were charged with voter fraud. Four pleaded guilty, with the fifth person released because it came out that an ACORN worker had stolen her identity.

In Missouri, the voter fraud case was tied to at least one campaign, the senate campaign of Claire McCaskill.

In 2004, the Washington state Secretary of State described ACORN’s illegal activity as the “largest case of voter fraud in the state’s history”.

Present

ACORN is being investigated after several Municipal Clerks discovered fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications.

The majority of the fraudulent and duplicate applications are coming from the liberal ACORN group based in Detroit, Michigan, which now has ACORN investigating the problem once again as well as the Secretary of State’s Office turning over some of those applications to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

And it isn’t just Detroit that has found fraud being perpetrated by ACORN.

In recent years, ACORN’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Washington, with some employees convicted of voter fraud.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is also reporting that the Obama campaign has been forced to amend a report to reflect over $800,000 of previously unreported ACORN donations to his campaign.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The Ohio primary was March 4. According to FEC records, the Obama campaign paid Citizens Services Inc. $832,598.29, from Feb. 25 to May 17.

A Trib analysis of campaign finance reports showed Obama paid CSI for services that stood out as unusual. For example, CSI received payments of $63,000 and $75,000 for advance work. Excluding the large payments to CSI, the average amount the Obama campaign spent with other organizations was $558.82 per check on more than 1,200 entries classified as advance work.

Citizens Services Inc. is headquartered at the same address as ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. Citizens Services was established in December 2004 to “assist persons and organizations who advance the interests of low- and moderate-income people,” according to paperwork filed in Louisiana. In a 2006 ACORN publication, Citizen Services Inc. is described as “ACORN’s campaign services entity.”

“ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain,” Terry claimed. “Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama’s political gain.”

Money flows back and forth between ACORN, Citizens Services Inc., Project Vote and Communities Voting Together. ACORN posts job ads for Citizens Services and Project Vote. Communities Voting Together contributed $60,000 to Citizens Services Inc., for example, in November 2005, according to a posting on CampaignMoney.com. Project Vote has hired ACORN and CSI as its highest paid contractors, paying ACORN $4,649,037 in 2006 and CSI $779,016 in 2006, according to Terry of the Consumers Rights League.