McCain: The ACORN Fables
In another attempt to paint groups and people with whom Obama has some connection in as unsavory a light as possible, McCain has gone after the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. And we've gone after him, for an ad accusing the group of "massive voter fraud" and for saying in the final presidential debate that ACORN is "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." Both claims are breathtakingly inaccurate. There's a huge difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud. And while ACORN, which hires part-time, $8-an-hour canvassers to go door-to-door and register people to vote, has had widespread problems with phony registrations invented by employees who don't want to work, the problem has never been that it sent people to the polls using bogus identities or to vote in any other fraudulent manner. Even the Republican prosecutor of the largest ACORN case to date said the shenanigans of ACORN workers were "not intended to permit illegal voting."
To be sure, Obama's interactions with the group have been greater than he has let on. But whether those ties can accurately be called "long and deep," as McCain's ad claims, is highly questionable. FactCheck.org. It seems to me that fraudulent voter registrations COULD lead to fraudulent voting, no? Neither should be tolerated.