LISTEN HERE: Obama camp: GOP trying to intimidate voters
(CNN) – After days of efforts by the McCain campaign to link Sen. Barack Obama to embattled community organizing group ACORN, the Obama campaign responded Tuesday by accusing the McCain camp and the Republican Party of trying to intimidate voters and sow the seeds of confusion as the historic presidential election approaches.
“They seem to be setting up a strategy here to make it harder to vote,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters on a conference call. “To create a situation where voters don’t have confidence in the system.”
“They are going to try to raise questions. You know, cry out and raise questions about fraud and try and create a smokescreen out there to confuse voters and perhaps to give cover to some of the activities they’re going to be undertaking over the next three weeks.”
The Obama campaign also took issue with the McCain camp’s recent efforts to link Obama to ACORN, whose voter registration efforts have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks. “We have our own registration effort,” the Obama campaign’s general counsel Bob Bauer said on the call. “We register our own voters under our own standards and we do so successfully.”
Bauer also denied that the campaign ever paid Citizens Services, Inc., an entity affiliated with ACORN, to register voters. “We have never paid ACORN a penny for registration purposes,” said Bauer.
The campaign’s payments to Citizens Services, Inc. “were for canvassing in some of the larger primary states back in the spring – Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania,” Plouffe said. “It was to augment our grassroots organization.”
