From Little ACORNS

Frankly with the way things are going, forget the Ayers attacks, I'm surprised that Republicans have not made more political hay out of the ACORN controversy. I suppose it could be because, well, he was a lead speaker at an ACORN-sponsored event back in 2006, but McCain is running this ad.

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.

O"There is an ACORN organization in Chicago," Obama continued. "They have been active. As an elected official, I've had interactions with them. But they are not advising our campaign. We've got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don't need ACORN's help...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."