The Democrats’ preemptive strike has been delivered from Barack Obama’s legal team this time around.
Obama’s lawyers are demanding that the Department of Justice to investigate GOP presidential candidate John McCain, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and other Republican politicians because they have drawn attention to ACORN’s fraudulent activities on the campaign trail.
“Agents of the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee have been striking locally at election officials and boards around the country, sowing confusion and seeking through baseless legal maneuvers to discourage and harass voters and impede their exercise of their right to vote,” Obama for America’s General Counsel Robert Bauer said on a conference call with reporters last week.
Obama’s legal team is specifically taking issue with McCain’s remarks that ACORN’s voter registration fraud “threatens the fabric of our Democracy” and Palin’s assessment that there is a “choice between a candidate who won’t disavow a group committing voter fraud and a leader who won’t tolerate voter fraud.”
Bauer made his request for an investigation in a letter to the DOJ that said McCain and Palin were “sensationalizing this message by repeating it at the state and local level in violation of the law to harass voters and impede their exercise of their rights.”
Former Republican Sens. John Danforth of Missouri and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire are chairing an “Honest and Open Elections Committee” on behalf of the McCain campaign to take action against voter fraud. The GOP has asked Obama to participate, but the Democrats have declined.
Bauer said the committee will impede people from voting rather than safeguarding against voter fraud.
“They get a United States senator who's the head of the Republican ticket doing everything he can to make it harder for them to be -- to vote, making it harder for them to get through the lines quickly, making it harder for them to cast their ballot without impediment, without harassment, without humiliation,” Bauer told reporters.