Barack Obama’s presidential campaign accused rival John McCain of using a false crusade against voter fraud to suppress legitimate votes in a growing spat over ballots ahead of the Nov. 4 poll.
The Obama campaign’s top lawyer, Bob Bauer, accused Republicans on Friday of recklessly “plotting” to suppress legitimate votes and to “sow confusion and harass voters and complicate the process for millions of Americans.”
An estimated 9 million new voters have registered for the hotly contested presidential election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one.
The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warned that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public’s faith in democracy.
Republicans have launched a slew of lawsuits aimed at preventing false ballots from being cast, the most high-profile an attempt to challenge as many as 200,000 of the more than 600,000 new registrations submitted in the battleground state of Ohio.
That challenge was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling on Friday.
Republicans point to investigations into whether liberal-leaning community organization ACORN had submitted false voter registrations as proof of “rampant” and widespread fraud which McCain said on Wednesday could be “destroying the fabric of democracy.”
But Bauer told reporters the fact that senior officials from the Justice Department leaked news of an FBI investigation into ACORN a day after McCain lobbed that attack shows that “an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics” may have returned.
He said the matter should be turned over to a special prosecutor currently investigating allegations that US attorneys were fired by the Bush administration for failing to bring indictments of voter fraud and public corruption in the leadup to the 2006 election.
The McCain campaign dismissed Bauer’s accusations as an “absurd” attempt to “criminalize political discourse.”
“In case Senator Obama’s lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls ‘recent partisan Republican activities’ are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates,” spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement.
Gallup’s latest national tracking poll of registered voters had Obama at 50 percent to 43 percent for McCain. Polls of battleground states by CNN and Time on Wednesday showed Obama up five points among registered voters in Colorado, by eight in Florida, by three in Missouri and by a yawning 10 points in Virginia.
Obama was set to address a rally in St. Louis, Missouri, yesterday afternoon after spending the night at home in Chicago.
McCain had events scheduled in North Carolina and Virginia yesterday, while his running mate, Sarah Palin, was set to fly to New York to appear on the comedy show Saturday Night Live, which has seen its popularity spike with a series of sketches mimicking the Alaska governor.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in