The GOP is making a big deal out of the fact that Barack Obama represented ACORN in a 1995 lawsuit against the State of Illinois to compel the state to provide voter registration assistance at DMV offices. This innocuous association has metastasized into the lie that Obama taught ACORN to commit voter fraud.

The irony is that ACORN and Obama went to court to make sure that ACORN wouldn’t have to register so many voters. ACORN just wanted the State of Illinois to help voters register at the DMV. Far from clamoring for the opportunity to fradulently register cartoon characters, ACORN wanted the state of Illinois to shoulder its share of the burden. 

Obama was part of a team of attorneys who represented the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995 for failing to implement a federal law designed to make it easier for the poor and others to register as voters.

A federal court ordered the state to implement the law. [AP, 2007]

ACORN’s sister organization, Project Vote, lays out the argument in greater here: Federal law requires that all DMV offices and social service offices provide voter registration assistance. Many states ignore the law, even to this day. 

During a conference call last week, ACORN spokesman Nathan Henderson-James stressed that ACORN would rather not do voter registration. As its name suggests, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now would rather be organizing people in their communities instead of helping them fill out paperwork. Henderson-James believes that ACORN wouldn’t need to register voters if the federal government enforced the law.