CHICAGO (AFP) – John McCain and Barack Obama's campaigns swapped accusations of rampant and widespread voter fraud Friday as legal battles over who ought be allowed to cast a ballot ensnared the race to the White House.
An estimated nine million new voters have registered for the hotly contested November 4 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.
The Obama campaign's top lawyer, Bob Bauer, accused Republicans of recklessly "plotting" to suppress legitimate votes and to "sow confusion and harass voters and complicate the process for millions of Americans."
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 Friday.
Republicans said their fears were confirmed when investigations were launched last week in several states in the wake of revelations that the liberal-leaning community organization ACORN had submitted false voter registrations.
McCain said Wednesday the group is "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
A day later, senior officials at the Justice Department told reporters that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating whether ACORN had systematically encouraged the creation of false registrations forms.
Bauer said the leak was a "brazen" violation of department policy not to discuss ongoing investigations, and accused Republicans of once again politicizing the Justice Department in an attempt to influence the election and "create an environment of fear and intimidation."
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.
"What we're seeing is an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics," Bauer said. "Nobody really expects thousands of Mickey Mouses or Tony Romos to show up at the poll and vote this fall."
ACORN, which has been a driving force in increasing voter registration among younger and low-income minorities, dismissed allegations of wrongdoing and said it was responsible for alerting election officials to the bulk of the suspect registrations.
ACORN said a standard internal review found that as many as 13,000 of the 1.3 million new voter registrations it collected could be false and blamed canvassers who were trying to get paid without bothering to sign up new voters.
To affect the election, those records would have to pass a screening process and people would have to succeed in voting with those false names, which is a serious crime and incredibly rare.
A 2007 study by the New York University School of law concluded that "it is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."
But McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said even a small margin of voter fraud could change such a close election, particularly given that several states picked the president by a margin one percent or less in the past two elections.
"I don't think anybody at this time has any sense of how big this fraud has been," he told reporters on a conference call.
"It only takes a very little to undermine the public's credibility that these elections were honest, open and fair."
Davis also attacked Obama for failing to disclose his full relationship with the group - something McCain's running mate Sarah Palin highlighted on the campaign trail Friday - and said the scandal has cast a "cloud of suspicion" over the election.
"We think John McCain is going to win this election and we don't want a pall cast on it and I hope that the Obama people the day after the election understand we did everything we could to shine that the bright light of public scrutiny on all these issues," Davis added.
MIAMI – Republican John McCain told crowds in this battleground state Friday to "hold onto your wallet" because his Democratic presidential rival, Barack Obama, has talked of spreading the wealth around. McCain suggested voters could not rely on Obama's promise of tax cuts while returning once more to the story of Joe the Plumber, a regular part of McCain's speeches since the Arizona senator first mentioned the tax concerns of Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher in Wednesday's presidential debate.
Florida was McCain's first stop on a two-day tour through states, including North Carolina and Virginia, where he has surrendered his lead in polls during the past month despite their history of supporting Republican presidential candidates.
Last Sunday as Obama walked through Wurzelbacher's Holland, Ohio, neighborhood, Wurzelbacher asked him whether his plan to increase taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year would impede his ability to buy the plumbing company where he works. Obama replied that those making over $250,000 would be taxed more but that money would be returned to the middle-class through tax cuts. "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said.
The McCain campaign seized on that remark.
"When politicians talk about taking your money and spreading it around, you'd better hold onto your wallet," McCain told a Miami rally crowd. "Sen. Obama claims that he want to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes for the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes. That's not a tax cut; that's welfare."
McCain, who bestowed the nickname "Joe the Plumber" on Wurzelbacher during the debate, claimed Friday that "the response from Sen. Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe."
In fact, Obama, his running mate Joe Biden and their campaign have barely mentioned Wurzelbacher. Obama and Biden both attacked McCain for portraying Wurzelbacher as representative of most blue-collar workers, asking how many plumbers make $250,000 a year.
Nonetheless, McCain elicited boos from a fired-up crowd when he said of Wurzelbacher, "People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn't ask Sen. Obama to come to his house. He wasn't recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Sen. Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks."
News organizations eager to learn more about Wurzelbacher did besiege his house Thursday and discovered and reported that he lacks a plumbing license and owes back taxes.
During an appearance Friday evening in the Space Coast community of Melbourne, McCain revealed that he had spoken to Wurzelbacher for the first time earlier in the day.
"I want to tell you his spirits are good and he's a tough guy. He's what small business people all over this country are about," McCain said to cheers. He encouraged the crowd, "Send Joe an e-mail and tell him you're with him."
Despite his criticism of the Democratic ticket, McCain himself has kept Wurzelbacher in the spotlight, mentioning him repeatedly in his appearances Thursday and then renewing the topic on Friday.
"Joe's the man!" McCain said Thursday during a rally in Philadelphia's suburbs.
Later, both McCain and Obama gave traditionally lighthearted speeches to the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Fund Dinner in New York. McCain made light of questions about the plumber's income with a joke at his own expense.
"What they don't know is that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses," said the senator, who owns that many homes and investment properties with his wife, Cindy.
In Florida, McCain got a boost from his close friend Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee who now is a political independent. Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket, still has a strong following among Jews living in Florida and he came along to introduce McCain in Miami.
Later, in Melbourne, McCain reached out to the aerospace industry by pledging to spend $2 billion on aerospace projects during the period between retirement of the space shuttle and the launch of its replacment.
Noting the Chinese recently made their first space walk, he said: "We've got competition. We've got to stay ahead. We will be the first nation to Mars."
Recent surveys have shown Obama opening as much as a 5-point lead in Florida. The two are essentially tied in North Carolina, but Obama has opened a nearly double-digit lead in Virginia.
The state findings were echoed in an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Friday.
It showed people's regard for the Republican presidential nominee has deteriorated across the board since September, with McCain losing ground in how favorably he's seen and in a long list of personal qualities voters seek in White House contenders. Meanwhile, perceptions of Obama have improved or remained steady.
Retired Gen. Colin Powell, once considered a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), now may endorse his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), according to Republican sources. But an air of mystery surrounds Powell's planned live appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," and no one is sure what he will say.
Powell’s unassailable national security credentials could sway voters who are vacillating about whether Obama is ready to be commander in chief, and his endorsement of the Illinois senator would make a national security emphasis by McCain in the election's closing days extremely difficult.
Powell, 71, a professional soldier for 35 years, has advised the last three Republican presidents.
The general’s camp is being coy about what he might or might not say on Sunday. But some McCain advisers suspect, without being sure, that Powell will endorse Obama.
“It’s going to make a lot of news, and certainly be personally embarrassing for McCain," a McCain official said. "It comes at a time when we need momentum, and it would create momentum against us.”
Powell, a four-star Army general, was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when George H.W. Bush was president; and President George W. Bush’s first secretary of State,
Powell has consulted with both Obama and McCain, and the general’s camp has indicated in the past that he would not endorse.
On “Meet the Press” in June 2007, Powell said: “I’ve met with Sen. Obama twice. I’ve been around this town a long time, and I know everybody who is running for office, and I make myself available to talk about foreign policy matters and military matters with whoever wishes to chat with me."
Asked by moderator Tim Russert if he would come back into government, Powell said: “I would not rule it out. I’m not at all interested in political life, if you mean elected political life. That is unchanged. But I always keep my, my eyes open and my ears open to requests for service.”
Asked about an endorsement, he said: “It’s too early.”
NBC’s ‘Andrea Mitchell broke the news of Powell’s surprise “Meet the Press” appearance on the “Today” show Friday.
“In what promises to be a dramatic moment Sunday, Colin Powell — a lion of the Republican establishment, whom McCain and Obama both have courted for months — will finally speak out on a variety of issues, appearing exclusively on ‘Meet the Press,’” Mitchell said. “Of course, years ago, he was talked about as the possible first … African-American nominee of a major party.”
Last week, Powell appeared as a character witness at Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) corruption trial, telling jurors that Stevens is someone he trusts completely. "As we say in the infantry, this is a guy you take on a long patrol," Powell said.
By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 16, 12:45 PM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suspected U.S. missile strike killed a purported foreign militant Thursday in a Pakistani tribal area considered a haven for the Taliban and al-Qaida, while a suicide bombing left four security personnel dead, officials said.
The missile strike in South Waziristan hit a house overrun with foreign and Pakistani militants since last year, when its owner fled the remote, forested area considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, officials said.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials told The Associated Press that reports from informants and field agents suggested one foreign militant died and another foreigner was injured. Asked if any al-Qaida leaders had been hit, the officials said Arabs were living in the house but the identities of the victims were not yet clear.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media publicly.
A local resident, Javed Mehsud, said he saw a number of unmanned planes in the sky before and after three explosions destroyed the house in the village of Tapargai.
"I could see smoke rising but nobody dared go to look because the spy planes were still over our area," he said by telephone.
U.S. military and CIA drones that patrol the frontier region are believed to have carried out at least a dozen missile strikes against suspected militant targets since August.
The U.S. rarely confirms or denies involvement in the attacks, which have intensified amid frustration in Washington at the escalating insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.
All of the recent strikes, as well as a highly unusual raid by helicopter-borne commandos, have been in the regions of North and South Waziristan, key strongholds for Islamic militants fighting on both sides of the border.
With Pakistan's army also stepping up operations in its volatile northwest, militants have responded with a sequence of bloody suicide attacks, including last month's truck bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel.
Thursday's blast wrecked a police station in Swat, a picturesque valley where fighting has raged for more than a year.
Police said insurgents opened fire on their station in Mingora, Swat's main town, after midnight with guns and rockets before the bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle next to the police compound.
District police chief Dilawar Bangash said one officer and three paramilitary troops died and 26 people were injured, many of them seriously.
Meanwhile, security forces backed by tanks and warplanes opened a second major front in the nearby tribal region of Bajur in August.
Seven militants were killed Thursday in Bajur by plane and helicopter gunships attacks, said Jamil Khan, the No. 2 ranking government representative in Bajur.
However, there are doubts about whether Pakistani security forces can defeat the militants without inflicting heavy civilian casualties and eroding support for the country's pro-Western government.
Western governments worry that al-Qaida is regrouping in the border zone and that would-be terrorists from Europe and North America are going there to receive training.
Pakistan's political and security problems are deterring foreign investment and exacerbating the country's economic problems, which include runaway inflation and slowing growth.
On Thursday, the Pakistani rupee dropped to more than 82 to the dollar, continuing a slide that has seen it lose more than 30 percent of its value this year.
Also Thursday, prison guards seized grenades and handguns from Islamist militants after a protest at a jail in Dir in volatile northwestern Pakistan. Authorities said inmates were protesting poor food and a lack of decent space for meeting visitors.
___
Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Ashraf Khan in Karachi and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.
CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida, which gets its money from the drug trade in Afghanistan and sympathizers in the oil-rich Gulf states, is likely to escape the effects of the global financial crisis.
One reason is that al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists have been forced to avoid using banks, relying instead on less-efficient ways to move their cash around the world, analysts said.
Those methods include hand-carrying money and using informal transfer networks called hawalas.
While escaping official scrutiny, those networks also are slower and less efficient — and thus could hamper efforts to finance attacks.
"It would be inconceivable that large amounts of (terror-linked) money would transit through the formal financial system, because of all the controls," said Ibrahim Warde, an expert on terrorist financing at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
The question of where al-Qaida and its sympathizers get their money has long been crucial to efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. A 2004 U.S. investigation found that banks in the United Arab Emirates had unwittingly handled most of the $400,000 spent on the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the attacks, the U.S. made an aggressive push to use law enforcement techniques to disrupt terrorist financing networks and worked with allies to improve their own financial and regulatory institutions.
Al-Qaida and the Taliban have benefited from the drug trade's growth in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and the booming business likely will not be affected by the global slowdown.
Opium cultivation has fallen slightly this year but is still about 20 times higher than in 2001, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
Former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who recently consulted with U.S. and NATO officials in Afghanistan, issued a report in July saying al-Qaida and the Taliban "are principally funded by what some estimate as $800 million a year derived from the huge $4 billion annual illegal production and export of opium/heroin and cannabis."
In addition, wealthy donors and Islamic charities in the oil-rich Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, continue to be "one of the most significant sources of illicit financing for terrorism," said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department terrorism expert now with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Saudis have long insisted they are doing all they can to rein in terror financing, and U.S. officials have praised their efforts.
But, under a system known as "zakat," wealthy Muslims are required to give a portion of their money to the poor. Much of that is given to Islamic charities, and U.S. officials say at least some of that money continues to be channeled to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have benefited in the last two years from a surge in oil prices from about $60 per barrel at the beginning of 2007 to more than $145 per barrel in the middle of this year. Prices have fallen almost 50 percent in the last few months in response to the global financial crisis, but not before generating hundreds of billions of dollars to oil producers.
Levitt said the covert nature of terrorist financing makes it difficult to determine a direct correlation between rising oil revenues and the amount of cash al-Qaida has on hand.
But "it stands to reason that if there is more oil revenue, there will be more revenue for all kinds of things licit and illicit," he said.
Al-Qaida and other extremist groups have gloated in recent weeks about the West's financial woes, painting the crisis as either divine punishment for supposed wrongs or the last gasps of a dying empire.
An American al-Qaida member, Adam Gadahn, said in a video released this month that "the enemies of Islam are facing a crushing defeat, which is beginning to manifest itself in the expanding crisis their economy is experiencing."
Members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas and hard-liners in Iran also have cheered the economic turmoil.
Iran is thought to be the last major government supporter of terrorist groups. The majority Shiite country is not believed to finance al-Qaida, a Sunni group, but does support the militant Hezbollah faction in Lebanon, which engaged in war with Israel in 2006.
Iran denies the financial crisis is hurting its economy, but falling oil prices will cut into its crude sales, which make up 80 percent of the government budget. It is unclear how that will affect support to Hezbollah.
Despite the apparent glut in potential money for terrorist groups, Levitt believes anti-terrorism efforts have hampered their ability to transfer money where they want.
Levitt points to several messages from senior al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan intercepted by the U.S. or released by the terrorist group itself, asking Gulf supporters for more help because of funding shortfalls. The al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, appeared in a May 2007 video saying "the mujahedeen of the Taliban number in the thousands, but they lack funds."
But Warde and other analysts are not convinced al-Qaida is really hurting.
"Anybody who is involved in fundraising of any sort is never going to say we have enough money, so I think it is a silly argument to say that because there is this intercept ... it is proof that everything we've done has succeeded brilliantly," said Warde.
Thu Oct 16, 2:09 PM ET
“Senator Obama didn't tell the whole truth about his relationship with Mr. Ayers last night,” McCain said in an interview on Fox News. “They served together on boards, together they made a decision to give $230,000 to ACORN, the group that is now being involved in what could be one the great voter frauds in American history.”
The Arizona senator also accused Obama of not fully explaining his association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
“He certainly didn't reveal all of his relationships with ACORN, which his campaign paid $832,000 in the primaries to a front group for ACORN,” McCain said. “And you know what it was described as? ‘Lighting and site preparation' Give me a break.”
“But we know this, that there are allegations of voter fraud by ACORN in every single battleground state. This is a widespread operation. Now we laugh when Mickey Mouse is registered to vote, but we don't laugh, we don't laugh, when there are voter rolls filled up with names that there is no authentication whatsoever. This could violate the most fundamental aspect of democracy and that is a free and fair election.
Pressed on his associations with Ayers and ACORN during the debate, the Illinois senator chided McCain for making the affiliations the “centerpiece” of his campaign.
Of Ayers, Obama said, “Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago, he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.”
“Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.”
The Illinois Democrat also dismissed any alleged tie to charges of voter registration fraud conducted by ACORN.
“It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved,” Obama said. “The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 14, 6:04 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama and John McCain will both pursue the image of a strong leader in troublesome economic times as they meet Wednesday night for their third and final presidential debate.
Their face-off comes as Obama widens his lead in typically Democratic states and campaigns with an air of optimism about his prospects, while McCain seeks a way to gain ground and finds himself defending traditionally Republican states with less than three weeks left in the race.
"We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change. ... As president I intend to act, quickly and decisively," McCain said Tuesday in battleground Pennsylvania. There, he unveiled new economic proposals and previewed a possible debate strategy: argue that he would be different from Bush and better than Obama.
One day earlier in swing state Ohio, Obama outlined his own economic plan and showed off his own pitch. He suggested that McCain was more of the same and that putting a Democrat in charge was the only way to fix the economy's woes: "It will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington. It will take a real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years."
The economic crisis has transformed the campaign over the past month. Obama has built leads nationally and in key states as the turmoil has returned the nation's focus to the unpopular Bush's policies. Now, the burden is on McCain to try to reverse his slide.
Wednesday's debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is slated to focus entirely on the economy and domestic policy. The candidates will be seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS.
Both presidential contenders have used the previous debates to make and remake their main campaign points, frequently sidestepping direct questions such as how they would have to scale back their long lists of campaign promises in light of the economic crisis.
Advisers for each candidate say he will use the final debate to lay out his vision for the country and promote his economic policies while drawing differences with his opponent.
Character attacks — subtle or not — also could occur.
Obama has increasingly labeled McCain "erratic" and "lurching" during the economic crisis. The words suggest unsteadiness on the part of the 72-year-old four-term senator.
The Democrat's campaign released a pre-debate memo Tuesday that argued McCain was "ill-equipped" to lead during this crisis, saying his response "has careened, sometimes changing course within the span of a single day."
McCain has accused Obama of lying about his association with 1960s radical William Ayers, a founder of the violent anti-war group Weather Underground. Obama was 8 years old when the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for a series of bombings. Now a professor in Chicago, Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session at his home for Obama as he prepared to run for the state Senate. Later, the two worked with the same charity and social-service organizations in Chicago.
McCain has softened that attack on the campaign trail in recent days, though not in his TV and radio ads.
His campaign assailed Obama's on Tuesday for its "failure to explain how it is that Barack Obama carried on a decade-long friendship with a man who sought to topple the U.S. government through violence."
McCain has solidified and energized his base of Republican voters, but he has problems with his support among swing-voting independents. A recent Associated Press-GfK Poll showed them divided about evenly between the two candidates. That's a problem for McCain because Democrats decisively outnumber Republicans this year.
Compounding McCain's woes, new Quinnipiac University polls released Tuesday showed Obama leading by double digits in two states that Democrat John Kerry won four years ago and that McCain is trying to put in his column this year — Wisconsin and Minnesota — as well as in Michigan, which McCain abandoned earlier this month.
Also, McCain running mate Sarah Palin is being dispatched to campaign in usually Republican states such as Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia to shore up GOP support. However, McCain campaigned Tuesday in Pennsylvania and was to return there Thursday as well, a signal of the campaign's sustained effort to try to pick off that Kerry-won state offering a whopping 21 electoral votes.
To win, 270 are required.
McCain's strategy relies on keeping Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana and Ohio in the GOP column along with 21 other Bush-won states that aren't seriously contested. That would give McCain 260 electoral votes. He would then have to win 10 more votes from a pool of contested states won by Bush (Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico) and Kerry (New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania).
Polls show Obama leading or tied in all of those.
