Barack Obama's campaign fought back hard today against the ongoing accusations that the Illinois senator is connected to voter fraud.

Obama general counsel Robert Bauer wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking that a special prosecutor look into what role, if any, Justice Department and White House officials have had in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee's "systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud."
The Republican White House ticket has been hammering Obama on his connection to ACORN, a voter-registration group
being investigated by the FBI for voter fraud.
The special prosecutor on the case is Nora Dannehy, the same one investigating the removal of U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration.
Obama's camp says the same exact type of improper behavior that led to the firing of some of those U.S. attorneys several years ago - removals based on "improper political factors, including to affect the way they handled certain voter fraud or public corruption investigations and prosecutions" in 2006 - is being acted out now by Republican Party officials around the country.
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PD toolbar!"It has become clear, in these remaining weeks of the Presidential campaign, that 'the fact and law require' the Special Prosecutor's urgent attention to recent partisan Republican activities throughout the country," Bauer writes. "These activities seek both to suppress the vote and to unduly influence investigations and prosecutions through baseless allegations of vote fraud - exactly as in the 2006 election cycle."
Some of those activities cited included GOP claims of "fraud" by John McCain and Sarah Palin surrounding ACORN, and Republican lawmakers calling on the DOJ to launch an investigation into "these manufactured allegations of 'fraud'" involving ACORN. Bauer said those McCain-Pain surrogates who have sent such letters include: Sens. George Voinovich of Ohio, John Cornyn of Texas, and Reps. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
"Of course, the timing of the opening of this investigation and leaking of this information is damning, 19 days before the general election - and less than 24 hours after the Republican Presidential nominee announced the advent of fraud so pervasive that it threatened the very 'fabric of democracy,'" Bauer writes.
But the McCain-Palin attack against ACORN marches on.
Palin today said Obama hasn't been forthcoming about his ties to the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now, even though Obama has said he doesn't have any significant links to the group.
"You deserve to know,"
Palin told thousands surrounding her stage in a suburban community park in Ohio. "This group needs to learn that you here in Ohio won't let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State."
In a press call today, Bauer said ACORN is not "an agent of this campaign, they did not perform registration services for this campaign."
McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis told reporters Friday that he sent a letter to Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, encouraging them to join a group called "The Honest and Open Election Committee" organized by the McCain campaign.
"We've gotten little to no response back from the Obama campaign on this issue," Davis said, adding that yocan't just "blow off" these allegations as a "cynical ploy to reduce voter turnout," "like David Plouffe did."
The ACORN allegations are "not anything less than disturbing," Davis added.
To add to the ACORN debacle,
AP reports that the group has another nasty issue on its agenda when its board of directors meets in New Orleans this weekend: missing money.
ACORN leaders are locked in a legal dispute stemming from allegations that the brother of the group's founder misappropriated nearly $1 million of the nonprofit's money several years ago. The embezzlement case has spawned a lawsuit and set off a power struggle inside ACORN.
Bertha Lewis, ACORN's interim chief organizer, called the lawsuit "a distraction from us marshaling our forces to deal with the Republican right-wing attacks" over ACORN's voter registration.
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