Authorities raid a Las Vegas, Nevada, ACORN office after allegations of voter fraud.

(CNN) — The Roman Catholic Church is cutting off funds to the community organizing group ACORN, citing complaints over its voter registration drives in the November 4 election as part of the reason.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development froze its contributions to the group in June amid allegations that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million.

This week, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore, Maryland, the campaign's chairman said it was cutting all ties with the group.

"We simply had too many questions and concerns to permit further CCHD funding of ACORN groups," Roger Morin, the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, Louisiana, told his colleagues in a letter to the conference.

The CCHD has donated more than $7.3 million to ACORN-related projects over the past decade, including $40,000 to an ACORN chapter in Las Vegas, Nevada, that was raided before the election in an investigation into fraudulent voter registration forms. Among other questionable documents, the ACORN chapter submitted registration forms for members of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

ACORN contends it has tried to help head off election fraud.

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ACORN members rally in Washington last March.

(CNN) — So today I got a letter sent to all Catholic Bishops in the U.S. announcing that due to serious problems at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is suspending all funds to ACORN.

It’s significant because the Catholic Church in the U.S. has given $7.3 million dollars to ACORN projects over the past decade. Just last year, U.S. Catholics gave more than a million dollars to ACORN. And it appears some of that money filtered down to the ACORN office in Las Vegas that made headlines trying to register the Dallas Cowboys football team to vote in Nevada.

The problem for the Catholics is two fold:

1. The Catholic Church is concerned about its own tax exempt status being involved in a group that is now so deeply involved in political support of one candidate.
2. The Catholic Church says questions have arisen about ACORNS financial management, fiscal transparency and accountability.

So, of course, I immediately called ACORN’s spokesperson Scott Levenson, one of many public relations specialists brought on by ACORN to fight all this bad press. And here is Scott’s response to the question about the Catholic bishop’s freezing ACORN funding:

“The facts are wrong and we will no longer participate in a Drew Griffin hatchet job against ACORN.”

Less than an hour later, after our editorial director made a call to ACORN asking if this really was their response, we got this from another public relations specialist ACORN brought on to fight the bad publicity:

“ACORN is grateful to have received CCHD funding for many years, and proud that CCHD has enabled us to help our low income constituency achieve the American Dream. We know that CCHD is reviewing their current funding, and we are in discussions with them about continuing their support.” Steve Kest, ACORN Executive Director

The tension over at ACORN must be so thick you could cut it with a …well, I guess a hatchet.

Representatives of ACORN held a press conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this week.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A Pennsylvania judge rejected state Republican party demands to obtain lists of voters registered by the community group known as ACORN.

The state GOP accuses ACORN of widespread fraud in helping register some 140,000 voters in Pennsylvania.

ACORN welcomed the ruling against the Pennsylvania state Republican party, spokeswoman Ali Kronley told CNN Friday, turning the GOP charges back against the party.

"This kind of manufactured crisis is masking their own efforts to keep voters from voting," she said.

The top lawyer representing the Pennsylvania Republicans said they were "disappointed."

But, Heather Heidelbaugh added, the wording of the court order indicates the judge thinks ACORN has problems.

The judge said he would favor "expedited discovery" should someone want to pursue "evidence that in Pennsylvania practices of ACORN Outreach Workers can encourage duplicate voter registration."

The case hinges on allegations that ACORN canvassers are not trained properly, leading to improper voter registrations.

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ACORN Executive Director Steve Kest announces the group's lawsuits and television spot Wednesday.

(CNN) — Community organization ACORN is fighting back after allegations that it is trying to register voters fraudulently and to swing the presidential election for Democrat Barack Obama.

The group this week released a 30-second TV ad calling on Republican candidate John McCain to stop "attempts at voter suppression across the country."

It also said it was filing several lawsuits around the country to halt the alleged suppression.

Republicans have "challenged election officials and they've filed lawsuits in an effort to thwart these new voters — our citizens — from casting their votes on Tuesday. This effort must be stopped," Delaware ACORN board member Hugh Alleyne said during a news conference Wednesday.

ACORN contends it tried to help authorities head off election fraud.

"In nearly every case that has been reported, it was ACORN that discovered the bad forms and called them to the attention of election authorities, putting the forms in a package that identified them in writing as suspicious, encouraging election officials to investigate, and offering to help with prosecutions," ACORN said in an October 9 release.

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ACORN''s new TV ad says 'not this time' to alleged voter suppression and intimidation.

(CNN) — Embattled community organizing group ACORN is taking the offensive with a new ad targeting Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party, accusing the GOP presidential nominee and his party of attempting to intimidate voters.

The new ad, entitled “Not This Time,” is shot in black-and-white and features an African-American man who ages before viewers’ eyes. “It happened to him in 1960, 1965, and again in 2000. He was intimidated so he wouldn’t vote,” an announcer says as a traditional Southern hymn plays. “Tell John McCain: not this time,” the announcer says as the ad ends, and the phone number of McCain’s Capitol Hill Senate office appears on screen.

“Senator McCain needs to instruct his operatives and supporters to cease and desist. Nothing is more important to the fabric of our democracy than protecting the rights of American voters,” said Steve Kest, ACORN’s executive director, at a Wednesday press conference where the ad was released.

In a statement issued Wednesday about lawsuits recently filed in New Mexico, Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee’s Chief Counsel, said the only voter suppression has been that directed at false voter registrations.

The McCain campaign also swiftly responded to the allegations of suppression in the new ad. “I am not sure how any allegation relating to what might have happened 48 years ago has any relevance to the McCain campaign,” former GOP senator John Danforth, the co-chair of the McCain campaign’s Honest and Open Election Committee, said on a conference call with reporters. “Our response is that any kind of intimidation or suppression is illegal, it’s reprehensible, it is condemned by the McCain campaign, it has been condemned specifically by Sen. McCain himself.”

ACORN says the new ad will air 48 times on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The group said it is hoping to raise enough money to continue to air the ad through Election Day.

Concerns about voter registration forms submitted by ACORN in Indiana have led Indiana's Secretary of State to ask for a criminal investigation of the group.

(CNN) — Indiana's secretary of state has requested a criminal investigation into the embattled community organizing group ACORN, which is accused of submitting hundreds of bogus voter registration forms in northern Lake County.

Watch: Drew Griffin on ACORN in Indiana

The request is based on Secretary of State Todd Rokita's preliminary examination and analysis of 1,438 questionable voter registration applications ACORN submitted in the county, which includes the city of Gary. Rokita, a Republican, has concluded there is "significant, credible evidence" that ACORN violated Indiana and federal law.

Read: Rokita's request to prosecutors

"This is a fraud perpetrated on all of the people of Indiana, because fraudulent registrations are the first step in diluting the voice of honest voters and rendering an inaccurate tally on Election Day," Rokita wrote in his request to state and federal law enforcement officials.

In response, ACORN said, "We believe the law requires us to turn in every card."

The group, which is the target of intense GOP attacks, says it flagged questionable registration forms collected by its canvassers. The group has been criticized for submitting phony forms in several states — many of which are considered battlegrounds in next week's presidential election.

But Rokita said ACORN should have turned the documents over to law enforcement, not registrars.

"Complying with the law to submit legitimate applications does not allow ACORN officials to evade the law against knowingly submitting fraudulent applications," Rokita wrote.

ACORN said Rokita "appears to have changed his opinion on this question two weeks before the election."

The group said it detailed its quality control procedures and said that election officials in Lake County had refused the group's documentation flagging applications the group considered questionable and refused to meet with ACORN to discuss how to handle the applications ACORN had flagged. It also said it looked forward to cooperating with Indiana authorities in prosecuting employees "who have defrauded us" by filing faked forms.

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The Obama campaign called Monday for an internal DOJ investigation in the wake of increased federal scrutiny of ACORN, a community organizing group.

(CNN) – Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer called Monday for a government investigation into whether the White House is working with John McCain’s campaign to raise allegations of voter fraud, telling reporters attorney general Michael Mukasey needed to step in to ensure investigators are "not misused for partisan purposes."

Read: Bauer's Monday letter to Mukasey

A special prosecutor is investigating similar charges against the Justice Department over the controversial dismissals of several U.S. attorneys, including David Yglesias, who said he was fired for resisting pressure to prosecute ACORN, the embattled community group at the center of a sustained Republican campaign alleging voter fraud among supporters of Barack Obama.

Bauer spoke with reporters on a Monday conference call days after news broke that the FBI is taking a closer look at ACORN. Last week, he said the special prosecutor’s mandate should be expanded to include the rising government scrutiny of the community group.

Listen: Obama lawyer calls for an internal DOJ investigation

On Monday, he sent a letter to Mukasey saying said that the inspector general needed to investigate, because the prosecutor didn’t have the jurisdiction needed to look into the department’s activities — whether it complied with its own policies.

ACORN has said it registered roughly 1.3 million voters this year, but has come under fire because some of the registrations turned in by contract workers hired by the group have contained false information.

Sen. Obama's campaign requested Friday that an independent special prosecutor handle any federal investigations into voter irregularities during the upcoming election.

(CNN) – The Obama campaign announced Friday that it is asking Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over any investigations of voter fraud or voter suppression to Special Prosecutor Nora Dannehy, the same special prosecutor recently appointed to investigate the U.S. attorney firing scandal.

Read: The Obama campaign's letter to Mukasey

It’s the latest salvo in an escalating war over allegations of possible voter irregularities during the upcoming presidential election.

“What they’re actually about is the unprecedented effort to essentially sap the American people of confidence in the voting process,” Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign’s general counsel, said Friday on a conference call.

Listen: Obama camp's general counsel explains the request

Bauer said partisan politics was behind Thursday’s leak from senior governmental officials about a preliminary FBI investigation into the voter registration activities of ACORN, the embattled community organizing group that has become the focus of Republican efforts to highlight voter fraud as the election approaches.

“ACORN is a tool for attacking voters,” Bauer also said.

“We need to have these matters removed from the day-to-day department’s direct control and put into the special prosecutor’s independent hands,” Bauer told reporters Friday. “She should have responsibility for reviewing any and all matters involving allegations of fraud and suppression in this election,” said Bauer.

The McCain campaign responded suggesting that it was Sen. Obama and his campaign who were engaging in partisan politics by requesting the special prosecutor's involvement. In a statement issued Friday night, McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt called Obama's request "absurd" and said it was an attempt to "criminalize political discourse."

"Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act's requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to prevent voter fraud," Porritt added.

Listen: McCain campaign manager Rick Davis discusses ACORN Friday

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Palin is now demanding that Obama disclose all communication between his campaign and ACORN.

WEST CHESTER, Ohio (CNN) – Sarah Palin questioned Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN in her most forceful and comprehensive language to date, and demanded that the Democratic presidential nominee turn over all communication between the campaign and the progressive organization, which claims to have registered 1.3 million voters nationwide.

“As for ACORN and voter fraud, now they're under federal investigation, and John and are calling on the Obama campaign to release communications it has had with this group and to do so immediately,” Palin told an audience, with House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding on stage behind her.

The FBI confirmed Tuesday that they have begun preliminary a investigation of ACORN’s registration efforts. Palin accused the group of “rampant voter fraud,” although technically they are being accused of voter registration fraud.

“You deserve to know, Palin said. “You deserve to know because we do need to know more clearly about the choices that we have on Nov. 4. In this election, especially here in Ohio, you’re going to be asked to choose between a candidate who will not disavow a group committing voter fraud and a leader who will not tolerate it.”

Obama’s relationship with the community organizing group has been highlighted by Republicans ever since it was accused of submitting fraudulent voter applications in various states, including Ohio. Obama helped train ACORN organizers in Chicago after law school and later represented the group in a 1995 motor voter case that, in Obama’s words, “helped people get registered at DMVs.”

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At the final presidential debate, Sen. McCain said ACORN might be destroying the fabric of democracy.

(CNN) – In the wake of an Associated Press report that the FBI is reviewing the results of several state inquiries into the conduct of ACORN, Sen. John McCain’s campaign called Thursday for Sen. Barack Obama to release additional information about the relationship between the embattled community organizing group and the Obama campaign.

“Barack Obama’s campaign must fully disclose the nature of his association with ACORN,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement Thursday.

The Obama campaign took issue with the McCain campaign's request. "ACORN never performed any voter registration work for the Obama campaign and Senator McCain’s campaign knows this," the Obama campaign said in an e-mail to CNN. "The real question is why they continue to assert something that isn’t true, and why they believe that attacking a group that Senator McCain himself praised as 'what makes America special' helps their campaign."

Related: 'We don't need ACORN's help,' says Obama

CNN has been unable to confirm a report by the Associated Press that the FBI is investigating whether ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud across the country as the presidential election approaches. Instead, several government sources have told CNN that the FBI and the Justice Department are reviewing documents provided by state investigations into ACORN to determine whether there is a basis to open a federal criminal investigation.

These developments at the federal level come nearly a week after six Republicans in the House of Representatives sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting a federal investigation into ACORN’s voter registration activities. All of the House members who signed the letter to Mukasey had previously administered elections as Secretaries of States.

In a statement Thursday, ACORN said that it has not been contacted by any federal law enforcement agencies. "Should any investigation be forthcoming, we are confident that we would be exonerated," the group said. "We have always, and will continue to, work with any inquiry."

Watch: ACORN counters fraud charges

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Sen. Obama talked about ACORN with reporters in Ohio Tuesday.

(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama responded Tuesday to the McCain campaign's efforts to link him to embattled community organizing group ACORN.

Watch: Obama on the economy, ACORN

"We've got the best voter registration, turnout, and volunteer operation in politics right and we don't need ACORN's help," Obama said Tuesday in Ohio.

The Illinois senator added that ACORN was not advising his campaign, and echoed campaign advisors who have increasingly accused the GOP of trying to suppress voter turnout as Election Day nears.

"What I want to make sure of, though, is that this is not used as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression tactics that we've seen in the past. Let's make sure everybody is voting, everybody is registered, everybody is doing this is a lawful way," he said.

The Democratic nominee's comments came the same day that his campaign held a conference call with reporters about the McCain campaign's recent focus on voter fraud.

Listen: Plouffe, Bauer on voting issues

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and general counsel Bob Bauer accused Republicans of trying to intimidate voters and sow the seeds of confusion as the historic presidential election approaches.

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Former Republican senators Warren Rudman and John Danforth are the co-chairs of the McCain campaign's Honest and Open Election Committee.

(CNN) – The campaign of Sen. John McCain called on Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday to “rein in” community organizing group ACORN and “to work aggressively against wide-scale voter fraud.”

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis made the challenge in a statement released in response to an ACORN letter to the campaign Tuesday morning.

Citing the rising number foreclosures nationwide, the community advocacy group asked McCain to fight a practice known as “caging” — the challenging or removal of voter from the rolls because they no longer live at the address listed on their voter registration.

In its letter, the group asked McCain to reach out to Republican Secretaries of State in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia and obtain a guarantee from each of them that “a voter in their respective states who has lost their home to foreclosure does not lose their right to vote.”

In the McCain campaign’s response, Davis noted that the campaign had reached out to the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee to propose unprecedented, bipartisan monitoring teams in precincts where either side feared voter irregularities. Former Republican senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman, the co-chairs of the McCain campaign’s Honest and Open Election Committee, renewed the proposal at an appearance at the National Press Club Tuesday morning.

Davis also used the letter as another opportunity to tie Sen. Obama to ACORN. “Given the extensive relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN, our campaign also feels that Senator Obama has the responsibility to rein in ACORN’s efforts and to work aggressively against wide-scale voter fraud.”

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Gov. Palin's latest fundraising e-mail focuses on the community organizing group ACORN.

(CNN) – The McCain campaign is fundraising off embattled community group ACORN.

“The truth is that far-left groups in this country will do anything to help the Obama-Biden Democrats win the White House and maintain their majorities in Congress,” Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin writes in a fund-raising e-mail sent out Monday afternoon. “And last week, we found out they're going even further to win.”

“The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states. . . . We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.”

ACORN called the McCain camp’s suggestion “ridiculous.”

“We’re proud of our record of helping 1.3 million new registrants get involved in the process just as we are proud of our work to ensure clean and fair elections,” ACORN spokesperson Brian Kettenring told CNN Monday. “Candidates and parties may win or lose elections. But the assertion that anybody is trying to steal this election is ridiculous,” added Kettenring.

Related: ACORN defends its voter registration drive

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A new McCain Web ad ties Obama to ACORN — and suggests the group was connected to the current financial crisis.

(CNN) – Embattled community group ACORN, which come under rising Republican attack, hit back hard late Friday over a new Web video released by the McCain campaign.

The online video seeks to link Sen. Barack Obama to ACORN, and accuses the group of engaging practices at the heart of the nation's current financial troubles. ACORN "bull[ied] banks" and engaged in "intimidation tactics," says the ad. "ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans. The same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today."

ACORN denied the charges. "For more than a decade, ACORN members have held protests, released reports and advocated for regulations to protect homeowners from predatory lenders," ACORN president Maude Hurd said in a statement. "If John McCain thinks that community organizers caused the foreclosure crisis, he knows even less about the economy than previously thought."

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ACORN'S Las Vegas office was recently searched by Nevada state officials as part of an investigation into alleged voter fraud.

(CNN) – In the midst of a fusillade of attacks from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from the McCain-Palin campaign, the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, often called “ACORN,” is not backing down and is, instead, defending its voter registration activities as attention turns to the integrity of the election system on the eve of an historic presidential election.

Citing a long history of voter suppression in the country, ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said recent charges against the organization are just partisan attacks intended to undermine the group’s voter registration efforts. “The current strategy seems to be, from the right, to create, to manufacture a so-called crisis of voter fraud . . . and then to solve that crisis through measures that are about constricting the electorate, narrowing the electorate, keeping people from being able to vote,” he said.

Listen: ACORN, Project Vote explain their voter registration drive

On a conference call with reporters, ACORN and Project Vote, its partner in voter registration programs, explained their process for training and overseeing individuals who canvass for new registrations in the field.

Listen: ACORN, Project Vote answer reporters' questions

Canvassers are paid on an hourly basis and not, as some critics have charged, per registration submitted, Project Vote’s Executive Director Michael Slater said Friday. He also said there are no incentives for meeting or exceeding any quota, and that each application is reviewed and if potentially fraudulent or otherwise problematic registration cards are identified, they are flagged and turned into election officials. “In many states we are obligated to turn in all applications by law, regardless of whether we believe that there are problems are not,” Slater added. Asked for more details about which states have such a requirement, Brian Mellor, an attorney for ACORN, pointed to Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and California.

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The RNC launched a new Web site Friday about Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN on the same day that the McCain campaign also sought to highlight the same issue.

(CNN) — John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis and Missouri Governor Matt Blunt accused Barack Obama of ties to ACORN, the embattled community group facing allegations of voter registration violations in several battleground states.

Governor Blunt talked about the community organization’s voting law violations in Missouri and Davis said he hoped that the press would examine ACORN’s activities “so that none of those battleground states are stolen from the campaign in this election.”

This week ACORN and Project Vote announced that their voter registration drive had been the most succeful in history with more than 1.3 million voters registered in 21 states.

As they have done with recent attempts to link Obama to Bill Ayers, the McCain campaign tried to raise questions over whether the Illinois senator was being truthful about his past association with ACORN.

Listen: Davis, Blunt on Obama, ACORN

The Missouri governor said Obama’s ties to ACORN went a long way back, to a period “before he launched his political career in the land of Bill Ayers,” and cited that in 1993 Obama acted as their lawyer on a case and ran a 1992 ran a voter registration drive and taught classes with them in the early 1990s.

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Questions have been raised about voter registration forms in Lake County, Indiana that were submitted by the group ACORN.

CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) — More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.

The group — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN — already faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada and faces investigations in other states.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

"All the signatures looked exactly the same," Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. "Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same."

The forms included registrations submitted in the names of the dead — and in one case, the name of a fast-food restaurant, Jimmy Johns. Sally LaSota, a Democrat on the board, called the forms fraudulent and said whoever filed them broke the law.

Full story

Related: Officials raid ACORN's Las Vegas office

Officials from the State of Nevada served a search warrant Tuesday on the Las Vegas office of ACORN.

(CNN) – Nevada state officials served a search warrant on the Las Vegas office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now Tuesday.

The search was “the result of an ongoing investigation into allegations of voter registration fraud,” according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.

“There are allegations that a number of registration applications were completed with false information, and other applications on which attempted to register the same person multiple times,” Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller said in a statement, adding that the office had “been told some of allegedly erroneous applications even included the names of players from the Dallas Cowboys football team.”

ACORN denied any intentional wrongdoing on the organization’s part. “When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials,” Interim Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis said in a statement released after the raid. “We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of
submitting fraudulent registrations.”

Listen: ACORN, Project Vote on Tuesday's raid

The group’s Southwest regional director, Matthew Henderson, told reporters any errors on the forms were unintentional. “There were some people that, you know, probably sat down on a couch and filled out names out of a phone book,” he said. “And so, when we talk about fraud, that’s really what we’re talking about here. Not an attempt to steal an election. We’re talking about an attempt for someone to get out of doing some real hard work.” Henderson also said that ACORN’s canvassers are paid by the hour, and not per registration, as some of its critics had alleged.

In partnership with Project Vote, ACORN recently completed a voter registration drive in 21 states. The groups said 1.3 million people were registered during the joint voter drive. They also said approximately 80,000 new voters were registered in Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located.