ABC News is reporting that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has registered the names of two Web sites with the express goal of attacking her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. The two websites are Votingpresent.com and Votingpresent.org. Both these websites use domains hosted by the same IP address as official Clinton Web sites, such as TheHillaryIKnow.com.
According to ABC News:
The Clinton campaign intends to use these new Web sites to paint Obama as cowardly.
Clinton has attacked Obama for having occasionally voted "present" as an Illinois state legislator when it came to contentious legislation.
Obama camp's response:
The Obama campaign referred to the websites as "politically motivated attacks in the eleventh hour of a closely contested campaign" and defended Obama's "present" votes.
"Over more than a decade in public office, Barack Obama has successfully led the way on difficult issues from welfare reform, to the reform of a broken death penalty law in Illinois to a battle for long-overdue ethics reforms in Washington," said spokesman Bill Burton.
"Among the thousands of votes he cast in the Illinois Senate, he used the present vote on occasions when he believed bills were drafted in an unconstitutional manner. On other occasions, he voted present as part of legislative strategies, such as ones crafted by pro-choice forces in Illinois to thwart maneuvering by the opponents of a woman's right to choose."
In the same article ABC News reports that Clinton's campaign has also introduced, quietly, a Web site called Attacktimeline.com, which Clinton officials say "chronicles the ways Obama and Edwards were criticizing her publicly long before she began returning fire".