By news intern Garrett McCulloch

At a press event yesterday afternoon, Washington's chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) tried to shed the bad image the organization has picked up from several recent, high-profile scandals. The liberal group's members have been accused of voter fraud and other nefarious acts—making ACORN a bulls eye for conservative attacks.

But John Robert Jones, president of Washington ACORN, said the group has had a positive impact, such as assisting over 85,000 people in Washington with housing, banking and tax issues, among others.

"We're being scrutinized because we do something that other organizations don't do," Jones said. "We knock on every door. We empower people who thought that they were helpless."

The group trotted out several people to attest to the ways ACORN has helped them. Most just made about a five-second statement about their experience with ACORN. Rose Loveless said ACORN helped her find an attorney to fight an eviction from her home. Cianthe' O'Neal used the group's help to start a small business. Barbara O'Leary Hatfield Liberace said she came to ACORN to have her taxes prepared.

"And they were done right," she said.

Mostly though, the ACORN members said the group helped by pointing them to resources that they would have trouble finding on their own, like assistance with high mortgage rates. Jones said it's common for the group to help someone drop their mortgage rate from 18 percent to as low as three percent.

ACORN has had its share of troubles over the last couple years. Some employees were caught on tape in September advising a woman posing as a prostitute and a man posing as a pimp on ways to set up a brothel and evade taxes. There were also allegations last year of voter registration fraud, amplified in the 2008 presidential campaign because Barack Obama worked with the group in the past. Jones defended the group's voter registration drives—passionately—despite the bad press they've gotten.

"There are people in this country who are 50 years old that have never voted. But we found out that if you take the low-income people and the poor people across this country, and unite and make a human chain and march to the polls, nothing can stop them," he said. "They are afraid of the power of the masses. And that is why we receive the scrutiny and the attacks that we do.”

Washington's ACORN ran into its own scandal in 2006, when several people it hired to register voters wound up turning in about 1,800 fraudulent registrations. After this, ACORN went as far as to contribute $25,000 toward prosecuting them, Jones said.

"We wanted to make sure we took responsibility for it, and Washington ACORN did," he said.