Organizing Prison Inmates for Obama

How far will the Obama campaign go to register new voters? The Wall Street Journal tells us that an Obama organizer requested permission to register prison inmates and instruct them on how to make campaign donations:

Barack Obama’s campaign prides itself on grassroots organizing, with thousands of staff members targeting numerous subsets of the population for voter registration and persuasion. One even sought to register inmates.

An internal email from the Michigan Department of Corrections in August describes a request from the campaign to enter jails to register those inmates set to be released before Election Day.

An Obama spokesman in Michigan acknowledged that a new organizer made the request, but supervisors nixed the idea as soon as they found out about it. The campaign denied all association with a second request to the Department of Corrections. The emails say that a Theresa Collins, identified as the national coordinator of “Inmates to Support Barack Obama,” asked the prison to post information about how prisoners could make campaign contributions to Obama. That group doesn’t appear to have any Web site.

The email chain shows that Richard Stapleton, administrator of the department’s Office of Legal Affairs, told a colleague to deny the campaign’s request. The email, which Washington Wire received from Obama opponent, was verified by a Corrections Department spokesman.

“We’ve got to make sure they’re out first,” said John Cordell, the spokesman. “We could say you’re out on Oct. 31, but if they do something between now and Oct. 31 that would make us think they’re a danger to society, then we’ll rescind their parole.”

Since the preferred currency in prison is cigarettes or drugs, what is the exchange rate used to prevent the inmate from exceeding the campaign finance limits? Or, does the campaign staff just go ahead and accept the drugs for their own personal use?