posted October 14, 2008 04:45 PM            

------------------
~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted October 15, 2008 04:34 PM            

These were harder, just asfraudulent and the intent was the same...to commit election fraud in favor of Barack Hussein O'Bomber.

fraud alert: Houseful of out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters, received absentee ballots
By Michelle Malkin • October 15, 2008 04:09 AM

Something smells at 2885 Brownlee Avenue in Columbus, Ohio.

I strongly recommend that the Ohio Republican Party get on the case before it’s too late. Today’s the last day to challenge voters who registered early in Ohio before the run up to Election Day.

Here’s the stench: An entire houseful of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances — all while mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee and early voting. The activists are leaders of a group called “Vote From Home ‘08.” The group is self-identified as having “extensive experience with political organizing, election administration, and Democratic politics.” They were hailed as the “Justice League” by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page brags: “Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing state? Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House. Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide.”

My friends at Palestra.net, a network of young reporters who have been doing the voter and registration fraud reporting that the MSM has been slow to do, have a breaking investigative report on how several members of the Democrat Vote From Home team — all Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars studying abroad — are turning up on Franklin County voter rolls despite having no bona fide residence in Ohio and admittedly having little to no knowledge about the state before descending on it in August to sign up other new voters in a rush to put 10,000 Obama supporters on the rolls.

Watch:

Here’s the page listing the Vote From Home team. Take a good look at these three, for starters:

Here’s the Franklin County, Ohio registered voter search page.

Here’s just one of several Vote From Home activists, Daniel Hemel, who registered to vote with the Brownlee Ave. address listed as his “home:”

The Franklin County, Ohio site shows that Hemel was mailed an absentee ballot on October 1.

Palestra reporters Shelby Holliday and Tiffany Wilson visited the Vote From Home “home” in search of Hemel and were told that the Scarsdale, NY native and Harvard grad had returned to school — he’s a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in England studying for an M.Phil in International Relations — and had no plans to return to Ohio.

You’ll recognize another of the names and faces from the Vote From Home team. This is Marc Gustafson, a driving force behind the effort and in front of the cameras:

He is also registered to vote in Franklin County, Ohio at the same Brownlee address and was mailed an absentee ballot on September 30:

He’s also the same activist Palestra reporter Shelby Holliday interviewed in her “Thug Thizzle” report. Gustafson’s the one who bragged about the free shuttle program for the homeless Ohioans for Obama:

“It’s a perfect opportunity for them to come in, register at a temporary address like a homeless shelter or a YMCA or something like that. They can register at that address because they don’t know where they’re going to be tomorrow or next week.”
Where’s Gustafson? Not in Ohio. He’s a Marshall Scholar at the Oxford University in England who worked as a field coordinator for the Howard Dean Campaign in Rhode Island, Iowa and New Hampshire. According to campaign contribution reports, he lists New York as his residence.

According to the Ohio Secretary of State’s page, you must be “a resident of Ohio for at least 30 days immediately before the election in which you want to vote.” The guidelines also state:

Generally, a person’s residence is the place where the person’s habitation is fixed (i.e., where the person lives on a permanent basis) and the place where the person intends to return
whenever the person is absent.

...a person’s temporary presence in Ohio, such as during a vacation or working in
Ohio on a temporary basis, does not make the person eligible to register and to vote in Ohio.

Gustafson’s friend and business partner, Heather Halstead, is another Vote From Home activist who shows up in Franklin County, Ohio voter rolls:

She is based in New York, went to Dartmouth for college, and lists New York as her residence in campaign contribution reports. No connection to Ohio other than the brief period she spent signing up others — and herself — to vote in the swing state.

Halstead was mailed an absentee ballot on September 30.

Vote From Home team member Jennifer Kyle, whose bio states that she works for ShoreBank International in the Washington, DC area, is also registered to vote in Franklin County, OH using the Brownlee address:

Kyle was mailed an absentee ballot on October 4.

Vote From Home team member Greg Nolan also used the Brownlee address to register to vote in Franklin County, OH:

He is based in Florida, where he attended college and was “active in Democratic politics,” and is headed to Stanford for graduate school. No ties to Ohio other than his brief stint working with Vote for Change.

And on and on it goes. Shelby at Palestra tells me that some 12 activists associated with Vote From Home may have fraudulently registered and that some have voted already. If they were this breathtakingly careless or brazenly reckless with their own registrations, imagine what damage they might have done in their voter registration drive — and what damage they may yet do in following through on absentee ballots with those voters.

Will the rest of the MSM pick up on the invaluable investigative reporting of Palestra’s intrepid young reporters? Or will they look the other way? Will out-of-town punks — all using 2885 Brownlee Ave. in Columbus as their ballot drop house — help turn Ohio blue? Will the Democrat Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, bury her head in the sand?

posted October 16, 2008 10:20 AM            

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides those names to county elections boards. The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud.

"Things already are in motion to comply," Kidder said. "We're working to establish these processes on how we can make this work. The computer work actually began last week."

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January.

Brunner previously cross-checked new-voter registrations with databases run by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle and the Social Security Administration and made the results available online, but the 6th Circuit said the information was not accessible in a way that would help county election boards ferret out mismatches.

Brunner, a Democrat, told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Wednesday that she is concerned the court decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. Brunner said she'll urge counties not to force these people to use provisional ballots.

The court gave Brunner until Friday to get election boards the information but it was unclear whether that deadline would be met. The court set no penalty for missing the deadline.

County election officials were trying to determine Wednesday how they will respond once they get the information.

"I'm very concerned with these new requirements as we get closer to Election Day," said Steve Harsman, director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections in Dayton. He said his staff already is working 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's clearly going to have an impact in regard to resources we have to expend to resolve discrepancies," said Jeff Hastings, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland.

"We've had about 100,000 (registrations) since January and of those about 34,000 since the primary. We will do whatever is required of us."

Also Wednesday, the Ohio Republican Party said it has filed public records requests with all 88 counties for copies of forms submitted by newly registered voters, especially those who registered and cast an absentee ballot on the same day during a one-week window earlier this month.

Brunner has said that 13,141 Ohioans registered and voted immediately during the window.

"We've seen reports of fraudulent registrations, and we want to see those forms first-hand," said Jason Mauk, the state GOP's executive director.

posted October 20, 2008 02:07 PM            

SUMMARY: McCain and the GOP link Obama and ACORN, but the connection seems more partisan then perilous.

With Election Day less than a month away, John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee have been warning voters of Barack Obama and his ties to the community organizing group ACORN.

ACORN was founded in 1970; its acronym stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN's agenda includes left-leaning causes such as voter registration drives for low-income groups, initiatives to increase the minimum wage and programs offering help to victims of predatory lending.

By all indications, ACORN operates within the American political mainstream, though clearly it favors the left side of the ideological spectrum. Its voter registration efforts tend to focus on the low-income, minorities and youth, all traditional Democratic constituencies. Obama received an endorsement from the group's political action committee in February 2008 when the Democratic primary was in full swing. But that's not to say Republicans never support ACORN's efforts: McCain himself appeared at a 2006 rally in favor of immigration reform, sponsored in part by ACORN.

The primary allegation against ACORN is that its voter registration drives result in many phony registrations. ACORN itself admits that some of its workers, in their attempts to meet registration goals, have turned in registration forms for people who do not exist or don't live in the geographic area. (Notorious examples include Mickey Mouse and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.) ACORN says the problems are isolated, and that it works with officials to correct them. They claim to have registered 1.3-million people to vote, so a small number of irregularities are to be expected. (For more on ACORN and the controversy surrounding its voter registration drives, read the St. Petersburg Times story here.)

Several states are investigating the group's voter registration efforts. McCain brought up ACORN at the candidates' final debate on Oct. 15, 2008, saying that ACORN was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." The next day, press reports cited anonymous sources saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into the group, but ACORN said it had had no contact with federal investigators.

On Oct. 17, the Obama campaign blasted the leakers, saying it was evidence that law enforcement was in an "unholy alliance" with partisan political operatives to undermine public confidence in the voting process. The campaign released a letter it sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking for an investigation. "Republican Party officials and operatives nationwide, including the candidates themselves, are formenting specious voter fraud allegations, and there are disturbing indications of official involvement or collusion," wrote Robert Bauer, general counsel to the Obama campaign.

It's unknown what the results of the ongoing investigations will be, but past investigations might give us some indication. In 2007 in King County, Wash., prosecutors filed charges against seven ACORN workers and reached a civil agreement with ACORN that the organization would monitor its workers more carefully.

"A joint federal and state investigation has determined that this scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting," said King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg at the time. "Instead, the defendants cheated their employer, ACORN, to get paid for work they did not actually perform. ACORN's lax oversight of their own voter registration drive permitted this to happen."

The McCain campaign issued numerous charges about Obama's connection to ACORN in an Oct. 10, 2008, memo, which the Obama campaign has disputed. We selected the following allegations to examine in depth.

• In 1992, Obama directed Project Vote, "an arm of ACORN that also encouraged voter registration," according to the McCain campaign. Obama did direct Project Vote, but it is a separate organization from ACORN. This year, Project Vote and ACORN worked together on a nationwide voter registration drive, and they have worked together on other initiatives in the past. But they are separate organizations. We didn't find any evidence to indicate they had a relationship during the 1992 Illinois drive. And even if they did, Obama clearly directed the drive for the Project Vote organization. We couldn't find any allegations of impropriety related to the 1992 drive. We rate this statement False.

• The McCain campaign says Obama was "a trial attorney for ACORN." Obama represented ACORN in a voter registration case, but he was not a staff attorney. Obama worked for the civil rights firm Miner, Barnhill and Galland. He represented ACORN along with other plaintiffs in a case against the governor of Illinois, demanding that the state better enforce a new federal law known as "motor voter," which allowed people to register to vote when they got their driver's license. We rated this statement Half True.

During the third presidential debate, McCain made the additional charge that the Obama campaign directed campaign money to ACORN, calling the group "the same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for 'lighting and site selection.'"

Here's what we know about that allegation: The Obama campaign paid a group called Citizens' Services $832,386 during the primaries. (For comparison, the Obama campaign has spent an overall $391-million through August 2008.) Some of the expenditures are listed as sound, stage and lighting, and others are listed as get-out-the-vote efforts. ACORN has said Citizens Services subcontracted out part of the get-out-the-vote work to ACORN, but ACORN officials say it was "a small amount." The Obama campaign said it paid Citizens' Services, who in turn paid $80,000 to ACORN. The two groups share offices in New Orleans.

posted October 20, 2008 02:28 PM            

"A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war...A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play."
- Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133
Rules? What rules? Laws? What laws?

Clearly, Alinsky's acolytes take him at his word. When one is fighting a war "against social evils," one is above the law. Rules and laws are for the other people.

I'm stunned by the irony here.

For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush stole the White House," without a single proven shred of evidence, without a single indictment or conviction of Republicans on vote fraud, vote rigging or anything even close. Meanwhile the only group indicated and convicted in actual vote fraud cases in the last two elections -- ACORN -- is fully mobilized still, claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters this year, and is tied historically and inextricably to our front-running candidate for President, Barack Obama.

If anyone tried to sell this story as fiction, no publisher in his right mind would touch it. The average reader's willingness to suspend disbelief simply doesn't stretch this far.

Yet, here we are two weeks out from what may very well be an actual, stolen presidential election.

ACORN pledged to spend $35 million this year in voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives. The bulk of this money has been targeted at the most important battleground states of the past 2 elections. And as the National Black Republican Association proclaims, ACORN's motto is: "Let Every Fraudulent Vote Count!" Indeed the ACORN strategy apparently rests on Mickey Mouse & company voting early, often and everywhere.

Should legal, registered, qualified voters be concerned that their votes will be negated by fraudulent votes? Yes, we all should be.

State of the Investigations

With investigations ongoing in about a dozen states, Barack Obama has requested that everything be turned over to a special prosecutor. Not just any special prosecutor either. Obama wants all of the ACORN investigations lumped into the ongoing, Democrat-launched probe into Justice Dept. attorney firings in the Bush Administration.

The bottom line here is simple. Obama and the Democrats are attempting to frame every investigation into voter fraud, vote rigging and vote buying from the past 2 elections, as well as this one, as purely political. According to Obama and the Democrats in control of Congress, none of this ACORN fraud ever happened. The attorneys were fired because they refused to investigate ACORN and the Democrats say that was political. Obama claims that all investigations now being mounted by states and the FBI are intended to suppress voter turnout, and are politically motivated.

Only ivy-league lawyers could turn this heap of poppycock into thousands of words on good paper.

Maybe the individual state efforts can save American democracy.

Ohio, the state to watch: When Sarah Palin implored Ohioans last week not to let "the Buckeye state become the ACORN state," she hit that nail squarely upon its head. In the very state that could decide this election, if it turns out to be close, the Democrat Secretary of State got her way last week with an emergency decision of the Supreme Court. The High Court overturned a circuit court ruling that had instructed Ms. Brunner to aid counties swamped with new voter registrations to weed out fraud by checking them against state databases of driver's license and social security numbers. She refused.

But the U.S. Supreme Court did not address the substance of the suit. It ruled in Brunner's favor on a technicality of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which directed the suit to state court, rather than federal. Attorneys have now filed a brief with Ohio's state supreme court. The judges have instructed Brunner to respond by Monday, and both sides must file briefs by Friday.

Of course, all this stalling on Brunner's part has the appearance of being purely political. The legitimate Ohio voters have a right to a legally protected process. They may be forced to demand it, or we all may pay the price.

Meanwhile, also in Ohio, the Buckeye Institute has filed a RICO suit against ACORN. What may be the most encouraging sign in this entire election is the fact that Hillary Clinton Democrats are joining Republicans and investigators in this struggle to protect the integrity of America's vote.

Nearly completely ignored by our watchdog mainstream media is the fact that a huge rift still exists in the Democrat Party due to the thuggish tactics used by Obama, his supporters and ACORN to garner the Democratic nomination. Caucus fraud was rampant and Democrats have been collecting evidence and video testimonies by eye witnesses for months now. This is the evidence that they are now sharing with plaintiffs in the Ohio RICO suit.

As reported on the Hillbuzz website last week:

"What's happening here is something we have never seen before: centrist Clinton Democrats and Republicans are working together to expose the DNC and Obama campaign's illegal activities and orchestrated, coordinated fraud. Both parties are working with federal agents to investigate ACORN, which has been funded with upwards of $800,000 in questionable donations from the Obama campaign (in what appears to be the expressed and explicit direction to engineer voter fraud in the general election).

"The tactics being employed now in the 15 states currently under investigation are the VERY SAME TACTICS we saw on the ground in Iowa, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, and other states working for Hillary Clinton in the primaries."

A lifelong Democrat from D.C., Dr. Lynette Long, has spent the past 6 months investigating and tallying results from the Democratic Party nominating contests. Her conclusion:

"As I write this, the Democratic Party is poised to formally nominate Barack Obama as its candidate for President of the United States.

"It's the triumph of fraud.

"I've spent the past two months immersed in data from the 2008 Democratic caucuses. After studying the procedures and results from all fourteen caucus states, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and reviewing hundreds of personal stories, my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process." (emphasis in original)

Even as Barack Obama and his attorneys attempt to portray investigations into ACORN voter fraud as politically motivated attacks brought by Republicans, faithful Democrats band together with Republicans and Independents behind the scenes to protect the integrity of the American electoral system from systematic fraud.

Apparently Barack Obama's mama forgot to teach him the meaning of shame.

In this I second Hillary Clinton: Shame, shame on you, Barack Obama.

Missouri: George W. Bush won Missouri by 7 points, but John McCain is now neck and neck with Barack Obama. In this state, where every single legitimate vote will be crucial, eight ACORN workers pleaded guilty in April to vote fraud in the 2006 election for submitting registrations with false names and addresses, and forged signatures.

Presently, local and state officials are attempting to verify the mounds of ACORN-submitted registrations dumped on them the final day in typical Cloward-Piven fashion that seeks to overwhelm and crash the whole system. Hundreds of fraudulent registrations have already been identified. But whether officials' efforts will be enough, or whether they will be in time, is anybody's guess. In a contest where every electoral vote is crucial, the integrity of Missouri's 11 votes is threatened by a far more dangerous possibility than a bunch of hanging chads.

Pennsylvania: Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that Republican Party leaders filed suit to protect the integrity of the vote against widespread ACORN fraud, "accusing the group of fostering voter registration fraud and asserting that the election system lacks adequate safeguards to stop it."

In a state with 21 electoral votes that Hillary Clinton won in a landslide during the primaries, Pennsylvania has become one of the primary sites for PUMA Pac activities. PUMA people are not fading into the woodwork in the manner that our mainstream media would have us believe. No, they are a force to be reckoned with, and have signaled that they will work hand in hand with Republicans to protect this election.

The Obama/ACORN National Strategy

Investigations ongoing in about a dozen states indicate widespread and systemic fraud. The FBI is currently probing these allegations, most of them involving ACORN, the group that proudly operates Camp Obama and who trains its membership in militant tactics taken from the Alinsky "rule book" that specifically instructs organizers to disobey the law.

According to the comprehensive research published by Heidi J. Swarts in her book, Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-Based Progressive Movements (University of Minnesota Press), ACORN differs significantly from the kinds of organizations that have any charitable motives whatsoever. The organization has no interest in good deeds, nor organizing any sort of programs that do not entail political/government solutions to all social problems.

In addition, writes Swarts, ACORN set itself apart from all other socially motivated progressive initiatives with its "strategic innovations," involving "national campaigns...which are quickly disseminated through one centralized organization" to its 1,200 nationwide offices in more than 35 states. Even though ACORN had visions of national political campaigns since its inception in 1970, the group was until the 1980s more interested in keeping its own prominence as the "only truly radical community organization" than in moving towards unity with other progressive movements for "change."

When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, ACORN leader Wade Ratke decided to widen his scope and seek the cooperation of other groups. And his decision has paid off. Swarts writes that "since the 1990s, but particularly since 2000, ACORN has demonstrated far greater openness to building alliances, not only with labor unions and the Church-based community organizations but with a wide range of advocacy groups."

These massive numbers of community organizers working in cohesive concert, especially since 2000, have made their national campaigns for "change" possible. And what do these groups seek? Power for low- and moderate-income Americans. They see mass mobilization as their fundamental source of power. They intend to use that power, not only to "spread the wealth around," as Obama states, but also to fundamentally change taxpayers into hog-tied guarantors to their manifesto's demands.

And it would seem now that ACORN & company stand at the threshold of having one of their very own in the White House. Barack Obama did promise ACORN in 2007 that he would make their representatives part of his transition team to the Presidency and from there they would together map the "change" they intend to bring posthaste.

One thing, I believe, is certain. The minute Barack Obama is sworn in as the Chief law enforcement officer in America, the FBI will no longer be investigating ACORN. Neither will the Justice Department.

And I doubt there will be a mainstream media outlet in the Country who will dare to call Obama's use of federal agencies "political." In fact, they probably will not even bother to report on any of it. They'll be far too busy singing the praises of our new Community Organizer in Chief.

Welcome to the Revolution. Hail Obama.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/stealing_the_presidency_an_oba.html

posted October 20, 2008 06:46 PM            

It's also an attempt to foul up the voting process...in hopes officials will just throw up their hands and let anyone vote as many times as they show up at polls.

ACORN is behind this and ACORN if tied fast to Barack Hussein O'Bomber who gave one of their front organizations $832,000 from campaign funds to register...demoscats...though ACORN claims to be a non partisan orgainzation.

Could I see a show of hands of those who believe ACORN is a non partisan organization?

Glitches fill Ohio voter rolls
Eligibility questions could bring confusion, spur conflicts
By Gregory Korte • gkorte@enquirer.com • October 19, 2008
Last Updated: 3:03 pm | Sunday, October 19, 2008

In Hamilton County, 17 people are registered to vote from riverfront addresses south of Mehring Way - places with street numbers that would put their homes somewhere in the Ohio River.

Another 46 voters are registered at addresses that would put their homes in the middle of the Paul Brown Stadium parking lot, or at the riverfront project known as The Banks - which hasn't been built.

An Enquirer analysis of more than 8 million Ohio voter registration records found a litany of quirks, inconsistencies, errors, duplicate registrations and other problems with little more than two weeks until Election Day.

Thousands of voters appear on registration lists twice - some as many as six times. At least 589 registered voters - mostly in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties - were born in 1991 or later, which puts them under the legal voting age.

Voters are registered at post office boxes, office buildings with no residences, police stations and even park benches.

Some may be fraudulent, election officials say; many have more innocent explanations.

• Poll: Voting fraud in Ohio?

Either way, discrepancies in voter registration data present a major challenge to Ohio election officials, inevitably resulting in confusion over voter eligibility and disputes at polling places. The issue already has resulted in partisan challenges and a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court - issues that could intensify as Election Day approaches.

"It's definitely a concern. Obviously it should be fixed," said Nathan Cemenska, an election law expert at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. He said it's unlikely that inaccurate or fraudulent voter registrations could sway a national election.

Still, "Election officials need to work on this. It's a big public relations problem for them, but they're between a rock and a hard place," said Cemenska, a Democrat. "They get beat up in the media for having all these bad voters on the books, but if they take them off they open themselves up to criticism from the other side that they're disenfranchising voters."

That's exactly what happened last week, as the Ohio Republican Party took Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to court over her handling of the state's voter registration roster.

The Ohio GOP wanted Brunner, a Democrat, to release data to county boards of elections on more than 200,000 new voter registrations that did not match other government databases from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration.

That data, Republicans said, would help elections officials identify fraudulent registration forms.

• Deters subpoenas voters' records

Brunner said using mismatches alone as a reason to disqualify a voter could result in thousands of voters being disenfranchised "because of federal government red tape, database matching errors and computer glitches."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Ohio GOP doesn't have standing to bring a lawsuit. But the decision sidestepped the central issue: How far must election officials go to make sure that registered voters are real, living people qualified to vote?

Voting irregularities

The Enquirer analysis did not have access to other government databases the state uses to cross-check valid registrations. Instead, The Enquirer looked for inconsistencies within the Ohio Secretary of State's master voter registration file as of Oct. 14. Registrations for this election closed Oct. 6.

The Enquirer found at least 6,567 voters in Ohio who are registered at least twice from the same address. Of those, 157 voters - mostly in Cuyahoga County - are registered three or more times. Two voters from Cleveland appear on the voter rolls six times each - with six different voter identification numbers.

That doesn't include thousands more who may be registered twice at different addresses. They're more difficult to identify because the secretary of state won't release full dates of birth - only the year - for registered voters, making third-party cross-checking difficult.

Having multiple registrations isn't uncommon. Many voters may not realize they're already registered and register again. It's up to county boards of elections to check for duplicates and remove them.

"Frankly, I'd rather have people in there twice than not at all. It's not a big deal," said Diane Goldsmith, who heads the voter registration department of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

"Those kind of people aren't out to vote twice. What we're more concerned about is the registrations we get, and we're not sure if they're real people."

Suspect documents

Examples of suspect documents include multiple registration forms submitted in the same handwriting for different people. Or multiple forms for the same voter, with different Social Security numbers or dates of birth.

Some names appear to be taken from the phone book - even with abbreviations like "Wm" for William or "Robt" for Robert. Goldsmith said many of those have been referred to the Secretary of State and the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office for investigation.

Voter registration forms don't always identify how someone was registered, but a group frequently identified as a source of bad registrations is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. According to the Associated Press, the FBI is investigating the group in several states for alleged voter registration fraud.

ACORN, which claims responsibility for registering 1.3 million low-income, minority and young voters, admits "errors in the process" that led to "a handful" of fraudulent registrations. But the organization said allegations of rampant fraud amount to partisan mudslinging.

"It's very frustrating to us. It may sound funny to people. But we have to spend hundreds of hours going over these forms. There's a lot of registration fraud. That's my belief," said Goldsmith, a Republican. "Voter fraud is another issue. The fact that you have voter registration fraud might open the door to the potential of election fraud."

Registered at work

Because Ohio voters have to show identification at the polls, a fictitious registration alone doesn't translate into vote tampering.

Still, bad voter registrations are problematic in several ways.

Four people are registered to vote from 310 Ezzard Charles Drive - the Cincinnati Police Department's District 1 headquarters. All are Cincinnati police officers, according to city payroll records, and some have been voting at the West End precinct since the early 1990s.

It's not uncommon. The Enquirer found similar examples in other police districts and with sheriff's deputies in Hamilton and Butler counties. Election officials said they would look into the police officers' registrations.

"There's some sort of urban legend or myth that police officers or certain persons don't have to put their home address on their voter registration form. Everybody is supposed to be registered where they live, not where they work," said Sally Krisel, the director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. She's a Democrat.

It's not just a technicality. Legislative races and issues can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so voters registered at the wrong address may be voting on issues they have no right to vote on - and don't get the chance to elect their own local officials. Two of the four police officers, for example, live in the city of Wyoming.

Election officials said it's difficult to identify voters who use business addresses, because so many commercial buildings also may include apartments. While disqualifying post office boxes is relatively straightforward, it can be more difficult to spot voters who try to use a private mail box service.

Homeless voters
Then there are homeless voters.

In Hamilton County, there are more registered voters - 695 - at 217 W. 12th St. than any other single address.

That's the address of the Drop Inn Center, the state's largest homeless shelter. It serves an average of 200 people a day, and about 3,700 over the course of a year.

Using such an address is perfectly legal. In Ohio, there's no law that says a citizen must have a home in order to vote - so homeless voters can theoretically list their "residential" address as a park bench or interstate overpass.

That may be why some addresses appear to be on the banks of the Ohio River, or Great American Ball Park or the parking lot of Paul Brown Stadium.

Another possible explanation: data entry errors. Election officials couldn't immediately explain why their system accepted addresses in the 0-300 range of Elm, Race, Vine and Walnut streets - downtown addresses that don't exist - as valid.

One voter, for example, is registered to vote at 11 Elm St. - an address that, if it existed, would be in the river. But her apartment number suggests she once lived at 1111 Elm St. - a building owned by the YMCA of Greater Cincinnati that once contained apartments.

Those kinds of errors could create problems for voters. The riverfront is in a different precinct than Over-the-Rhine, so the wrong address could mean that a voter is required to cast a provisional ballot or turned away for being at the wrong polling place.

Database errors

Data entry errors make matching voters to other databases an inexact science. Variations on first names (Dave vs. David, for example), maiden names and misspellings could cause an otherwise eligible voter to be red-flagged.

In some cases, first and last names appear to be switched or missing. According to the Secretary of State's database, 73 Ohio voters have last names of a single letter or character, including voters with last names like "%" and "]."

County boards of elections are doing what they can to reconcile discrepancies by Tuesday, when they're required to have poll books printed for the Nov. 4 election.

On some level, election officials say, the system relies on the honesty of voters.

"We have to take everything that comes in here basically on faith," Goldsmith said.