Posted on 06/03/2004 11:55:58 AM PDT by tang-soo
MADE-UP PEOPLE - PROSECUTOR CHECKING FALSIFIED VOTER FORMS
Published: Wednesday, June 2, 2004
NEWS 01A
By Robert Vitale
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
When Arthur Creasap received a letter from the Franklin County Board of Elections last month, it asked for more information on his voter-registration form.
Creasap was perplexed. He already was registered to vote and never had turned in a form.
The board said Creasap, a Columbus resident, had signed the form and that his driver's-license number and the last four digits of his Social Security number were missing from it.
But it wasn't Creasap's signature. The problem was confirmed when authorities noted that his name was misspelled, and his birth date was listed as 1983. Creasap, 74, was born in 1930.
The Franklin County sheriff's office is investigating a number of other possibly fraudulent voter-registration forms similar to Creasap's.
"I consider it identity theft,'' Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said yesterday. "These (forms) are false. It's a fifth-degree felony to do this.''
Two groups that have registered 23,000 new voters in Franklin County since last fall could be to blame.
Damschroder says the "blatantly false'' registration forms were turned in by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN, and Project Vote, a group headed by a former Ohio Democratic Party chairman.
The two national, nonpartisan groups are working together locally to register minority and low-income voters.
Damschroder said he has sent Prosecutor Ron O'Brien information from dozens of people who called his office after receiving voter-identification cards they didn't request or for people who don't exist. Others called after getting a notice that more information was needed on forms, as Creasap did.
Katy Gall, head organizer for ACORN in Columbus, said she plans to meet with Damschroder today.
ACORN and Project Vote verify information on 75 percent of the registration cards they collect, but some mistakes are bound to slip through, she said.
She noted, however: "Even if it's 1 percent, it's too many.''
David Leland, who left his post as chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party in 2002 to become Project Vote's national director, said the group aims to register more than 1.2 million new voters nationally before the Nov. 2 election.
In Columbus, the two groups are paying temporary workers $6.25 an hour, plus bonuses based on the number of registrations they collect.
Damschroder said the incentives seem to encourage the problem. Forms given to the Board of Elections have listed real people's names with incorrect birth dates and Social Security numbers, he said. Others list fake first names with the correct addresses and last names of people who live there.
The board has caught forged signatures when running the names of supposedly new registrants through its database of more than 750,000 Franklin County voters, said to Libbie Worley, manager of voter services. Other problems with falsified information have been caught because the forms lacked required identification.
Worley said some of the fake forms have resulted in voter identification cards being issued.
ACORN has had similar problems before. Last fall, elections officials in St. Louis questioned more than 1,000 voter-registration forms submitted by the group's paid workers.
At least one other Ohio county is facing the same trouble.
"It's a drain on resources,'' said Paula Hicks-Hudson, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, where the same problem occurred earlier this year as the groups began registering new voters in Toledo.
Hicks said her agency began training sessions for ACORN and Project Vote workers and also gave them a warning: Elections-law violators will be prosecuted.
In Franklin County, ACORN has fired registration workers in the past for falsifying forms, according to Gall, and it will continue "pretty aggressive'' efforts to verify the information it collects.
rvitale@dispatch.com
No group that is led by David Leland could possibly be labeled as nonpartisan. After all, he was the Ohio Dim State Chairman. I was sad to see him leave that post a couple of years ago. Under his leadership, the GOP won nearly every state wide election - as well as took control of both the house and the state senate. I think the only Dim to wwin a state wide election was lee Fisher for Attorney general several years ago. With people like Taft though, I use the term GOP with my tongue planted in my cheek.
Here we go.....!!
I worked in Columbus long ago when they passed an election-day voter registration bill. We got rid of it in a referendum but it was in place for the referendum. I resisted the temptation to write a letter to the editor urging voters who opposed the bill to be sure to vote against it several times.
There is a ton of Supreme Court verbiage about "one man - one vote" in the context of racial discrimination. Today it is more likely that one man has .99999943 votes - due to the dilution caused by illegal voters (felons, non-citizens, dead people, non-residents, college students voting in two jurisdictions, etc., etc., etc.). It's time to focus the vehement objection to vote dilution heard in the civil rights era to all voters and that means cleaning up the process from start to finish. There is no reason that six sigma levels of quality could not be implemented in voting.
Ohio, huh? No doubt we will also hear reports of Republicans chasing away voters in black neighborhoods.
The two national, nonpartisan groups are working together locally to register minority and low-income voters.
Nonpartisan? Riiiiiiggght!
It looks like he has discovered a method where the Rats can start winning again, cheating and breaking the law.
Another attempt at stealing the election by democrats before we even vote!
Figures.
I would change the voting laws to force everyone to show up in person to sign up and show up at least once every four years and show proof of identity and address to stay on the voter rolls. If you can't find five minutes once every FOUR YEARS, you probably are too busy to know what you are voting on anyway.
Non-partisan. Uh huh.
The dems whine on and on about President Bush stealing the election, yet any time evidence of vote irregularities and outright fraud surface, it's linked to a democrat.
Gee ACORN, another communist arm of the dnc (or vice-versa) did something illegal (again) and got caught (again) and will slink away (again) unpunished (again!)
How's this for non-partisan:
http://www.workingforchange.com/
This is the parent website that is linked to for voter registration by the ACORN website. (www.acorn.org)
Project Vote links back to the exact same voter registration site held by the 'non-partisan' workingforchange.com. From the PV website: "Project Vote is a 501 (c) (3) non-partisan, nonprofit organization."
"Project Vote, a group headed by a former Ohio Democratic Party chairman"
Aha! Another fictitious group, with fictitious principles, fictitious morality and fictitious patriotism! Why not a fictitious electorate to go along with it!
BTW-don't expect to see anything about this on the news tonite, unless it's on Fox.
You mean there's voter fraud going on in the demoncrat party? I'm shocked!
I've had to show proof of identity before. I think it was the first time I voted. Anyway, I ALWAYS take my ID in with me so I have it if asked. I live in small town Iowa, so, they all know me and never ask for it!! But I like your idea A LOT!!
Their fraud is so rampant that they get courts to approve it!
In the 2000 election, a motion was filed in a court in St. Louis claiming that voter turnout was so high that many people were having trouble voting and the polls needed to be kept open past scheduled closing time to allow these people to vote.
The people who filed this motion... someone who was NOT registered to vote and A DEAD MAN!
Yet the court ordered the polls to remain open. Later another court reversed the ruling, but the damage and fraud was already done.
The Rats plan rears it's ugly head!
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