MADE-UP PEOPLE - PROSECUTOR CHECKING FALSIFIED VOTER FORMS

Columbus Dispatch ^ | June 2, 2004 | Robert Vitale

[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

[tang-soo]

If not for vote fraud, the RATS would lose about a third of the elections they now win.

Philadelphia shoud be proud of their 110% voter participation.

[Mr. K]

I had a similar experience in Elma, NY- my signature on my registration form was NOT mine, and was an obvious attempt to simulate mine.

I am stll trying to track this down

[tang-soo]

bttt