Yet another state investigates the union-backed voter fraud group for BarackA Durham (NC) official is asking state elections administrators to check approximately 80 voter registration forms for possible fraud.
Mike Ashe, Durham County's elections director, said the forms were among about 4,000 submitted to his office over the past four to six weeks by a national left-wing group called Acorn, for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
"They will be turned over to the State Board of Elections for investigation and prosecution," Ashe said of the questionable documents.
Most of the forms at issue bear one of six names. Ashe was not sure whether the people named existed or not.
Many of the papers are incomplete, which Ashe said is a nuisance, not a crime. But the group contains very different versions of what are purportedly the same person's signatures.
Signing another person's name on a voter registration form can result in up to 15 months in prison.
Acorn representatives said the organization works hard to detect and eliminate fraud in its voter registration efforts and will work with Ashe to fix problems.
Ashe's staff also learned this week of irregularities with a handful of other registrations. It was not clear who was responsible for these problems.
A woman who visited the elections office Wednesday said that Tamion Richardson of Buffalo Way had received a mailing stating that he had been registered to vote. The woman, who said she was Richardson's mother, said he was 14 years old and ineligible to vote.
Elections officials did not obtain the woman's name or phone number.
"This is serious, obviously," Ashe said, pointing to Richardson's registration form, which had a 1989 birthdate. "This is not the young man's signature, I don't believe."
Ashe said that Richardson would be deleted from the voter rolls and would not be allowed to cast a ballot.
Also, elections officials have received calls from people saying they had received new voter registration cards with incorrect information.
"I don't know how big an impact that is out there," Ashe said. "Is it four bad cards or 12 bad cards?"
An improperly updated registration card should not impede a legitimate voter's ability to cast a ballot in the general election unless a person's address has been changed to a different precinct, Ashe said. In that case, a voter on Nov. 4 would undergo the somewhat cumbersome process of casting a provisional ballot -- but the vote should ultimately count.
A provisional ballot isn't needed during the Oct. 16 through Nov. 1 early voting period because the advance polling sites serve all county precincts.
The integrity of Durham's voting system is not threatened by any of the bogus forms, Ashe emphasized, and no one will be allowed to cast multiple ballots.
"I don't think it has impacted the vote or the election in any way because of the checks and balances that we have in the system," the director said. "We caught this."
(heraldsun.southernheadlines.com)
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