ACORN: Now, It's Embezzlement Allegations

Baton Rouge, LA ~ An internal review by ACORN's board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than a previously reported sum of $1 million, according to documents from the Louisiana attorney general's office.

The new amount was reported in a subpoena released Monday from an investigation by Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported in Tuesday's editions. It is unclear if the money was taken from state, federal or private funds, according to the subpoena.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new embezzlement allegation is "completely false." She said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys have a chance to review the subpoena.

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ACORN Official Says Nothing Done Wrong Here

An official with the controversial and embattled ACORN organization denies his group did anything wrong in Oklahoma and alleges documents retrieved from computers appear to be "partially doctored."

Brian Kettering, deputy director of national operations for ACORN, told The Oklahoman, "The documents that we have seen — ostensibly taken from these computers — do not appear to reflect the work of ACORN in Oklahoma and appear to be partially doctored versions of some ACORN documents.”

Rep. Mike Reynolds released documents earlier this week which he said show ACORN focused on helping Democrats in three legislative races in the 2008 election and had developed a plan to become influential in state politics within five years.

Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, said the documents were recovered from two computers abandoned by ACORN workers in Oklahoma City. Reynolds said he bought the computers from the landlord of an ACORN office in Oklahoma City after the group stopped paying its lease on the office. The computers were password-protected, but he found the passwords in a drawer, he said.

"We consider our computers to be stolen property, the contents thereof stolen work product,” Kettering said in an e-mail response Wednesday to The Oklahoman.

In Florida, where an investigation into alleged voter fraud by ACORN workers is underway, Kettering said earlier this week the group worked "while the right wing noise machine was fabricating lies about us."

Last year, in defending ACORN's voter registration efforts, Kettering said, “There is an orchestrated campaign – coming from the right – that is ultimately about voter suppression.”

Read more at http://www.newsok.com/acorn-leader-denies-claims-of-political-work-in-oklahoma/article/3405310#ixzz0SgbqKkYo.

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Nevada Prosecutors Say ACORN's Acts Illegal

From Fox News In Las Vegas ~ When ACORN took to Las Vegas and started playing "Blackjack" and "21," the activist group was making a far bigger gamble than it ever guessed, according to Nevada prosecutors.

There's nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but authorities say ACORN was using the names of those casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system.

A preliminary hearing Tuesday in the downtown Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant.

Until now, prosecutions for voter registration fraud have focused on ACORN workers, and authorities have secured guilty pleas from several who admitted to falsifying voter registration forms.

But when investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller's office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that implicated the ACORN organization itself.

"We came across policy manuals that outline their policy of creating a quota system, which is against the law," Miller told FOX News in an interview. "This, in fact, was something that was widespread and something the organization itself knew about, and it's important to hold the organization criminally accountable as opposed to the individual field directors."

ACORN denies it had a quota for the number of voter registration forms that its workers were required to turn in every day. Instead, the organization says there were "performance standards" — an expectation that workers would find 20 new voters a day.

But prosecutors say ACORN paid a $5 bonus per day to workers who would sign up 21 or more voters per shift, hence the name "21" or "Blackjack," an alleged quota system that Ross says is the first step toward corrupting the democratic system.

"These charges strike at the heart of having integrity of the electoral process. That's something that is important in Nevada and the entire country," he told FOX News.

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Retrieved Computer Document Puts Rice In Middle Of Democratic Party, ACORN Conspiracy

A document obtained from an abandoned Oklahoma City ACORN office computer purports to put Senator Andrew Rice, the new leader of Senate Democrats, in the middle of a conspiracy between ACORN and the Oklahoma Democratic Party to target legislative Republicans and elect Democrats.

The document is a letter on ACORN letterhead with Rice's printed name at the bottom; whether the letter was a draft for Oklahoma Cityan Rice to send, and if it was sent, is not known. The letter urges the Citizenship and Immigration Service to expedite the processing of immigrant citizenship applications.

Rice said he didn't write the letter and had no association with ACORN.

ACORN is under investigation in numerous states for alleged illegal activity on behalf of Democrats. Last week, the Census Bureau announced that it would not allow the federally-funded ACORN to participate in the 2010 national population count. Also last week, prosecutors in south Florida arrested 11 ACORN employees on charges of falsifying hundreds of voter applications, including some involving illegal immigrants, during a registration drive last year. And some ACORN employees were fired after telling two undercover videographers posing as a prostitute and her pimp on how to circumvent the law and obtain federal funds. Multiple federal and state investigations of the group are underway.

During the 2008 presidential race, Republican John McCain tried, unsuccessfully, to link Democrat Barack Obama to the group. Since, the link has become clearer. See http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI= for details.

ACORN, short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, started in 1970 in Little Rock, Arkansas to help the poor and today is a national, multimillion-dollar conglomerate. ACORN's political action committee endorsed Obama for president, and his campaign paid an ACORN subsidiary $832,000 to help get out the vote. Obama, himself a former community organizer, has long-standing ties to the group, which he represented in 1995 in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over the "motor-voter" law.

There's more: Patrick Gaspard, considered one of the most powerful figures in the Obama White House, is a longtime ACORN operative and former union official described by ACORN itself as "ACORN's man in the White House."

ACORN's Oklahoma City office was closed and abandoned last year and Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, obtained a computer from the office. He was able to retrieve numerous documents, including those reported on by radio station KTOK, and this undated document, on ACORN letterhead:

Dear USCIS

I am writing to request that you take all measures necessary to expedite the processing of immigrant citizen applications, in order to make the dreams of hard working people who contribute much to our communities a reality.

Currently, there is a longer than expected waiting period, for the processing of the N-400 citizenship applications.

This past year the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) raised the application fee to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. According to the USCIS the revenue from the fee increase will "enable a 20 percent reduction in average application processing times" One of the application types that the USCIS claims will see a decrease in processing times is the N-400; which it states "will improve from seven months to five months", by the end of 2008. Currently, the stated processing time for the N-400 is 6 to 7 months. Many immigrants are now experiencing a 1 year or more waiting period, as opposed to the seven months claimed by the USCIS.

As you can appreciate, this is a serious obstacle, for these hard working people, on their path to full citizenship. Many come to the United States, in hopes of making a better life for themselves and their families. These hard working people have followed all the rules and have yet to see the fruits of their labors. Instead, they are facing long waiting periods and an endless bureaucracy that is turning the American dream into a nightmare.

I believe citizenship is an important American value and I believe the USCIS should address the problem of the backlog. I further believe that the USCIS should live up to its word and take all measures within its power to make this process more efficient and speedier. We are asking that you support and make the dreams of these eligible persons, so that they may become full participating members of our community, with all the rights and privileges that come with US citizenship. We thank you for your support, on this important issue.

Thank You Andrew Rice Oklahoma State Senator

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Documents Link Oklahoma Democrats, ACORN

By Jerry Bohnen/NewsRadio 1000 KTOK ~ Even as ACORN faces more allegations of wrongdoing nationally, claims are leveled against the organization by Oklahoma Republicans that it received possible illegal help from the State Democratic party in targeting GOP legislators for defeat.

The allegations come from state GOP chairman Gary Jones and Republican State Representative Mike Reynolds of Oklahoma City.

A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Democratic party declined to comment to the claims.

Jones and Reynolds maintain that documents gleaned from an abandoned ACORN computer in south Oklahoma City are the basis for their allegations.

Reynolds, a computer expert, obtained the computer after ACORN abandoned the office and left behind a computer and hundreds of files and papers. The office landlord was going to trash the materials but referred them to Reynolds, as KTOK reported last year prior to the November elections. Now Reynolds has managed to retrieve the files from the computer and they reveal what appears to be a direct and close-working relationship between ACORN and state Democrats.

In one document, ACORN planned to target five different Senate and House seats and wanted to defeat Republican legislators and elect Democrats. View PDF Document. The districts in question were Senate Districts 33 and 43 and House Districts 85, 87 and 93.

Another document indicated ACORN's plans to take control of city halls in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Still another under ACORN letterhead was a letter sent out under the name of an Oklahoma City Democratic State Senator (Andrew Rice).

"The route to power is two fold," said one ACORN document. "First, build powerful city organizations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa that can control these municipalities."

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Scandal? What Scandal? Media Misses The Mark

The Main Stream Media's failure to cover the ACORN scandal has blogger and columnist Anthony G. Martin up in arms, and he details his views in a provocative column, which can be read at http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m9d20-Why-they-arent-covering-ACORN-scandal.

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Cole Moves To Defund Controversial ACORN

Congressman Tom Cole has co-sponsored the "Defund ACORN Act."

This legislation calls for the federal government to cut financial ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Cole has consistently condemned the housing association's abuses and wants the federal government to stop sending taxpayer dollars to ACORN and its affiliates.

"It defies common sense and common decency that an organization like ACORN receives any federal funding," Congressman Cole said. "The numerous incidents of voter registration fraud should have been enough to stop funding this criminal enterprise, but the recent video tape of ACORN employees making suggestions to a couple as to how they could better conceal and profit from an underage prostitution ring is simply too much. Federal funding for ACORN must stop immediately and permanently."

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Lawyer: NY Times Killed Obama-ACORN Story

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Read the entire story at http://thebulletin.us.

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GOP Leaders Protest ACORN Funding

From www.newsmax.com ~ A rising chorus of GOP leaders are protesting that the blockbuster Democratic stimulus package would provide up to a whopping $5.2 billion for ACORN, the left-leaning nonprofit group under federal investigation for massive voter fraud.

Most of the money is secreted away under an item in the now $836 billion package titled “Neighborhood Stabilization Programs.”

Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by some for tipping the scales in the Democrats' favor in November.

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Cole: ACORN's Massive, Multi-state Voter Fraud

By Congressman Tom Cole

Much is being made in the news lately of the uncovering of massive, multi-state, multi-election cycle voter fraud, perpetrated by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN. In just the past year and a half ACORN claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters. Normally this would be a good thing - we should encourage greater participation in our political system. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that ACORN was operating a massive scam by registering tens of thousands of phony voters.

In Nevada it has been revealed that ACORN hired inmates in the state penitentiary to register new voters. They registered the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada. Another Nevada canvasser was caught filling out voter registration forms using names and addresses copied out of the telephone book. Needless to say, this scandal is not confined to Nevada. Election officials in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico have all uncovered similar instances of fraud. A state prosecutor in Washington State put it very well when he described the activities of ACORN as "an act of vandalism against our voter rolls."

Voting in free and fair elections is the very foundation of our system of self governance. Who can ever forget the remarkable election of 2000 when the candidate who actually received fewer popular votes won the election? This was after an extended recount - in the state his bother served as Governor - and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. Yet at no time did we see tanks rolling through the streets. There was no martial law. Americans tuned into the Tonight Show every night to see Jay Leno cracking jokes about hanging chads. This was possible because Americans had faith that despite the problems we had in that election, the process was fundamentally honest and fair. Organizations like ACORN undermine that trust and as a result they undermine the very political stability of the United States.

And as if this treachery weren't enough, ACORN does this with millions of dollars of taxpayer money. You see, ACORN played another role in the dominant news item of the past several weeks - the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry. For years ACORN has used intimidation tactics to force banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back. And they extorted millions of dollars from Congress under the auspices of the Community Redevelopment Act by arranging to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up the risky mortgages on the secondary market.

Remarkably, in the recently passed Economic Recovery Act, the liberals in Congress attempted to put even more money into the pockets of their cronies at ACORN. Fortunately, the Republicans put their foot down and all additional funding for ACORN was stripped from the bill. I'd call that a good start, but now we need to get to work making sure the rest of their taxpayer funding is stripped away.

Unfortunately, it does not appear to be just a few bad apples at ACORN. The entire organization has a considerable record of manipulation and fraud. In June the Consumers Rights League published a series of internal documents from the organization that reveal ACORN has comingled political money and taxpayer funds. In order to prevent future taxpayer rip-offs and blatant voter fraud, the Community Reinvestment Act needs to be overhauled, and ACORN should never again receive a penny of taxpayer money. Furthermore, those responsible for the fraudulent registrations must be thoroughly investigated, and if found guilty, punished to the full extent of the law.

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Red Dirt Report: ACORN Skipped Out On OKC Office Rent, Left Angry Landlord, Littered Office

Story & Photo By Andrew W. Griffin/Red Dirt Report

OKLAHOMA CITY – On the second floor of an old building in South Oklahoma City's “Little Mexico” neighborhood, there is a room that until recently, housed a branch of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a low-income advocacy organization known for left-wing activism, rabble-rousing and – shockingly – voter registration fraud.

Left hurriedly and in a shambles, the small office, coated in a layer of plaster dust, still housed computers, documents, registration forms, I-9 employment info and boxes with an IRS return address and others with a return address for an ACORN office in New Orleans.

The person working at this office, Adam Carter, had reportedly skipped town in June, according to the landlord. and in August, an ACORN representative from Tulsa came down and took more items, leaving behind what was found by Red Dirt Report.

ACORN never fulfilled it’s year lease for the property and never paid a dime in rent. The landlord told Red Dirt Report that the ACORN workers seemed to attract trouble and that there was something not quite right about what they were doing. The landlord also said that the aforementioned Tulsa ACORN worker, named “Brittany,” said ACORN didn't have any money to pay for the rent and that Carter had depleted the South Oklahoma City ACORN account.

A call to the main Oklahoma City ACORN office at 2525 Northwest Expressway revealed that the number had been disconnected. A call to the ACORN office in Tulsa, at 531 E. 36th Street North went unanswered.

Granted, these are bad times for ACORN and calls from the media may have resulted in a siege mentality for the group. Nevertheless, ACORN is active in Oklahoma and while touting itself as non-partisan and accepting federal funds, seems to want to advance the goals of “The Party” (aka Democrats) according to evidence left in the abandoned office.

If you haven’t heard of ACORN before, chances are in the past couple of weeks you can’t escape reference to the group. A little history. ACORN began in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1970’s as a welfare-rights group working with low-income folks. But over the years, ACORN grew beyond the boundaries of the Natural State and in the process expanded the number of core issues it would address.

But in those intervening years there have been countless examples of fraud, rabble-rousing and even nepotism and embezzlement on the part of the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Then there is the growing scandal related to voter fraud connected to ACORN voter registration drives. With everyone from Mickey Mouse to Jimmy John’s (a restaurant) to the players on the Dallas Cowboys (in Nevada?!?) getting registered across the country, a growing number of states are looking into ACORN and the false voter registration forms. In Ohio alone, 200,000 voter registration forms appear to be fraudulent.

In the past decade, ACORN started ACORN Votes, ACORN’s national political action committee. Not surprisingly, earlier this year they endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. Obama, as it turns out, represented ACORN on legal issues in 1995. Obama also worked on voter-registration drives in Illinois with Project Vote, an ACORN-allied organization that helped ACORN register over 1 million people to vote. The Obama campaign also gave over $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary to help augment grassroots efforts in several battleground states.

As noted in a piece by Deroy Murdock at National Review Online, in his November 2007 ACORN address, Obama said: “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.”

Then, there is the online news site, World Net Daily, which has reported this week that Obama has not been entirely truthful about his links to the activist organization. As new reports show, he helped train ACORN activists.

Why isn’t Obama being entirely truthful about his connection?

Additionally, an MSNBC investigation showed that court documents show ACORN has a troubled history.

According to a source close to the Oklahoma County Election Board, last Friday night, 30 minutes before midnight, Democrat activists brought in a stack of voter registration forms. It was noted, by this source known only to Red Dirt Report, that the activists were going to Oklahoma City area homeless shelters and signing up homeless folks with plans to take them to the polls on election day.

And on Thursday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Moore) said in a press release that a serious investigation into ACORN is warranted, saying, “Furthermore, those responsible for the fraudulent registrations must be thoroughly investigated, and if found guilty, punished to the full extent of the law.”

Red Dirt Report was allowed exclusive entry into the abandoned South Oklahoma City ACORN office which had been trashed and ransacked. Interestingly, flyers left behind called for people in the low-income neighborhood to come to a meeting to talk about the need for more streetlights in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Was this merely a way to get people worked up about an issue so they would come in and then in turn register as a Democrat? Some evidence appears to point to that.

In fact, the evidence discovered in the abandoned office on South Robinson revealed maps of Oklahoma City broken down in House districts. Districts where a Republican won, but just barely, were highlighted. Papers related to the 2006 election results for Oklahoma were also noted.

Red Dirt Report contacted ACORN regional offices in Little Rock and New Orleans seeking comment on ACORN activities in Oklahoma and ACORN activist Adam Carter. However, those calls were not returned.

It should be noted that a source close to Red Dirt Report has it on good authority that a more serious investigation into ACORN may take place.

In Oklahoma’s First Congressional District, in the Tulsa area, Democrat congressional candidate Georgianna Oliver, running against incumbent Republican John Sullivan, was endorsed by ACORN in a letter that was posted at Oliver’s campaign website. Writes North Tulsa (ACORN) Chapter Chairperson Patricia Walker, “Our members are excited to support you and believe that you are committed to representing our issues in this most-important race.”

The blog Living On Tulsa Time found the ACORN endorsement, on ACORN letterhead, which has since been scrubbed from the campaign site OliverForUSCongress.com. Why wouldn’t Oliver want to note that endorsement?

We may never know. A call to the Oliver campaign office in Tulsa was not returned. Neither was a call to the Sullivan campaign, seeking comment on Oliver accepting the endorsement.

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FBI Opens Nationwide ACORN Investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.

A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday. A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters—most of whom tend to be Democrats.

Republican accusations about the group were raised during Wednesday's presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and GOP candidate John McCain.
Some ACORN employees have been accused of submitting false voter registration forms—including some signed `Mickey Mouse' or other fictitious characters.

Those voter registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and at least five other states. Election officials in Ohio and North Carolina also recently questioned the group's voter forms.

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Texas County Rejects 40% Of ACORN Names

From The Houston Chronicle ~ Although nearly 40 percent of the 35,000 voter registration applications submitted in Harris County by a community-organizing group accused of fraud in other states were rejected, there is no evidence of intentional manipulation of the voter rolls here, according to the county's voter registrar.

Elections officials in more than a dozen states are investigating reports that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, submitted fraudulent registrations.

Republican leaders have called for a federal investigation, and GOP presidential nominee John McCain has been using connections between the group and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, as fuel for attacks in the final weeks of the campaign.

About half of the 14,000 ACORN applications that were rejected in Harris County were missing required information such as the potential voter's address, date of birth and Texas driver's license number, said Paul Bettencourt, the county's voter registrar and tax assessor-collector. Another 3,800 applicants already were registered to vote.

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Cole: ACORN's Phony Voter Scam

By Congressman Tom Cole

Much is being made in the news lately of the uncovering of massive, multi-state, multi-election cycle voter fraud, perpetrated by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN. In just the past year and a half ACORN claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters. Normally this would be a good thing - we should encourage greater participation in our political system. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that ACORN was operating a massive scam by registering tens of thousands of phony voters.

In Nevada it has been revealed that ACORN hired inmates in the state penitentiary to register new voters. They registered the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada. Another Nevada canvasser was caught filling out voter registration forms using names and addresses copied out of the telephone book. Needless to say, this scandal is not confined to Nevada. Election officials in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico have all uncovered similar instances of fraud. A state prosecutor in Washington State put it very well when he described the activities of ACORN as "an act of vandalism against our voter rolls."

Voting in free and fair elections is the very foundation of our system of self governance. Who can ever forget the remarkable election of 2000 when the candidate who actually received fewer popular votes won the election? This was after an extended recount - in the state his bother served as Governor - and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. Yet at no time did we see tanks rolling through the streets. There was no martial law. Americans tuned into the Tonight Show every night to see Jay Leno cracking jokes about hanging chads. This was possible because Americans had faith that despite the problems we had in that election, the process was fundamentally honest and fair. Organizations like ACORN undermine that trust and as a result they undermine the very political stability of the United States.

And as if this treachery weren't enough, ACORN does this with millions of dollars of taxpayer money. You see, ACORN played another role in the dominant news item of the past several weeks - the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry. For years ACORN has used intimidation tactics to force banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back. And they extorted millions of dollars from Congress under the auspices of the Community Redevelopment Act by arranging to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up the risky mortgages on the secondary market.

Remarkably, in the recently passed Economic Recovery Act, the liberals in Congress attempted to put even more money into the pockets of their cronies at ACORN. Fortunately, the Republicans put their foot down and all additional funding for ACORN was stripped from the bill. I'd call that a good start, but now we need to get to work making sure the rest of their taxpayer funding is stripped away.

Unfortunately, it does not appear to be just a few bad apples at ACORN. The entire organization has a considerable record of manipulation and fraud. In June the Consumers Rights League published a series of internal documents from the organization that reveal ACORN has comingled political money and taxpayer funds. In order to prevent future taxpayer rip-offs and blatant voter fraud, the Community Reinvestment Act needs to be overhauled, and ACORN should never again receive a penny of taxpayer money. Furthermore, those responsible for the fraudulent registrations must be thoroughly investigated, and if found guilty, punished to the full extent of the law.

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Man Says ACORN Gave Bribes To Register

CLEVELAND (The New York Post) ~ A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.

Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot.

ACORN is under investigation in Ohio and at least eight other states - including Missouri, where the FBI said it's planning to look into potential voter fraud - for over-the-top efforts to get as many names as possible on the voter rolls regardless of whether a person is registered or eligible.

It's even under investigation in Bridgeport, Conn., for allegedly registering a 7-year-old girl to vote, according to the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered Ohio's Secretary of State to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The order was in response to a Republican lawsuit unrelated to the ACORN probe in Cuyahoga County, in which at least three people, including Johnson, have been subpoenaed.

Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it's a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay "compensation on a fee-per-registration" system when signing up someone to vote.

Johnson, who works at a cellphone kiosk in downtown Cleveland, said he was a sitting duck for the signature hunters, but was always happy to help them out in exchange for a smoke or a little scratch. He'd collected 10 to 20 cigarettes and anywhere from $10 to $15, he said.

The Cleveland voting probe, first reported by The Post yesterday, also focused on Lateala Goins, who said she put her name on multiple voter registrations. She guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them. "You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," she said.

ACORN spokesman Kris Harsh said the group does not tolerate its workers paying people to sign the voter-registration cards.

ACORN's political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, but Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign in Ohio, said ACORN has no role in its get-out-the-vote drive.

During the primary season, however, the Obama camp paid another group, Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. That group and ACORN share the same board of directors.
In Wisconsin yesterday, John McCain blasted ACORN.

"No one should be corrupting the most precious right we have, that is the right to vote," he said.

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