Indiana Wants Criminal Voter Fraud Probe

And the ACORN scandal just keeps growing.

Political Machine has confirmed that the Indiana secretary of state, Todd Rokita, has requested a criminal investigation into 1,438 fraudulent voter registration applications in Lake County, and whether The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) had anything to do with it.

"This is not simply registration fraud," the Republican Rokita wrote to the FBI, Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter, Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, and US Attorney David Capp of the Northern District of Indiana. "Furthermore, this is not simply a local issue. This is a fraud perpetrated on all of the people of Indiana because fraudulent registrations are the first step in diluting the voice of honest voters and rendering an inaccurate tally on Election Day."

Political Machine this morning obtained a partially blacked-out copy of the letter Rokita wrote.


Rokita did his own investigation before asking for the criminal probe. His office found that among the 1,438 fraudulent registrations:

-61% had one of more critical defense, like indications of forgery or incomplete data
-30% contained information "that was obviously incorrect, incomplete or illegible"
-26% showed signs that someone had helped the intended voter, by either correcting or altering the information
-22% appeared to be multiple applications prepared by the same person; on many of them, the affidavits appear to be forgeries

Rokita's office has received "hundreds of calls" from citizens about similar activities.

Although many voter registration groups do good work, "behavior linked to NWI-ACORN, illustrated through the attached evidence, weakens the public perception of voter registration drives and hampers the ability of those groups that choose to comply with the law," Rokita wrote.

ACORN has detailed its registration procedures in Indiana, admitting some problems and noted that its office was shut down for three weeks to clean house. The group sent CNN a statement through its PR firm, saying: "As with all of our work, we defend our wuality control procedures and look forward to cooperating with the Lake County Board of Elections to prosecute those who have defrauded us."

ACORN is saying that they were defrauded, not that they themselves were the fraudsters.

ACORN recently submitted a package of information, including problematic cover sheets, investigation sheets, and worker batch sheets for six Lake County canvassers that ACORN turned over to authorities because of suspicious applications.

Rokita said: "If ACORN is contending that it brought this matter to the attention of local election officials, then NWI-ACORN will surely wish to assist law enforcement in bringing the bad actors inside the organization to justice."