LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- With four business days to go until Monday's voter registration deadline, a record number of Michigan residents have signed up to vote on Nov. 2, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said Wednesday.
But among the many legitimate registration forms are hundreds, if not thousands, that appear to be fraudulent. Land said advocacy groups for the first time are hiring people to register voters, encouraging some to fill in the forms for people who haven't registered so they can make more money.
Eaton County Clerk Fran Fuller said one registration form was filled out for a man who was dead. That form and others looked like they'd been filled in by someone taking names out of a Lansing phone book, she said. She has turned the information over to the county prosecutor, who's investigating.
"The signatures and the printing of the names were what first tipped off my staff that something wasn't right," said Fuller, who estimates her office has received about 100 fraudulent forms. "The signatures were very similar. A lot of them had no driver's license number, which was very suspicious."
Land said nearly 7 million Michigan residents have registered to vote so far, already beating the record set in 2000, when 6,859,332 people registered. The draw this year, as in 2000, is a close and contentious presidential race that has political parties and advocacy groups signing up new voters to try and help their candidates.
Many of those being paid to register voters are college students, which is why so many of the suspicious registrations are turning up in Wayne County, home of Wayne State University; Washtenaw County, home of the University of Michigan; and Ingham County, home of Michigan State University, said state Elections Division director Chris Thomas.
Kent County and Kalamazoo County, which also have state universities within their borders, are seeing similar problems, he added. Some clerks in the affected counties have their staffs working overtime to sort through suspicious-looking registrations, or have had to hire extra help.
Thomas said the groups submitting the most questionable registrations have been the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, or PIRGIM, and Project Vote. Fuller said all of the suspicious registrations her Eaton County office received were turned in by PIRGIM, a nonpartisan advocacy group based in Ann Arbor..."
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw104905_20040929.htm
I don't understand something. If they register someone to vote that is fraudulent, then how does that person vote? Just registering doesn't get them to a polling place.
You know when the AP doesnt say what party a group is associated with .... ITS DEMOCRAT