Investigators probing ACORN have learned that an Ohio man registered to vote several times and cast a bogus ballot with a fake address, officials said yesterday, as they revealed that nearly 4,000 registration applications supplied by the left-leaning activist group were suspect.
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The vote of Darnell Nash, one of four people subpoenaed in a Cuyahoga County probe of ACORN’s voter-registration activities, was canceled and his case was turned over to local prosecutors and law enforcement, Board of Elections officials said yesterday.
Nash had registered to vote repeatedly from an address that belonged to a legitimately registered voter, officials said during a hearing at which the subpoenaed voters were to testify.
Board officials had contacted Nash this summer, questioned his address and told him to stop repeat registering.
But still, he breezed into Ohio election offices – the state allows early voting for president – reregistered with a fake address and cast a paper ballot, officials said.
“He came in on 9/30 and Mr. Nash again registered to vote at [someone else’s] address, and he cast a ballot,” said board official Jane Platten.
Nash did not turn up for the hearing.
The Post reported last week on the Cleveland-area probe and the subpoenas, which were sent out to four people – including two voters who said they were hounded by ACORN workers to register over and over, even when they warned they’d already done so.
It’s the latest issue in the probe of ACORN’s registering voters in Ohio, one of at least nine states where officials are investigating similar reports of phony sign-ups by the group.
At the same time, officials said, some 5 percent, or 3,650, of the 73,000 total registration cards turned in by ACORN in the Cleveland area from its Project Vote initiative to sign up low-income voters were “questionable,” Platten said.
There were “egregious acts of registering multiple times,” said Platten. “The extent of it is beyond the resources of this board.”
Nash’s case and three others were turned over to authorities yesterday, said Ryan Miday, a spokesman for prosecutor Bill Masson.
“We will consider presenting it to a grand jury,” Miday said.
A member of the board said if necessary, the FBI or federal prosecutors could be brought in for assistance.
Still, members of the bipartisan board downplayed any voter fraud.
And Platten insisted officials with ACORN have offered “any and all” help in probing the questionable activities. Katy Gall, the Ohio state director for ACORN, said her group is cooperating fully with the investigation.
She added that her group has fired anyone who was found soliciting duplicate registrations.
ACORN, whose political arm has endorsed Democratic nominee Barack Obama, has signed up more than 1.3 million voters for this cycle.
ACORN adviser Scott Levenson said, “If one of the 13,000 [people] we hired is potentially a bad apple in the bunch, we encourage the authorities to prosecute, as appropriate, anyone that did the wrong thing. We discipline [and] we fire workers who [abuse their position] . . . We encourage prosecutors to follow suit.”
He also denied suggestions that the group pays canvassers by the number of names they sign up, and that they have quotas.
Also yesterday:
* Two of the four subpoenaed voters, Freddie Johnson and Christopher Barkley, met privately with sheriff’s deputies and described what they’d told The Post about being hounded by ACORN workers. Barkley testified at the hearing that some of the registration cards listing his name weren’t filled out by him.
* In an e-mail to supporters, John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, slammed “the left-wing activist group ACORN” and suggested, “We can’t allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.”