An accusation of voter fraud involving the residents of a state home for the developmentally disabled in Kinston making the rounds on right-leaning e-mail listservs in North Carolina is completely untrue, say state mental health officials, the local elections director and Lenoir County Republicans.

"Bus loads of mentally retarded and severely handicapped patients from a state funded facility called The Caswell Center were being transported to the voting location and that their black Democratic state employee aids were voting for them," said the e-mail, signed by Lester Jarman, a Kinston insurance agent. "They claimed they were assisting; but, how can institutionalized mentally retarded patients know how to vote much less make a reasonable logical decision? Most of them cannot read or write and many of them are also blind. This must be illegal!"

The e-mail also alleged that "Democratic supporters" were passing out shots of liquor to voters in the parking lot of the early voting site, Michael Biesecker reports.

Neither accusation is true, according to Lenoir County Board of Elections Director Dana King.

B.J. Murphy, the vice-chair of the Lenoir County Republican Party, has sent out an e-mail attempting to dispel the rumors about the Caswell Center. Jarman has also sent out an e-mail backing off his original accusations.

Neither of those messages appears to have had as wide a distribution as the original, however.

More after the jump.

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State elections director Gary Bartlett heard about the RNC conference call today saying that voter registration fraud is rampant in North Carolina, and wants to clarify the state board's position.

The state elections board takes voter fraud seriously, but organizations have the right to participate in voter registration drives, Bartlett told Lynn Bonner.

"Certainly, when someone tries to commit fraud...it does slow us down, there is no doubt about that, but we have to balance everything," Bartlett said. The suspicious forms are "just a small portion of many things we’ll be reviewing."

The state has not finished its investigation into the bogus registration forms submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, he said, but it appears so far that the people who submitted them were motivated by "personal greed," not partisan politics.

"It doesn’t have anything to do with them supporting or opposing any cause," he said.

Update: Deputy Director Johnnie McLean told the Charlotte Observer that the bogus forms appear to have been filed by "a lazy worker" hired by ACORN. She says she does not see any evidence of voter fraud.

"For somebody to say that with no apparent evidence to support it, it just doesn't do very much to establish trust in the elections process," she said.

The Republican National Committee is arguing that voter registration fraud is "rampant" in North Carolina.

During a conference call with reporters this morning, RNC chief counsel Sean Cairncross and spokesman Danny Diaz argued that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is submitting fraudulent registration forms here.

The State Board of Elections has found 135 bogus forms out of the nearly 28,000 submitted by the group in North Carolina this year, or about half of one percent.

Overall, more than 467,000 new voters have registered in North Carolina since the beginning of the year.

Diaz argued that the fraudulent forms are a burden to elections directors and risks leading to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voter registrations. He also argued that a percentage of the false forms may end up leading to voter fraud.

"It's hard to catch, but we do know in point of fact that these names get on the rolls," he said.

He pointed to a recent New York Post story that an Ohio man registered to vote multiple times and cast a ballot with a fake address.

The State Board of Elections has found 135 bogus voter registration forms.

The elections board is checking suspicious voter registration forms handed in by canvassers working for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which works to register low-income people as voters.

Elections board director Gary Bartlett said 104 of the incorrect forms were from Durham, 30 from Wake and one from Mecklenburg.

Since 2007, ACORN claims to have registered 1.3 million people nationwide, including nearly 28,000 in North Carolina. The group flags questionable forms submitted by its canvassers, but by law it must submit all forms to the elections boards.

Elections officials said falsified forms do not lead to voter fraud, since names that do not have accurate information don't make it onto the voter rolls. (AP) 

The Halifax County Board of Elections has dismissed an election protest by Scotland Neck Mayor Robert Partin, who claimed voter fraud in a predominantly black precinct in town.

Partin was defeated by James Mills, who said he will be sworn in as the first African-American mayor of Scotland Neck. The board did find one questionable provisional ballot and two voters who voted twice—once by absentee ballot and once at the polls on Nov. 6, Jane Stancill reports.

But those votes were not enough to throw the final result into question, the board said in a written decision filed this afternoon after a hearing Monday. The decision said "the protest should be dismissed because there is not substantial evidence of any violation, irregularity, or misconduct sufficient to cast doubt on the results of the election."

Partin sought a new election with his protest, which contended that more than 70 voters used inaccurate addresses. He could appeal the board's findings to the State Board of Elections, but had not filed notice as of this afternoon.