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) 

A group at the New York University School of Law says it has made a public records request to the State Board of Elections for purged voter lists to find out whether voters have been wrongly dropped from the rolls.

The Brennan Center for Justice is studying whether several states wrongly purged voters from their records, Barb Barrett reports.

The center’s investigators looking at states, including North Carolina, because they have had flawed voter purges or registration practices in the past, according to a news release from the Brennan Center.

The group says many states purge voter rolls in secret, without notifying voters.

"There really are no effective national standards to govern voter purges, and the result is a chaotic, whimsical approach to the maintenance of voter rolls," said executive director Michael Waldman.

Heavy registration in urban counties has swelled North Carolina's voter rolls.

More than 400,000 new voters, including a large number of young and black citizens, have registered, bringing the state's total to a record 6 million.

"Voter registration has eclipsed all records, no doubt about it," said state elections director Gary Bartlett.

Democrats are the apparent beneficiaries, helping Barack Obama make the state an unexpected battleground. Republican John McCain's campaign says it isn't worried.

Overall, Democrats have an overall edge in registration, with 2.7 million to 2 million Republicans. Of the new voters, 48 percent are Democrats, 21 percent Republicans and nearly a third independents. By comparison, in 2004 Democrats made up 39 percent of new voters and Republicans 34 percent.

Black people, who make up about 22 percent of the state's population, account for more than 30 percent of new voters. (N&O)

Clarification: An earlier version of this post misstated the number of new voters. While  there are 600,000 new voters, the net increase is about 400,000. That's because around 200,000 voters were removed from the rolls because they moved, died or committed a felony. 

Barack Obama is running ads encouraging young voters to register.

The Democratic presidential candidate has a full-page ad in Wednesday's edition of The Independent, an alternative weekly based in Durham. He's run similar ads in The Daily Tar Heel, the student paper at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The ad shows an oil drop with wind turbines and plant designs inside. "I registered because the future won't run on oil. — Josie K." reads the headline. "Don't get mad. Get registered."

The ads are running with two weeks remaining before the Oct. 10 deadline for new voters to register. They coincide with tours by Obama surrogates on college campuses.

They are a further sign that the Obama campaign hopes to boost the turnout among young voters in North Carolina by a substantial margin this year. 

Add another surrogate for Barack Obama coming here.

Actress Jurnee Smollett, star of the movie "The Great Debaters," will be at N.C. Central and N.C. State, UNC-Greensboro, Winston-Salem State, High Point University and N.C. A&T today.

On Friday, she'll visit Elizabeth City State University and East Carolina University.

The tour is part of a voter registration drive aimed at college students.

Voter registration closes at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10.

The campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Wednesday it was making a major effort in North Carolina because of the alignment of the issues and because of an unprecedented get-out the vote effort.

"The people want out of this war and they want some changes in the econony," Democratic Gov. Mike Easley said during an Obama campaign teleconference. "It's going to be very difficult for the people of North Carolina to vote for the status quo rather than change, which is where we are right now."

The Obama campaign said they have so far opened 16 offices across the state, spent more than $2 million in TV ads, and registered thousands of new voters, Rob Christensen reports.

"We are in striking distance," said Patrick Gaspard, the Obama national political director said of North Carolina.

The Obama campaign seemed to be reaching out to blue collar workers, who tended to vote for Hillary Clinton in the May primary.

The Obama campaign said it would emphasize rising gas prices, manufacuring jobs lost through unfavorable trade deals and John McCain's opposition to the Farm Bill.

The Obama campaign said it planned to organize every precinct in the state. The campaign said it would focus on voter registration between now and the Oct. 10 deadline.

They noted that since January, Democrats had picked up 169,635 new voters, while Republicans had gained over 51,542.

El Pueblo plans to reach out to Hispanic voters.

The longtime Latino advocacy group is one of 25 groups around the country to receive a grant from the National Council of La Raza for voter outreach ahead of the Nov. 4 elections.

"This type of outreach is critical to increasing the influence and strength of this underserved population in this year's, and future, elections," said advocacy director Irene Godinez in a statement. "Our goal is to make sure that everyone in our community who is eligible acts, participates, and votes."

El Pueblo is training young workers on registration drives and plans outreach efforts in the coming months, including at La Fiesta del Pueblo on Sept. 6-7 at the N.C. State Fairgrounds.

According to the State Board of Elections, slighty less than 1 percent of registered voters were listed as Hispanic as of Aug. 9, although Hispanics made up 6.7 percent of the population in the 2006 Census.

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP wants an aggressive investigation into recent automated calls it suspects are meant to confuse voters and suppress the black vote.

Rev. William Barber II, president of the state’s NAACP chapter, sent a complaint Saturday to N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper that outlines information the group has gathered about Women's Voices Women Vote — the group behind the robo calls, reports Titan Barksdale.

The calls tell voters to expect a voter-registration packet in the mail, but the calls were made after the deadline for registration in North Carolina. A man who identifies himself as Lamont Williams provides the misinformation.

“We want this taken very seriously,” Barber said. “[The calls] are a danger to our democracy and a danger to what’s best about this country.”

Cooper has said the calls are illegal because they did not disclose who sponsored the call or give contact information about their source.

“Regardless of the motivation, the robo-calls violated the law and they needed to stop,” Cooper said in a statement Wednesday.

Jennifer Canada, a spokeswoman for Cooper’s office, has said the calls continue to be investigated.