And people wonder what happens to all those bogus voter registration forms?

Fox News:

Michael Ward couldn't vote in person because he was "taking care of elderly parent."

Kimberlee Truell was on a "Bus trip to casino," as was Miguel Vazques.

The only problem with these absentee ballot records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y., is that they're phony, voters and investigators say -- and they've prompted what's being called an unprecedented investigation of suspected voter fraud.

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out -- enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.

A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were "significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process."

Among the reasons cited on the fraudulent forms for absentee voting: "traveling to Buffalo," attending a "screen printing conference in Syracuse," "working late shift," "working construction," and "home -- ill."

"Someone took my signature and voted with it and I felt extremely violated," Suozzo told Fox News. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old environmental engineer who says he never saw, let alone signed, the Working Families Party Absentee ballot application that carried his supposed signature. He was flabbergasted that someone would vote for him and submit it.

Could such a scheme have been carried out at the state level - say, the state of Ohio - in a general election?

In such a case, tens of thousands of fraudulent votes would have had to pass under the radar. And in a national election, millions of votes.

It is very possible that a few thousand votes in Ohio may have been bogus - either falsified absentee ballots such as the scenario in New York or union ballot stuffing operations using false voter registrations.

But anything beyond that, you would have to believe that Republicans would be brain dead. Both sides watch things like this very carefully - that's how the NY case came to light. Logically, if there were a massive effort to defraud the vote, it would show up in a variety of ways and would be virtually impossible to hide.

It's stuff like what happened in New York that gives ACORN local clout - which, if you've been following the story of their corruption, is exactly what they seek. It doesn't take much fraud in these small, local contests to tip the scales to ACORN's favored candidates.

And, it doesn't make ACORN any less of a threat to democracy that it would be impossible to carry out these tactics in a state or nationwide election. As Clarice Feldman has said many times on these pages, ACORN is a criminal conspiracy and needs to be investigated as we would investigate any organized crime outfit.

Time to clean up this mess and protect the integrity of the vote.