Voter Fraud

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records...

Community-organizing group Acorn said Thursday it was considering quitting its voter-registration work amid a growing political storm over its activities, a move that could hurt Democrats at the polls.

In the latest rebuke, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Thursday to block the group from receiving federal funds. Republicans attached the measure attacking Acorn to an unrelated bill that advances a top Democratic priority: making the federal government the sole provider of college loans under federal programs, forcing private lenders out of the origination market.

The Acorn measure passed with strong bipartisan support, 345-75, while the student-loan bill passed by 253-171, largely along party lines...

Arrest warrants have been issued in Miami for 11 people suspected of falsifying information on hundreds of voter registration cards -- including registering the name of the late actor Paul Newman -- the Florida state attorney told FOXNews.com.

The FBI and state authorities took seven people into custody Wednesday as it issued 11 arrest warrants for voter registration fraud in Homestead, Fla., in June 2008.

Florida state attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle said 11 workers hired to register voters by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- or ACORN -- submitted 888 fraudulent names. She said the names included people who were already registered voters, fictitious names, and the name of the late actor Paul Newman, who died in Sept. 2008...

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hired forensic accounting
specialists to investigate more than $1 million in church funding to
voter-registration group ACORN, fearing the money may have been spent in
partisan or fraudulent ways that could jeopardize the church's tax-exempt
status.

The investigation is "thorough, serious and ongoing," according to a July 11
letter to more than 200 bishops from New Orleans Bishop Robert Morin, chairman
of the committee that oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development...

Government officials and voting rights watchdog groups will be keeping close
watch of the polls around the country Tuesday, trying to keep lines of voters
moving and to make sure that everyone can cast a ballot in what's anticipated to
be a record election turnout.

Groups like the nonpartisan Fair Elections Legal Network are keeping a
particularly watchful eye on battleground states like Ohio and Virginia. 

"The main thing that we all know is that there's going to be a huge turnout.
There are going to be long lines, and any problems that occur will exacerbate
because of those lines," said Robert M. Brandon, president of the Fair Elections
Legal Network...