KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana |Potential voter registration fraud investigated in Caddo

Potential voter registration fraud investigated in Caddo

By Fred Childers - bio | email

SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) - "They walked in here just mounding up cards," said Registrar of Voters for Caddo Parish, Ernie Roberson while looking over a box full of thousands of voter registration cards.      "They" are a group called Voting is Power, that went door to door in Caddo Parish to register people to vote, "They turned in about 8600 applications, out of that number 1400 new ones, sorted out the new and then we had around 1400 address changes, the rest of them were non existent," says Roberson.
      Before the organization ACORN appeared in the headlines for reported registration fraud, VIP caught the attention of Louisiana authorities over the summer. "They swamped all of us with a lot of applications but we haven't had the problem since we aggressively started dealing with that group and I think they just picked up and left Louisiana," says Roberson.
      The Louisiana Secretary of State's Office is investigating the group, Voting is Power. The Secretary of State won't comment on the investigation, only to say all the findings will be turned over to the parish district attorneys in the parishes where the cards were turned in. The fear here in Caddo is: The damage has already been done "What I'm afraid of is a lot of people think they are registered, and that's going to cause problems on election day," says Roberson. That's because many of the applications turned in, even  with real names, were incomplete. A big headache that's resulting in thousands of man hours. "It costs money, democracy is very expensive whenever you have to sort through hundreds and even thousands of forms that are either duplicates or completely bogus that costs us time. Ultimately costing the tax payer money.