The Miami Herald reported today: "Republicans allege that the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now is engaged in rampant voter fraud, but they've offered no proof of such a systematic effort. The GOP does have evidence that some of the group's 13,000 canvassers submitted fraudulent applications, but ACORN says it alerted authorities to most of the phony forms."

In another story last week, the Herald reported that, "[b]reaking with the talking points of his fellow Republicans in Washington, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he doesn't think voter fraud and the vote-registration group Acorn are a major problem in the Sunshine State.

'I think that there's probably less [fraud] than is being discussed. As we're coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who enjoy chaos,' Crist told reporters."

The assumption is that the Republicans are trying to position themselves to dispute the validity of an Obama victory in battleground states. Yet virtually any scholar who follows American elections and voting will tell you that voter registration fraud rarely leads to actual voter fraud. The isolated incidences of registration fraud at ACORN were most likely due to mercenaries producing fake voter registrations, with the name of Disney characters for instance, in order to boost their productivity numbers so that they could get paid. I've worked as an election day official and I can't imagine someone registered as Mickey Mouse showing up on election day demanding to vote.

According to Project Vote:

At the federal level, records show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. The available state-level evidence of voter fraud, culled from interviews, reviews of newspaper coverage and court proceedings, while not definitive, is also negligible. …A review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error. .. The claim that voter fraud threatens the integrity of American elections is itself a fraud. It is being used to persuade the public that deceitful and criminal voters are manipulating the electoral system…The exaggerated fear of voter fraud has a long history of scuttling efforts to make voting easier and more inclusive, especially for marginalized groups in American society. With renewed partisan vigor fantasies of fraud are being spun again to undo some of the progress America has made lowering barriers to the vote.

Which leads us to the verifiable Republican efforts to suppress voting. Across the country Republicans have been itching to purge people from voter rolls and recently the Supreme Court struck down an attempt to challenge 200,000 voter registration in Ohio because there was no standing to sue.

And now ACORN is fighting back. On Wednesday it released a report documenting Republican efforts to challenges voters "using foreclosure filings as a basis to prove the voter no longer lives at the address."

This kind of systemic challenge could further impact election results since even threats of such challenges can suppress voter turnout, particularly in minority and lower-income communities that have experienced voter suppression in the past.

Many homeowners may appear on a foreclosure list but have since made arrangements with the lender, caught up, or could even remain living in the house well past the foreclosure. There are many stages to the foreclosure process and given the current crisis, some lenders are choosing to negotiate with the homeowner or even let them remain in the home after foreclosure. Foreclosure lists only indicate that someone has had a foreclosure filed against hem and does not prove that the homeowner no longer lives in that residence. Furthermore, most jurisdictions require change of address notification only if the voter has moved out of the precinct within the last 60 days.

Even if the homeowner has actually moved, they may still live in the precinct with a family member or as a renter. Federal law requires states to let people who have moved within their jurisdiction (usually defined as a precinct) to vote and update their registration at the polls. However, of the millions of voters whose lives have been disrupted by foreclosure, some may have been too caught up on the chaos to notify election officials in a timely way of their change in address. Given the widespread nature of the foreclosure crisis, there should be accommodations made for voters who have recently moved due to foreclosure. In addition, challenging foreclosure victims violates the National Voter Registration Act, which requires boards of election to give voters notice and two federal election cycles in which to update or confirm their addresses before voter registrations are cancelled.

Long after this election is done, there will be much more work to be done to protect voters from those who give no more thought to disenfranchising voters than they would squashing a bug.