07:49 AM CDT on Thursday, October 7, 2004

By JAMIE ALLMAN
KMOV

KMOV News 4 has learned that hundreds of voter registration cards are bogus.

Sleuths at the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners are trashing hundreds of faulty voter registrations, most of them collected by voter drive groups like Pro-Vote and America Coming Together.

KMOV

Commissioner David Welch initially played down the matter. The Republican election board director is cautious about making general accusations, accepting explanations from groups like Pro-Vote.

KMOV presented Welch with a list of names of voters who apparently registered twice, using variations of their names - registrations that had not yet been flagged.

Welch says it may not be the registration groups, but the people who work for them who are to blame.

Voter registration groups have in the past been accused of hiring convicted felons to canvas for voters and being paid by the card. Pro-Vote introduced us to two female workers, non-felons, who are paid hourly.

Wednesday was the deadline to register in Missouri. In the past couple of days, 10,000 new voter cards arrived at the county office.

Commissioner Welch believes someone is punching at possible holes in the system in hopes that the office is just too busy to catch all the bogus cards. He insists the cards are triple checked.

The question is, can all of them be checked before November 2?