(The Politico) The ACORN war rages on. Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) called today for a "full-scale" investigation into allegedly ACORN-led voter fraud in Missouri and across the nation. Up until just a few weeks ago, ACORN was an obscure community organizing group allied with Democrats and pushing for access to affordable housing. It is now one of the GOP's top targets, called out at McCain-Palin events and the subject of untold viral e-mails.

Blunt's call is for an investigation into voter-registration fraud, which is significantly different than voter fraud. Voter registration fraud generally means that people paid to register voters got lazy and faked the registration by filling in the name of, say, a Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman instead of registering an actual voter. Faking a registration is easier than registering an actual voter and the pay is the same. The people who have been fraudently registered, however, will not vote. An ACORN contractor may have made off with $30 bucks for registering Donald Duck, but it's more likely that someone on election day will vote for Donald Duck than that Mr. Duck will show up to vote himself.

While not a major crime, the fake registrations are a problem for elections administrators, as Blunt points out. “Fraudulent voter registration slows down the processing of those who are legitimately trying to register to vote," he notes. "These kinds of activities threaten to disenfranchise legitimate voters who want to make their voices heard on November 4, and underscore why House Republicans fought hard to get a millions of dollars directed to ACORN removed from the recently-passed financial rescue package."