With Indiana up for grabs in the presidential election for the first time in decades, new and updated voter registrations have come in at a furious pace. Now it's time to carefully sift through them.

Lake County Elections Board Director Sally LaSota said more than 12,000 voter registration forms need to be processed from recent days.

Porter County has processed at least 3,500 voter applications since the May primary.

But it wouldn't be an election in Lake County without fears of election hijinks.

LaSota said of the 2,000 new voter applications dropped off Monday by members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, "about 1,100 are no good."

Hundreds of other applications among the 5,000 forms ACORN submitted in Lake County prior to this week contained incomplete information, unreadable handwriting or are otherwise unusable.

Some ACORN representatives apparently pulled names and addresses from telephone books and forged their signatures. One of the clues was when "Jimmy John" was listed as an applicant on a form that listed the address of a Crown Point sandwich restaurant named, of course, "Jimmy John's."

Another application that was singled out listed the name and address of a Gary man who died Nov. 16.

It isn't unheard of for dead people to vote in Lake County, but registering to vote for the first time?

ACORN said Monday its administrators screened out the 1,100 registration forms in question and warned Lake County officials. An ACORN spokesman said the organization has fired and reported to law enforcement any of employees suspected of vote fraud.

ACORN said Monday its administrators screened out the 1,100 registration forms in question and warned Lake County officials. An ACORN spokesman said the organization has fired and reported to law enforcement any of employees suspected of vote fraud.

Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley last week asked for a federal investigation into hundreds of voter registrations bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people. That's a good suggestion.

Confidence in the government requires confidence in the electoral process.

Now that the deadline for registering to vote has passed in Indiana -- today is the last day in Illinois -- make sure fraudulent applications are tossed out so we can have a clean election this year.

We can't afford to compromise the electoral process.