Just when the GOP thought voter fraud was a good political warhead to loop into their daunting ammo belt - alongside Joe the Plumber and that washed-up '60 radical, what's-his-name - up pops a real case of voter-connected flim-flam committed by a Republican.

Seems a guy here in Southern California listed his childhood home as his current address so he'd fit the requirements that registration lists be compiled by locals. According to the L.A. Times:

State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm, Young Political Majors, or YPM, collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states."

In case you've spent the past few weeks trapped at the bottom of an anthracite mine or marooned on a Caribbean banking island (lucky you), the GOP has been trying to tie the Obama campaign and those rascally Democrats in general to fouled voter registration lists; so, this news must hammer the NRCC pretty hard.

Republican accusations that community voter registration organizations like ACORN collected phony signatures on registrations have leapfrogged to full-out - but unfounded - charges that such groups are attempting actual voter fraud. Among a number of McCain's otherworldly comments in last week's debate was the imputation that bored temp workers adding names like Mickey Mouse and Tony Romo to fill out sign-up quotas was a "grave threat to our democracy."

The Jacoby story has some pretty seedy angles:

"Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters."

 "...YPM has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics across the country. Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit.

The GOP, of course, says it's all folderol and is "politically motivated"

Yeah, right. We'll see. Wonder what Mukasey thinks about this development.