New Accusation of Voter Fraud
HARRIS: OK. I want to give you a look at the big board. New York Stock Exchange here, and the Dow, as you can see, is down 196 points. The fact is the Dow has been down most of the day. I would love to be able to squeeze in a market check here, but it's busy, busy, busy here in the NEWSROOM. You've got a Sarah Palin event coming up in Henderson, Nevada. But if we can squeeze to check in with Susan Lisovicz, we will certainly do that. The Nasdaq, the tech heavy Nasdaq, is down 50 points as well. Record crowds are showing up at the polls across the country for early voting. People had to wait hours to cast ballots in several Florida counties yesterday. Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek said he was considering filing a lawsuit, here we go, to have additional voting machines put in place to accommodate the turn out. Big crowds also turned out to vote early in Texas. So many that in Corpus Christi, the computers were overwhelmed causing the machines to freeze up for 15 minutes. Nationwide, about one-third of the voters are expected to vote early this year. That is up significantly from previous years. Amid early voting, we've been reporting about possible voter registration fraud in several states. CNN's Ted Rowlands reports on accusations that a group is tricking people into registering as Republicans.</s>TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 25-year-old Mark Jacoby was arrested for allegedly lying about his own home address on two voter registration forms in order to do business in California. The charges against Jacoby are serious but have nothing to do with the outcome of an election yet. After his arrest, California's secretary of state was talking tough.</s>DEBRA BOWEN, CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE: This is serious. It is a felony to register falsely.</s>ROWLANDS: Jacoby runs a company which finds people at places like grocery stores to sign petitions or register to vote. According to the California Republican Party, Jacoby's company registered about 50,000 people for them this year, and was paid between $7 and $12 per person. Authorities say some of those people have complained that they were lied to, told they were signing petitions supporting tough laws against child molesters, not signing up to become a Republican. Jacoby hasn't been charged with wrongdoing related to those complaints.</s>JANE ROBISON, L.A. COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY SPOKESWOMAN: That investigation is ongoing by our office into allegations that his company allegedly signed people up, re-registered them unbeknownst to them.</s>ROWLANDS: But the California Republican Party is crying foul. They accuse the secretary of state of using this case to make headlines to deflect recent ACORN criticism against Democrats. The secretary of state denies that allegation. Some experts say both parties are blowing cases of voter registration fraud out of proportion.</s>RICHARD HASEN, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: People should stop with the hyperbole that, you know, we're going to have a stolen election, that fraud is rampant and that the fabric of our democracy is threatened. None of that is true. But nobody should worry about the integrity of our electoral process.</s>ROWLANDS (on camera): Jacoby is out on $50,000 bail. His attorney says he has done absolutely nothing wrong. Ted Rowlands, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>HARRIS: All right. You know, when gas prices are really high, we heard a lot about alternative energy sources. What's happening now? We'll get an energy fix when we come back.