WASHINGTON - The debate over ACORN - which according to Florida election officials registered the Disney cartoon character to vote - rages on as the community activist group spent the morning exchanging messages with the campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

The non-partisan group called on McCain to reach out to Republican election leaders to make sure the voter rights of people who have lost their homes are protected.

In recent press conferences ACORN has accused the GOP of trying to suppress voter registrations. ACORN, which has registered 1.3 million voters since last year, claims the Republicans fear that most of the group’s typically low-income and minority registrants will vote Democratic.

“Of great concern to us is the fact that not only are these Americans losing their homes, but various reports indicating that some of these same people are being threatened with losing their right to vote in this election. In our view, there is no group that has more at stake in this election than those Americans who have lost the very core of the American Dream ~ their homes,” ACORN wrote.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis says the campaign reached out to Democratic nominee Barack Obama to address potential election day problems, including voter fraud. Davis said the Obama campaign did not respond.

“Given the extensive relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN, our campaign also feels that Senator Obama has a responsibility to rein in ACORN’s efforts and to work aggressively against wide-scale voter fraud,” Davis wrote.

And the merry-go-round continued with a press release from the Obama campaign, which furnished a letter from last month written by campaign manager David Plouffe to former Senator John Danforth, who is working with the McCain campaign to curb voter fraud.

Last week, ACORN registrations were flagged in Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and New Mexico.

The FBI is investigating potentially fraudulent registration forms in Jackson County, Missouri. St. Louis election officials have said they haven’t encountered any problems with the group this election cycle.

ACORN says about 1 percent of the registration cards it turns in are fraudulent, but that the group flags them before turning them in. It also maintains that fraudulent registration is different than casting illegal votes.

The McCain campaign scoffs at the latter argument, insisting there’s no other reason to fraudulently register.

The question, though, that looms above all else: Did Mickey register as a Republican or a Democrat?