THE FOLLOWING paragraphs are from an actual published newspaper story about problems with voter registrations. I’ve edited out certain identifying information, so as not to spoil the punchline:

“Investigators for [deleted] attorney general and secretary of state have launched an inquiry into allegations of voter registration fraud in [deleted] counties, state officials said Friday. The investigation comes a month after [deleted] suspended its paid voter registration program, following the discovery by elections officials in [deleted] counties of thousands of flawed registration forms submitted by private firms [deleted] had hired. . . .

“The [deleted] voter registration program paid private contractors $3 for each new registration submitted. It was credited with adding 750,000 [deleted] registrations to state voter rolls in the last three years.”

THIS STORY appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 8, 2006. The thousands of suspect registration forms it mentions turned up in Orange and Riverside counties in Southern California. The registration drive was paid for by and conducted for the benefit of the California Republican Party.

The point: Any vigorous registration drive that involves thousands of possible new voters and scads of hired hands paid to find them and sign them up is going to have problems - whether the sponsoring group is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or the Republican Party. Chief among the predictable problems is that some - not all - of the hired hands are going to cheat.

Last year, Dan Satterberg - a Republican and interim prosecutor for King County, Wash., at the time - may have summed it up best in describing a comparable case of faulty voter registrations in the Seattle area: “The defendants cheated their employers to get paid for work they did not actually perform,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets.”

YOU HAVE TO TRAVEL a very long and very twisted trail to get from lazy workers ripping off their bosses to John McCain’s professed fears about ACORN. In what may be the greatest exaggeration in the history of politics since the beginning of time and the creation of matter, McCain last week said that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Let’s see: ACORN focuses on issues of special concern to low- and moderate-income Americans. It was founded in 1970. Since then, safety net programs for low-income people have been ripped to shreds. Middle-class Americans struggle harder to improve the lives of their families. The economy is more and more tilted toward the financial interests of corporations and the wealthiest segments of our society. State houses and legislatures, the U.S. Congress and the White House - with Republican presidents for 26 of those 38 years - have become increasingly hostile to programs for people who need help.

Right. ACORN: Masters of the universe.

RAISING ALARMS about voter registration irregularities has become pretty much a standard last-minute feature of Republican presidential campaigns, so it hardly was surprising that the McCain campaign dragged it on stage. It actually was kind of reassuring to see something familiar coming from a campaign that has staggered from theme to theme from week to week:

First, there was Mr. Experience, then The Rebel, then Deregulator-turned-Regulator. Lately, there have been bizarre flashbacks to the 1980s in which McCain and running mate Sarah Palin have resurrected the boogeyman of socialism (i.e. communism!) in apparent disregard of the utter failure of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Still, McCain keeps fighting last century’s good fight: “America didn’t become the greatest nation on Earth by spreading the wealth,” he told supporters outside Philadelphia last week. “We became the greatest nation on Earth by creating new wealth.”

All this time I thought America became the greatest nation on Earth by creating a new form of government in which people choose their own leaders, three separate branches share power and keep an eye on each other and the equality of all individuals and our most fundamental human liberties are enshrined and protected from government interference and abuse.

NOTWITHSTANDING the fitful spasms of the McCain campaign, American voters see and feel what is happening around them:

• Last week, USA Today reported that “one in eight people with advanced cancer turned down recommended care because of the cost. . . . Among patients with incomes under $40,000, one in four in advanced stages of the disease refused treatment.”

• Earlier this month, 90-year-old Addie Polk of Akron, Ohio, was facing foreclosure on the home in which she’d lived for 38 years. According to an Associated Press dispatch, she collected her house keys, her purse and her life insurance policy, climbed into bed and shot herself in the chest. Polk survived, and the foreclosure process has since been rescinded and her mortgage forgiven. “You have to shoot yourself to get help,” said a neighbor, the AP reported.

• On Sunday, Colin Powell told NBC News’ Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” that he had decided to vote for Barack Obama for president. He said he had given a great deal of thought to the decision and consulted repeatedly with both McCain and with Obama.

Powell - a decorated Vietnam War veteran, former National Security Adviser to Ronald Reagan, retired four-star Army general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush and a Republican - said he had become particularly troubled by the tone and emphasis of the McCain campaign. Among the examples he cited were the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim that some Republicans have helped encourage - as if being Muslim were somehow traitorous.

“THIS IS NOT the way we should be doing it in America,” Powell said. “I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave.

“And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.

“And then, at the very top of the headstone. It didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have the Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life,” Powell said.

“We have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way.”