AN ELDER statesman of the Republican party cast doubt about the legitimacy of the presidential election yesterday - three weeks before Americans go to the polls - by declaring the process was already "tainted" by voter fraud.
The assertion from John Danforth, a former Missouri senator and ambassador to the UN, dramatically escalates charges by the John McCain camp that Barack Obama and community organisation Acorn are trying to steal the election by bringing new voters into the electoral system.
Mr Danforth said canvassers for Acorn, which has registered 1.3 million new voters - mostly African-Americans, Latinos and young people - had committed widespread fraud in several battleground states.
"This election now has been tainted by something that is just plain wrong," he said.
Mr Danforth raised the spectre of the 2000 elections, which was undermined by the hanging chad issue. "We believe that this is a potential nightmare," he said.
"The issue could be whether it is fair at all and whether the losing side believes it has been fairly defeated or it has been cheated."
Mr Danforth's appearance yesterday at a press conference in Washington marked the first time such a prominent figure - Republican or Democrat - has questioned the legitimacy of the November 4th elections because of the dramatic rise in voter participation.
It comes as the McCain camp turns increasingly vocal in accusing Mr Obama and Acorn of seeking to steal the election.
The charges against Acorn have grown more pointed with Mr McCain's slide in the opinion polls.
Yesterday Sarah Palin sought to rally the party base with a fundraising e-mail attacking Acorn.
"We can't allow leftist groups like Acorn to steal this election," the e-mail read. The attacks on Acorn have also become a running thread on right-wing talk radio.
A number of press reports have surfaced recently about a large number of invalid registrations submitted by Acorn - some of which were revisited by Mr Danforth.
In Nevada, canvassers submitted the names of members of the Dallas Cowboys football team and Mickey Mouse as new voters. In Ohio, one man registered 73 times. In Missouri, 10 registrations were submitted in the name of a dead woman.
Mr Danforth noted that state election officials had rejected large numbers of the new registrations: 57,000 out of 233,000 alone in the Philadelphia area.
However, when asked he could not say how many were rejected because of incomplete or incorrectly filled forms, or fraud - or how many were later reinstated.
Democrats and voting rights experts say that the incidence of actual voter fraud is minimal in US elections and easily outweighed by the number of people, mostly poor and members of minority groups, who are denied the right to vote. - ( Guardian service)