CROWN POINT | The Lake County Republican chairman said he has found another case of someone resurrecting a name from the county's death certificates for its voter rolls.

GOP Chairman John Curley said it is yet another example of thousands of fraudulent applications generated this summer by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and worries many more lie hidden in the county's database.

County elections board Director Sally LaSota said Tuesday she is investigating how an apparently forged voter registration -- in the name of a woman who died in 2004 -- got around safeguards set up to prevent voter fraud.

She said the registration was in pending status, so no one could automatically use the name to vote illegally.

Linda M. Secviar, of Hammond, Lana Cole's sister, said Tuesday she was shocked her sister's name was used in the latest example of voter applications in the names of dead, underage or fictitious persons.

"How could they be so crooked?" Secviar complained.

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita is pressing for a criminal investigation of a grass-roots organization that has registered more than 1 million new voters nationwide, and more than 5,100 locally from the ranks of the urban poor and minority communities.

Jeff Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his organization's quality control personnel caught and flagged suspicious registrations. He said the Lake County voter registration drive was one of the worst in the country for bad applications, but GOP allegations of systematic vote fraud are inaccurate.

He doesn't know if ACORN generated the registration in question. Lake County refused to accept ACORN's quality control statements, and the Republicans are irresponsibly misleading the public, he said.

LaSota said the county elections board weeded out thousands of improper ACORN-generated voter registrations by checking them against the state's death rolls and sending postcards to prospective voters. They remove the names of anyone listed in state records as dead or if the postcards are returned for incorrect information.

Curley said the only reason this application was discovered is that the county election board's postcard was sent to Secviar's home where Cole had lived.

The form, dated Aug. 23, 2008, lists Cole's correct name and address, but an incorrect date of birth and is signed Dana not Lana Cole.

LaSota said the county had removed Lana Cole's name after her death in 2004, but the false date of birth on the new registration form may explain why it wasn't caught earlier.