CLEVELAND -- Election officials in swing state Ohio's most populous county asked a prosecutor today to investigate alleged voter-registration fraud, including 73 registrations obtained from one man by an advocacy group under fire in other states.

The bipartisan Cuyahoga County Board of Elections voted unanimously to ask county Prosecutor Bill Mason to investigate multiple registrations by four people who signed forms at the behest of a community organizing group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN.

One of the new voters, Freddie Johnson, 19, of Cleveland, said he signed 73 voter registration forms over a five-month period. Johnson said he was trying to help paid ACORN solicitors collect signed registrations but he didn't intend to vote more than once.

ACORN's state director, Katy Gall, watched the board's discussion and said later that ACORN had cooperated with the investigation and would fire anyone soliciting duplicate registrations. She said the organization was proud of its work registering new voters.

The group says it has signed up 1.3 million poor and working-class voters in a mass registration drive in 18 states this year. Some of those registration cards have become the focus of fraud investigations in Nevada, Connecticut, Missouri and other states.

Johnson, who said he didn't understand voter-registration procedures, was one of four people who were subpoenaed to testify over duplicate registrations. Johnson said after the board meeting that he had been assured by the sheriff's department that the investigation was aimed at ACORN solicitors and he wouldn't face criminal charges.

Johnson told the board that he sometimes would get approached by six or seven ACORN voter-registration solicitors while waiting for a bus. Other canvassers stood 10 feet away while a solicitor approached him, Johnson said.

"They never told me I couldn't stop signing them," said Johnson, who works selling cell phones. Johnson said he was surprised by the attention his multiple registrations had attracted.

Members of the board, split 2-2 by law between Democrats and Republicans, sent the matter to Mason for investigation. One member, Democrat Inajo Davis Chappell, said the board's referral shouldn't be limited to the four new voters in question.

Mason, a Democrat running for re-election in the Nov. 4 election in heavily Democratic Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, will review the matter and consider presenting it to a grand jury, which could return charges in an indictment, said his spokesman, Ryan Miday. There is no time frame for a grand jury presentation, he said.

Gall said ACORN canvassers are paid hourly, not for each signed registration they obtain. If canvassers kept going back to the same person to sign a registration card, "It sounds like people were being lazy," she said.

Any ACORN canvasser who fails to meet the organization's training standards is fired, she said.

Nevada state investigators last week raided ACORN's Las Vegas headquarters, seizing documents and computer data as part of a probe into scores of fabricated registration forms, including those signed in the names of Dallas professional football players