A small, unremarkable house on the East Side seems as anonymous as any other on its working-class street.

But as authorities investigate the rental home's current and former residents for possible voter fraud, it has become a focal point for questions about the integrity of Ohio's election system heading into the presidential election.

Some critics of Ohio's election system now question whether lax residency requirements and election laws are creating loopholes for outsiders to vote in this battleground state.

By late summer, the house at 2885 Brownlee Ave. had become headquarters for a group of 20- and 30-somethings who came to Ohio with a lofty goal: to register as many as 10,000 new voters in traditionally Democratic precincts on the East Side.

About 200,000 newly registered Ohio voters have been flagged by the secretary of state because their names, addresses, driver's-license numbers, and/or Social Security numbers don't match other state or federal records.

Likely among them are the 12 people who have registered to vote since August using the address of the 1,175-square-foot Brownlee Avenue house.

Some of them already have voted. Others requested absentee ballots but have yet to return them to the Franklin County Board of Elections.

None of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio -- no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election.

Most of them grew up on the East Coast, attended colleges there and registered to vote in their home counties. It is not illegal to be registered to vote in more than one state. But it is illegal to vote in more than one or to vote in a state that is not your permanent residence.

The owner of the house also is coming under scrutiny. He has voted in Ohio even though he has lived and worked in New York since 2004.

All 13 are under investigation by Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien. None has any apparent ties to ACORN, the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now, whose voter-registration activity has come under scrutiny in Ohio and other states.

"My take is that they haven't come here attempting to deceive anyone," O'Brien said. "They were under the impression they were entitled to vote. That's how they were reading the law."

He has talked to several of the people or their attorneys. He doesn't believe they set out to intentionally thwart the law, which requires voters to live in the state at least 30 days before the election.

Daniel Tokaji, assistant director of an elections law center at Ohio State University, said residency is not always cut and dried under Ohio law. The statute says: "A person shall not be considered to have gained a residence in any county of this state into which the person comes for temporary purposes only, without the intention of making such county the permanent place of abode. ... That place shall be considered the residence of a person in which the person's habitation is fixed and to which, whenever the person is absent, the person has the intention of returning."

"My bottom line is for some of these cases, there's a gray area in the law as to whether someone's intention to remain is sufficient in circumstances where they've come here and it's not clear how long they plan to stay here," Tokaji said.

Still, cases such as these cast a cloud on Ohio, said Bradley A. Smith, a Capital University Law School professor and former Republican member of the Federal Election Commission.

"Is this the tip of the iceberg or an isolated incident? Nobody knows," Smith said. "But it doesn't look good. It doesn't pass the smell test. And it undermines the confidence in the voting system."

The inhabitants of the Brownlee Avenue house aren't talking anymore. A woman who answered the door Friday peered from behind a Halloween decoration duct-taped to the screen door and said, "No comment," before slamming and bolting the door. A visit earlier in the week drew a similar response, and attempts to contact members of the group through other means were unsuccessful as well.

But some of the residents were interviewed by a Dispatch reporter during the last week of August and explained some of their intentions for Ohio.

"A group of us came up with the idea at Oxford. It's an opportunity for a new get-out-the-vote effort," said Marc Gustafson, a 31-year-old New York City resident who is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford in England.

The plan, he said, was hatched in January.

They formed a political action committee, based in New York, called Vote from Home, and registered it with the Federal Election Commission. They then raised more than $52,000, mostly in donations from friends and relatives, according to federal records.

They tried, unsuccessfully, to team up with Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, volunteer Daniel J. Hemel said.

By the end of July, they began trickling into Ohio. Some went to Cincinnati; others moved into the Brownlee Avenue house owned by Joel E. Speyer, an Ohio native who moved to New York in 2004.

They bought bunk beds and crammed into the three-bedroom house. They showed off photographs of their cozy quarters on their Web site, www.votefromhome08.com.

Group members said they were motivated to come to Ohio because of problems with long voting lines in traditionally Democratic precincts in 2004.

With subsequent changes in Ohio law that allowed early voting, the group wanted to get as many people as possible to cast a vote in Ohio.

They spent eight to 10 hours a day with clipboards and registration forms in store parking lots, at festivals, in shelters for the homeless and in churches.

"We are very clear about what our mission is: to make voting as easy as possible," said another member, Ross Baird. "Liberal organizations tend to expand voting access."

They lived off their fundraising donations, paying the owner of the house nearly $5,000 in rent. They shopped for food mostly at Wal-Mart but occasionally splurged at Whole Foods in Upper Arlington, federal campaign-finance records show.

They said their effort was bipartisan, yet at the house they openly displayed their preference for Obama. The house now is void of any overt favorite. Sheets cover the front window.

In August, they said their stay in Ohio would be temporary. Many said they planned to leave the state in October. Some had to return to school in England by Oct. 12. Others needed to get back to their jobs in other states.

But an unknown number of them remain. Three cars with out-of-state license plates were parked in the driveway late last week.

The first wave of volunteers arrived sometime in late July. Others followed in August, and at least one arrived in September and has since left. Federal disclosure reports show they made their first purchase in Ohio on July 23, spending $214 at Whole Foods.

The exact date of their arrival is one question investigators are trying to answer, because of Ohio's 30-day residency requirement to be eligible to vote.

The other issue under investigation is whether any members of the group really intended to make Ohio their home.

The difference between the Vote from Home group and out-of-state college students rests in intent. College students establish some roots. They open checking accounts and sign up for utilities. They get mail. They work. So they generally are eligible to vote from either their home or where they attend college.

"You have to have an intent to remain in the area," said Smith, the Capital University professor. "But proving it is very tough."

O'Brien has prosecuted two cases of voter fraud in the past two years. Both individuals were convicted and given probation.

Since 1953, only six people have been sent to prison for voter fraud in Ohio.

Dispatch reporter Mark Niquette contributed to this story.

jriepenhoff@dispatch.com