They call Karl Rove a “master strategist” on Fox News Sunday, where the unpaid adviser to John McCain appears to give election analysis on a race involving John McCain. But before we laugh about how Fox is so biased, maybe we should consider this: George W. Bush is pretty much the same A-hole he’s always been, but Rove managed to get him nearly through an entire eight years in the White House before most people stood up and took notice.

Alas, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, which is why Rove is starting to worry. He reported on Sunday that formerly undecided states such as Michigan, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota have gone for Barack Obama in recent days, and voter registration in states such as Pennsylvania and Florida was swinging Obama’s way, too.

It’s a trend we’ve seen in Nevada, too: Currently, there are 93,727 more Democrats than Republicans in Nevada, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans in Clark County by 125,581. (Those are total voters, mind you. Active voters are another story.)

But according to Rove, those numbers are somewhat deceiving. “The other thing is, is that we do know in Clark County, Nevada, there are a lot of fraudulent registrations of people who simply do not exist,” he told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

Again, you could be excused if you dismiss this as a lie, since Rove is to political manipulation what Hugh Hefner is to porn. But again, he’s not entirely wrong.

Larry Lomax, Clark County’s registrar of voters and a veteran of many elections, says his office has been inundated with “thousands” of voter registration forms that are false, usually submitted by groups which pay workers to sign people up to vote. Those signature collectors are not always concerned about the law, and because they have quotas, fraud does take place.

“It is a scam on their bosses,” Lomax says. “I think it’s people ripping off their bosses, not as a result of some nefarious scheme.”

Even if it was, he says, there are procedures in place to prevent it. Each voter must write the last four digits of his Social Security number (or his drivers license number) on the registration form. The county sends that information to the state, which checks it against the Social Security or DMV database.

If there’s any discrepancy whatsoever on the form — the wrong birthday, a misspelling of a name, the wrong Social Security or drivers license number — a letter is sent to the potential voter, alerting him to the mistake. If the county doesn’t get a reply, the file is tagged, and that voter must show photo identification at the polls. (That’s in addition to the usual safeguards, such as matching a voter’s signature to the one on file with the county.)

Thus far this year, Lomax says his department has processed 331,836 forms, everything from new registrations to changes of address, name, political party, etc. And the department has mailed 39,520 letters concerning discrepancies to voters, or about 12 percent of the total. Only some of those are likely fraudulent, Lomax says.And, he adds, the problem of phony registrations was worse in 2004 than it is this year.

So has voter fraud ever occurred? “It’s never translated to phony voting at the polling places,” he says. How does he know? “Because I have no evidence to the contrary.”

No matter what Rove may want to imply, it seems the problem of fraudulent voter registrations has more to do with workers paid by the registration eking out a bit more cash than it does with an attempt to sway the election. And even if somebody tried, there are procedures in place to prevent it.

By the way, the last day to register to vote in the November election is Oct. 14 (you must go into a government office to do so). Early voting starts Oct. 18. And, as of today, there are just 29 days until Election Day, Nov. 4.

No wonder Rove is worried…

UPDATE: The secretary of state raided the offices of ACORN — Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — on Tuesday, looking for evidence of falsifying voter registration forms.