If you’ve been following the campaign of Republican secretary of state candidate Bill Johnson, you know he’s not afraid to expose the grand conspiracy between ACORN (which stopped existing quite a while ago), George Soros, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Elaine Walker and his opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes to use an army of homeless voters to swing Kentucky for Barack Obama in the 2012 election.

Monday night, he took this message directly to voters in the KET secretary of state candidate forum:

He said plenty of other things, like how he will protect the lives of fetuses as secretary of state (or in his words, prevent the “child holocaust” by giving anti-choice pep talks to students, which is one of their constitutional duties), as well as something about rich peoples’ kids being kidnapped and being sent ransom notes made out of junk mail that I didn’t quite 100 percent follow (I’m a little slow). He was also wearing several pieces of flair, to fully express himself. One piece of flair was a Friends of Coal button, even though the King Coal barons are solidly in Grimes’ camp.

But back to the very serious ACORN plot to use the homeless to commit voter fraud in Kentucky.

As was revealed in the KET forum last night, Johnson’s ethics charge against current secretary of state Elaine Walker for allowing homeless people to register to vote in the precinct of their county clerk’s office — if they don’t fill in an address and cannot be tracked down before the election to specify where they stay most of the time — was dropped by the ethics commission.

Back in July, when Johnson was first bringing the homeless voter fraud issue up — and saying Walker should resign over it — LEO Weekly asked the previous secretary of state Trey Grayson (whom Johnson praised on KET) if this is the exact same policy that his office had in place during his term that started in late 2003. He said it was.

“My recollection of the general policy was that this is consistent with past practices, including John (Y. Brown III), me, I don’t know have far back it goes, but a long time,” said Grayson. “My understanding is that this is essentially the same rule that we had.”

Grayson added that his office never encountered an issue with voter fraud involving homeless people, to his knowledge.

“I wasn’t aware of anything. I do remember a couple of times having some discussion over the homeless voting issue,” said Grayson. “Other than discussions in passing, this never was an issue one way or the other. But it was not a big deal at all.”

LEO further asked Grayson what he thought about Bill Johnson’s fear that ACORN was plotting with people to commit voter fraud in Kentucky by exploiting this rule. Grayson was an outspoken critic of ACORN during his term, helping to pass a law making it illegal for organizations to pay workers based on how many people they registered to vote, which ACORN often did when it still existed. In the fall of 2009, after polls showed that Rand Paul was a serious threat to his Senate campaign, Grayson even sent out an over-the-top denunciation of ACORN to supporters, hoping to capitalize on the negative publicity the organization had received and tap into Republican fear of the group.

However, Grayson laughed off Johnson’s fears of 2011 ACORN shenanigans.

“Um… (laugh). ACORN doesn’t exist anymore. So why don’t we just leave my comment at that.”

Grayson is correct that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore. After a period of massive layoffs, the group officially filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed up shop in November of 2010.

When LEO talked to Johnson in July, he conceded that ACORN does not officially exist anymore, but they had new groups set up that used the same tactics and were staffed by the same people. When we asked him what those groups were, he said he’d have to “Google” it, but later sent LEO the links to three articles written in early 2010 that claimed an offshoot organization to ACORN still existed.

However, later that year the Government Accountability Office thoroughly investigated any links between ACORN and the groups, concluding that Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) was “not an affiliate, subsidiary, or allied organization of ACORN,” sharing no staff or board members. AHCOA does not even register voters.

But perhaps Johnson just hadn’t read any news in the following year and a half since he read that on Fox News’ website.

LEO asked Johnson why he filed ethics charges against Walker and called for her to resign, even though she was carrying out the same policy of Grayson and other secretary of states before him. Johnson said that he didn’t know that, but even if it was true, he questioned why the state board of elections was “pushing” the policy on county clerks.

“They literally said in the memo that (homeless registering to vote without an address) was a ‘growing problem,’ and then they turn around and try to say it’s not a big deal. What’s their motivation behind that?”

Actually, the memo in question sent out to county clerks merely stated that the number of those registrations was “increasing,” never characterizing it as a problem, and simply outlined the proper procedure for their registration.

“What are their motives? President Obama used to be associated with ACORN, so he knows all about voter fraud,” said Johnson.

Sarah Ball Johnson, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, has worked in the office since 1994 and told LEO Weekly that this is the exact same policy that Kentucky has had since at least 1995.

“I can tell you that it definitely was in effect in 1995, because we trained on it, and there’s memos and documentation indicating that, the exact policy we have.”

LEO asked Johnson if she is, in fact, part of a conspiracy by ACORN to use homeless voters to commit voter fraud.

“(Laugh) I know this policy has been in place since pre-1995, so the policy on the homeless is well litigated through federal case law.”

But what about all of these waves of mysterious homeless people registering to vote without an address?

Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown, who first raised the issue about potential homeless voting fraud and the so-called “violation of the law” by the State Board of Elections, told LEO that he had only received four of such registrations, all of which coincidentally came in a week or two before he testified before a joint committee of legislators in Frankfort on the matter. One of his assistants that has worked there for years said she could not remember ever seeing such a registration before.

Jefferson County Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw, a Republican, told LEO Weekly that her office recorded only 93 people homeless people registering without an address last year, and only two of them actually voted. (Being Kentucky’s most populous county, getting two votes is unlikely to swing Kentucky for Obama).

Holsclaw says that allowing these people to vote has never been an issue for Jefferson County.

“Well, your eyes and ears are always open to potential fraud, but I don’t really see that it’s been a problem up to this point, at least in Jefferson County. We do watch it closely, and we do encourage and want everyone to vote, but there are rules and laws that guide us somewhat in that area. But we have not had a lot of problems in Jefferson County when it comes to homeless voting and fraudulent homeless voting.”

LEO asked Holsclaw if she shared Johnson’s concerns about an ACORN plot to use the homeless to commit voter fraud in Kentucky.

“I’m certainly not going to look into what’s in (Johnson’s) mind, at all,” said Holsclaw. “I can only go by what Jefferson County has experienced. And Jefferson County just really has not had any problems when it comes to homeless voters.”

Grayson County Clerk Sherry Weedman, who has been in that office for the past 20 years, specifically remembers being briefed on the same homeless voting policy in 2005. She says that since that time “we’ve had eight register as homeless and only one of them voted. And at the time they were registered as homeless, they have since gotten an apartment, so they were able to provide an address for us and change their address as well.”

Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins (whose office says 44 people were registered as homeless last year) says that the wording of the policy might leave a potential loophole that could be used to commit fraud and affect a local race in one specific precinct, but doesn’t necessarily share Johnson’s concern.

“I think this is really not a big issue today, and hasn’t been an issue,” said Blevins. “It’ll be interesting to see if somebody does the research to find out if the folks that have been registering in this manner are actually voting. I’d be willing to just about bet you a couple of beers that they don’t vote. So, that makes it much ado about nothing.”

LEO also asked state representatives Mary Lou Marzian and Darryl Owens — who were present on the joint committee called together by Republican Sen. Damon Thayer in Frankfort on the issue, and characterized it as a farce — what they thought about Johnson’s fear of the ACORN/Soros/Obama/Clinton/Walker/Grimes plot.

They weren’t exactly kind.

“It gives me pause as to whether he’s even qualified to be secretary of state,” said Owens. “One would think that he would talk about issues that he could have an impact on. This national conspiracy theory, I mean, it’s just so ridiculous that I don’t think it even merits a response or attention. I mean, that’s so outlandish. I mean, who in their right mind would believe that?”

“That is absolutely ludicrous, and it borders on needing professional help,” said Marzian.

I’m not qualified enough to judge if Marzian’s advice is merited, but Johnson is certainly going to need some electoral help. With David Williams down almost 30 percent in the polls at the top of the ticket, and Johnson facing a serious fundraising disadvantage to his opponent, he’ll need quite a bit of that.

In November, we’ll see if fear of the diabolical national homeless conspiracy can make up for those disadvantages.