Voters beware: Under new names’ guise, the extreme-left Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is gearing up to help re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012.

Congress defunded national ACORN last year over its solicitous attitude toward purported prostitution operations, forcing it and state- and local-level affiliates into bankruptcy. Now, former staffers dedicated to ACORN’s ultra-liberal causes run renamed groups, often from the same offices.

Writing for The American Spectator’s blog, Matthew Vadum — Capital Research Center senior editor and author of the new book “Subversion, Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers” — confirms that ACORN’s dead in name only.

ACORN’s founder and chief organizer have new groups. State and local chapters have new names. So does ACORN Housing, which Mr. Vadum calls a “housing bubble generator.” And, he says, insiders expect the former ACORN groups “will re-federate under a new name soon.”

Whatever they’re called, these groups will employ familiar, suspect tactics — such as voter registration fraud — in support of Mr. Obama, a former ACORN organizer and lawyer. Voters in 2012 must reject those tactics — and ACORN’s far-left agenda.