Senator Barack Obama is leading Senator John McCain in almost every national poll, yet Obama keeps telling his campaign workers not to be overconfident. Beyond McCain calling himself "the comeback kid," Democrats have good reasons to fear a Republic victory on election day.
First and foremost, Republicans are actively seeking to suppress the voter turnout among the youth and minorities and poor people likely to support Obama
In Indiana, for example, Republicans filed a lawsuit to block early voting in and around the struggling industrial city of Gary. Republicans lost the suit, but they are appealing.
Republicans are sending private investigators to intimidate lower-class Democratic voters in New Mexico who were legitimately registered by ACORN and other grassroots organizations. (Please see related postings exposing the fraudulent swiftboat-style attacks on ACORN to distract public scrutiny of the Republican vote scams.)
Under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), voter ID laws or being erratically enforced around the country. Some (not all) Republican election officials have been accused of requiring government-issued photo IDs from all voters, which impacts those in poverty as well as legal immigrants who often lack the means to obtain birth records and other documents needed for photo IDs.
While Ohio now allows voters to prove their identity with any array of documents, for example, Republican dominated states like Kansas and Missouri are enforcing the strictest possible interpretation of the law in urban areas likely to vote Democratic.
Another tactic is removing American citizens from the voter registries for dubious reasons. Here in Colorado, for example, as reported by the New York Times, more than 37,000 names were purged from the registration database by the Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman, who critics contend should have resigned his post from the conflict-of-interest when he won the Republican nomination to run for congress.
Also here in Colorado, as another example, Republicans last month told students at liberal Colorado College (in conservative Colorado Springs) that students could not register to vote if their parents live out of state, which as untrue.
And right here in predominantly Democratic Denver, Republican-owned Sequoia voting systems company failed to deliver to the post office more than 10,000 mail-in ballots while telling city election officials that all of the expected 21,000 ballots had been mailed. (This incident represents only one of the required mailings.) Sequoia now admits they made a "technical" error.
Elsewhere around the country, as you can learn with a simple Web search, we're seeing Republican voting officials being accused of disenfranchising voters in Democratic districts by not printing enough paper ballots, not assigning enough voting machines, or even reducing the number of polling places.
If Republicans can prevent enough Democrats from casting ballots, McCain could win the election. Going further, those votes that Democrats actually do cast many not be properly counted.
As reported in The Brad Blog and other investigative websites, many of the touch-screen voting machines, like the Sequoia Edge and ES&S iVotronic, tend to malfunction after heavy use. The machines do not record votes properly or at all, in some cases.
The most prevalent problems is what called "vote flipping," where you press the screen for one candidate and the machine shows you voting for someone else. Vote flipping has been reported in West Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere.
Whether vote flippingor failures to rrecord votes are deliberate design flaws or accidental defects, asserts Brad Friedman, Democrats and Republicans alike should demand the elimination of all touch screen voting systems. A federal lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania, for instance, seeks to require that paper ballots be made available to every voter statewide.
Beyond design flaws, electronic voting machines are still subject to tampering, charge critics like Friedman. For instance, the standardized "smart card" that slides into machines like the Sequoia Edge are used by successive voters. If an early-morning voter brings in a smart card that's been infected with a virus, it would be easy to swap out a good card for the infected card when handing it back to the poll worker. That virus could effect the voting on that machine and all other machines for the rest of the day.
So, between voter suppression and voting machine malfunctions or else outright tampering, it's possible that Obama may lose the 2008 presidential election.
The only real safeguards for Democrats are to immediately verify that their voter registration records are accurate and intact, such as through VotersUnite.org. They can vote early as a way to reduce the long lines on election day. They can demand a paper ballot instead of using the machines. If challenged at the polls, Democrats have a legal right to demand a "provisional" paper ballot, which will be counted once their registration is verified in the days after the election.
The key, of course, is for Democrats to vote in such overwhelming numbers that even voter suppression and vote fraud will not be enough to resist the wave of support for Barack Obama.
Regardless of what the polls might say, unless Democrats take steps to ensure that every vote is duly counted, Republicans may retain the White House.
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Comments
It is a shame when our Media and Newspapers are so leftist and socialist as to refuse to be un-biased and when they express individual view points as news, which it isn't. We re finding the cheapness of reporters and papers and TV to be boring, and that may be due to the lack of intergrity and ethics. More and more Newspapers and Reporters sound like a rag sheet, not reputable. It really is a shame, any thing for a buck, I guess that's the way you look at it. Sad, and by the way I am for McCain, even tho none of you have a kind word to say about him, or his love of American ^& her Peoples. NOOBAMA EVER !
Why are we worried about the Republicans interfering in a fair election when it is ACORN that is registering voters like Mickey Mouse,people not qualified to be voters, and the deceased? I think if anything will prevent a fair election it will be the democrats...
Alleged "voter suppression" by Repubs can not possibly counter the ongoing criminal organization called ACORN. Their OWN internal report showed that of the much touted 1.3 million new registrations WERE FRAUDULENT!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/us/22acorn.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
"An internal report by a lawyer for the community organizing group Acorn raises questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws.The June 18 report, written by Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer, spells out her concerns about potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.
It also offers a different account of the embezzlement of almost $1 million by the brother of Acorn’s founder, Wade Rathke, than the one the organization gave in July, when word of the theft became public.
“A full analysis of potential liability will require consultation with a knowledgeable white-collar criminal attorney,” Ms. Kingsley wrote of the embezzlement, which occurred in 2000 but was not disclosed until this summer."
Your story belies the "a seasoned journalist" moniker.
It looks like the only thing modern day republicans are good for is attacking. Attacking pensions, legislation to protect consumers, veterans benefits, political opposition, the election system, wimen's rights, your phone conversations, and financial stability of the nation. If McCain does gets in, through fraud or legitimate support by his uneducated and aggressive supporters. You better be prepared for the worst economic times in modern history. Right now Asia owns us, we owe them more money than we can pay. Its not going to get any better with another aggressive leader.
This is horrific and well-documented here and elsewhere. Where the heck are Obama's "Army of Lawyers??!!" One suppression tactic you didn't mention is Bush's recent request of the DOJ to "investigate" the validity of 200,000 voter registrations in Ohio - i.e. to side with local Republican efforts to suppress them based on typos made by the Ohio BOE to names and other identifying criteria. These typos can be as simple as a missed period in a middle initial. The Republicans want to disqualify anyone with even the slightest discrepency. This disproportionately hits newly registered voters - mostly democrats. Ohio, of course, was stolen from Karry in 2004, costing him the election. See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/24/AR2008102403659.html
For those on this comments page that are concerned about ACORN, realize you are being fooled. False registrations are simply ways of people working for registration organizations to get a bit more money as each registration = a few dimes in their pocket for these people who hand in registrants. This is NOT voter fraud, since if I hand in a false registration form to ACORN and it says Mickey Mouse, it only can become voter fraud if Mickey Mouse shows up at the polls (very unlikely) to vote.
ACORN is the VICTIM of these voter registration issues, not the perpetrator. ACORN by LAW must turn in all voter registration and they themselves flag the suspect ones. If not verified, they simply don't count and no issue. This is a far cry from voter FRAUD or voter suppression that actually attempts to stop real voters from voting - that is a true threat to our democracy. Republicans, you can vote for whoever you like that is your American right, but don't be fooled by your own propaganda.
This is an extremely serious issue and I think the real answer to what the Bradley effect is. It's not due to the reasons people think that we "iie" about who we're going to vote for. that is a complex and improbable theory in my opinion. The simpler reason is simply fraud, voter suppression. Read my blog and learn more about this issue which truly threatens the fabric of our democracy (as opposed to the nonsense that McCain said about ACORN)
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stevesulkin/gGgfJh
I would be embarressed to admit I was a republican. Do not know how any decent person of any party can support such a devious, unscrupulous party.
They cannot win on merits or accomplishmenbts so they resort to the sleeziest tactics available.
We need to make sure Obama/Biden win by a landslide and not allow them to steal the election once again.
ACORN is under investigation in 14+ states! The ties to the OBAMA campaign are NOT debatable.
What the artical mentions about the Republicans is inference with no ties!!
Obama is less than trueful about his past.
ACORN is under investigation in 14+ states!
Show me ONE place a Republican tied organization is unuder investigation!!!!
Give me FACTS not opinion!!!!
@Happy Indep:
Fraudulent registrations don't equate with suppressing voters. You didn't actually think that the fraudulent registrations meant extra votes did you? Registered =/= vote.
On the other hand, voter suppression has a very real, direct, and obvious effect.
@CA WALTRIP: It's unfortunate that you can't tell the difference between liberal/leftist and socialist. Besides, have you not heard of something called an opinion piece, as this article clearly is? There ARE people using voter suppression in the GOP, calling the article biased in no way changes this. Now, I do agree that more news sources are becoming disreputable, but more out of simply poor reporting or cheap reporting than any bias (though there are certainly biased sources, Fox and MSNBC are both biased for example, if in different directions).
As for socialists- the socialists have already come out and said Obama isn't one, and they would rather not be associated with him for that reason. Second, McCain's more "socialist" with several of his planned policies (paying everyone who screwed up's mortage? Palin's plans with needy children? Hello people, those are fiscally liberal concepts that require huge gobs of funding and follow socialist ideals of need before merit) than Obama is. In fact, if you look at Obama's actual plans, he's practically a fiscal conservative, which I like a lot, since I am a fiscal conservative. Why do you think so many republicans are jumping ship and voting Obama?
I'm an independent, who's views are: Fiscal conservative, social liberal on many things, supporter of the bill of rights (yeah, that includes the first and second people). As far as I'm concerned, I would've voted for the person McCain was in 2000 (was too young at the time). Now though? He's obviously not the same person anymore, whether he's old, pressured, or what I don't know. All I know is that I respected the old McCain, but he's changed, and not in a good way. His ridiculous choice of the anti-intellectual (aka people proud of their flaws instead of being proud of their strengths, aka walking contradictions) Palin only highlights this fact.
You are an idiot. By not printing enough ballots, supposedly, they are also taking away votes for their own candidate. Stupid.
Think the Philadelphia Phillies are the only story in Pennsylvania this week? Think again. Both John McCain and Barack Obama are braving the torrential downpour that forced umpires to call the Phillies-Rays World Series baseball game on Monday night. Election Day is the temporary finish line for the weary candidates, but for the winner, that’s merely the first signpost on a great marathon. Morning rallies by McCain/Palin and Obama (where’s Biden?) were attended by thousands, McCain in Hershey and Obama spreading his message to the open-eared at Widener University outside Philadelphia. McCain says he’ll fight on, despite what the polls and pundits predict, Palin defends the attack mentality the GOP has taken against Obama/Biden and Obama maintains that McCain will bring America “more of the same,” straight from the George W. Bush menu. For those of us who have ever used quick loans, that more of the same just might mean that they will still be available, that we will hold on to that much of our financial freedom. Under a Democratic president and dominant Democratic Congress, we may not have that choice.
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A perfect storm maybe brewing. Palin energizing social conservative base. Bitter Hillary voters still angry at Obama and White-only voters. The media does not know how many people polled are lying. These factors may bring out an "October surprise". Also, Chicago has a losing record...Cubs,Sox,Bears.
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