Low turnout in Iraq's election reflects a disillusioned nation

By GottaLaff

Let's check in on how that Bush-democracy-spreading, er, -imposing, thing is going:

BAGHDAD — Voter turnout in Iraq's provincial elections Saturday was the lowest in the nation's short history as a new democracy despite a relative calm across the nation. Only about 7.5 million of more than 14 million registered voters went to the polls.

Interviews suggest that the low voter turnout also is an indication of Iraqi disenchantment with a democracy that, so far, has brought them very little. [...]

Many blame the U.S. presence in Iraq for sowing the seeds of sectarianism by bringing back exiles to rule them.

Beyond the disillusionment, thousands of potential voters were unable to cast ballots Saturday because official voter lists did not contain their names. Street protests resulted.

"I didn't participate in this election because I don't trust any list," Yasir Baqir, 28, said on Saturday in Fallujah. "Like any election, we read and see many promises but nothing real (happens) and there is still a crisis, a security crisis, an economic and a services crisis." [...]

"There was a mood of apathy before the elections," said Ali al Adeeb a Shiite legislator from Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's party. "Many asked themselves what is the good? Why should we vote and for what? The enthusiasm came as the elections got closer."

The commission was happy with the turn out, but...

Despite that assessment, it seems that tens of thousands of mostly displaced people didn't get to vote. The commission said this was a mistake on the voter's part. Many didn't check where they were supposed to vote before Election Day.

Most of the confusion seemed to be concentrated in Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas.

Anyone heard about this "disenchantment" from the corporate media? So far, all I've seen reported is how violence was down, and how much progress there's been. Not one word about disillusionment or disenfranchised voters.

VIDEO: Franken camp claims disenfranchisement

By GottaLaff

There's that nasty word again... "disenfranchisement":

In its quest to turn Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s seat blue, the Franken campaign cited voter disenfranchisement in its latest conference call to reporters this afternoon.

Franken spokesman Andy Barr showed reporters a video of voters whose ballots were thrown out due to technicalities, he said. Barr said some local elections officials made “simple mistakes, human mistakes.”

As I've said before, I'm not feeling optimistic. From the Franken campaign:

In the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, every vote should be counted fairly.

But there are Minnesotans who had their votes thrown out, even though they did nothing wrong.

They voted absentee, but their ballots were improperly rejected because of someone elses mistake.

And in the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, their votes remain uncounted.

The IWRC* Palin crowd was "sparse, to say the least"

By GottaLaff

Way to "close strong", IWRC*:

LAKEWOOD, Ohio – It was not the best of beginnings for Palin Monday morning.

At the first of the Alaska governor’s six rallies of the day, there was plenty of room to spare. The crowd at Lakewood Park was sparse, to say the least, perhaps one of the smallest she has seen in weeks.

And then, speaking of Obama’s views on coal, she repeatedly stumbled on the word “bankrupting,” calling it “bankruptcing.”

A mental giant she's not.

Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow is on the radio machine with Thom Hartmann right now, both of them worrying about the election being stolen. They are also discussing "the new poll tax".

Several thousand military votes have already been lost, Hartmann says.

Let's hope that the huge turnout more than compensates for the problems, and that those in line stay in line and cast their vote, even if it takes 10 hours. Let's not let the system disenfranchise voters.

*"In What Respect, Charlie?"

VIDEO: Obama campaign senior counsel on voting dirty tricks

By GottaLaff

They're on it:



H/t: /Ellen

VIDEO: Greg Palast's "Protecting the Vote"

By GottaLaff


Steal Back Your Vote! from Greg Palast on Vimeo.

Greg Palast is the go-to guy when it comes to information about voter suppression, disenfranchisement, election fraud, voter fraud, you name it.

The video is about 15 minutes. As The Uptake puts it:

One of the best stories we've seen about how the election has and can be manipulated. It comes from Greg Palast of the BBC.

Court: Michigan must return purged names to voter rolls

By GottaLaff

Yes!

A federal appeals court has agreed with a lower court and ordered the state of Michigan to add the names of 5,500 voters back onto the voters rolls.

The names were purged when mail sent to the voters by local election officials was returned as undeliverable. Purging the names was permitted under Michigan law but violated the federal National Voter Registration Act which limits the circumstances under which a state may remove a voter from the rolls.

The appeals court explained that Michigan’s practice caused affected voters to “face wrongful disenfranchisement.”

Click here to read the appeals court's opinion

Phony flier message tells Virginia Democrats to vote on November 5

By GottaLaff

This is all the Republicans have left. As usual, they're resorting to vile, underhanded, lying, fraudulent attempts at voter suppression. But, hey, I'm not "worried".

By the way, everyone votes (no later than) November 4th, should there be anyone out there that might be confused by tricks like this:

The Virginia Pilot reports today that a phony Virginia Board of Elections flier is being distributed in Hamption Roads, VA telling Democrats that they are now scheduled to vote on November 5. The flier falsely claims that “an emergency session of the General Assembly” adopted a new voting schedule to “ease the load” at polling places on election day.

Party Lawyers Ready to Keep an Eye on the Polls

By GottaLaff

If there's nothing to "worry" about, I doubt if both teams would have lawyers everywhere (apparently, "worry" has become a buzz word here, but I'm using it as a catch-all; so, ahem, no worries... snerk!). Seriously, it's good to know they're on top of it:

With heavy voter turnout expected on Election Day, both parties are amassing thousands and thousands of lawyers to keep an eye on the polls.

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is expected to send at least 5,000 lawyers to Florida alone. The first recruitment e-mail message the campaign sent out nationally received 6,000 responses from lawyers willing to volunteer. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain’s campaign has lined up “Lawyers for McCain” to spread out at polling places in closely contested states as advocates for the ticket.

Both campaigns plan to use the lawyers to protect their supporters at the polls, help untangle ballot problems and run to court should litigation be necessary. [...]

The role of lawyers, especially at polling places, has grown since the 2000 election. For the Obama campaign, the recruitment of lawyers began the moment it set up field offices and is part of its long-term strategy to make voting easier.

Already, lawyers for Mr. Obama have been talking to county election officials and boards of election to increase the number of early voting sites, to encourage early voting and to make sure that there will be sufficient number of voting machines.

“We have a selective, but ferocious legal strategy,” said Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign’s legal program. “Rather than waiting for Election Day, we’ve had lawyers working from the beginning. We’ve used them for a massive voter education program, so that people know their rights and what to do on Election Day.”

This comes on top of an effort the Democratic National Committee began after the 2000 election. The committee set up a National Lawyers Council to work on ballot issues, established a voter protection hot line and surveyed 1,300 state and local election officials to flag potential Election Day problems in advance.

So far, over 10,000 lawyers have signed up over the committee’s Web site. [...]

“Lawyers have always written checks,” Mr. Kessler said. “Now we are taking it to the next level in assuring that there will be no issues on Election Day. We are learning from the last two elections and we now have the credo ‘Never again.’ If we lose, we lose. But we don’t want it because of something that took place in the polling place.” [...]

All volunteers must undergo a training session either in person or online with the Obama campaign.

“We’re going to have lawyers at the polls and in close proximity to the court houses,” Mr. Johnson said. As an example, he said lawyers could be helpful in keeping the polls open when lines became extremely long.

The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee declined to say how many lawyers they had enlisted. Sean Cairncross, the committee’s chief counsel, said: “We will have enough lawyers to respond to any contingency...”

Mr. Cairncross said Republican lawyers would be on the lookout for voter fraud, and would work to halt such previous stunts as having busloads of voters show up to keep polls open beyond their statutory closing time. [...]

Democrats say their lawyers have already had an impact. In Montana, a federal judge upheld a Democratic challenge to a Republican attempt to purge 6,000 voters from the rolls. And in Detroit, a court settlement was reached over allegations that Republicans were going to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters.

Vigilance.

Colorado's Katherine Harris threatens the '08 Election

By GottaLaff

David Sirota just scared me:

The story on the left describes [Secretary of State Mike] Coffman's efforts to invalidate roughly 5,000 registrations (depending on which source you ask). Here's the crux of what's going on:

"5,000 Coloradans whose voter status is in limbo because of [a] controversial check box...The registration form asks for a driver's license or state ID number. If applicants don't have that, they're supposed to check a box and then put down at least the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. But thousands of people didn't check the box. According to a policy adopted last year by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, these applications are supposed to be listed as incomplete...National and local voting-rights organizations criticize Coffman's policy, saying it violates other federal laws. They say Coffman is unfairly putting up barriers for people who are eligible to vote and want him to change his policy."

The check box is "controversial" because you are asked to check it on the form if you don't "have" a driver's license or ID card. Here's what it looks like on the form (which you can download and see yourself here):

So, here's the thing - what's the definition of "have?" I may have one at my house or in my car, but not with me at the very moment I am filling out the registration form. [...]

And yet, if you made any of those logical choices - if you gave all the social security information required by law, but simply didn't check the box - Coffman is attempting to use that choice to potentially invalidate your registration and prevent you from voting.

[...] Thus, it isn't surprising that the Rocky Mountain News notes that "the largest number [of registrations affected by Coffman's edict] are Democrats, followed closely by unaffiliated voters," and "hundreds live in predominately minority neighborhoods in Denver and Aurora" (ie. traditionally Democratic constituencies).

Remember, Coffman is an up-and-coming Republican "star" - he's simultaneously Secretary of State and running to replace Colorado U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R). So he's not some nonpartisan election observer - as I said before, he's positioning himself to be Katherine Harris, who also went on to use her notoriety as an election thief to win a seat in Congress.

[...] But what we're seeing here in Colorado is a very public attempt to use Republican-controlled offices to potentially disenfranchise thousands and rig the election. Indeed, the Denver Post now reports that Coffman has asked his fellow Republican crony, state Attorney General John Suthers (R), to validate his moves with an official legal opinion so as to trip up potential pre- and post-election legal challenges to the disenfranchisement. This isn't a conspiracy theory - it's happening all right out in the open for everyone to see.

It all adds up to the kind of coordinated Republican scheme we've seen in the last two elections. And once again, that scheme could throw a national election.

Wisconsin judge throws out voter ID lawsuit

By GottaLaff

First Ohio, now Wisconsin. Maybe the Republicans should take a hint: Elections should be fair. Voter suppression is so 2004:

A judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit by Wisconsin's attorney general demanding that state elections officials confirm hundreds of thousands of voters' identities before election day.

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that neither federal nor state law makes the checks that Atty. Gen. J.B. Van Hollen seeks a condition for voting. She said Van Hollen had no standing to sue and should have made a complaint to the state Government Accountability Board rather than going to court.

Van Hollen spokesman Kevin St. John said the state Department of Justice would appeal, perhaps directly to the state Supreme Court. The agency will continue to pursue the case beyond election day if it must because an accurate list of registered voters is crucial to future elections, he said.

Van Hollen, a Republican and co-chairman of GOP presidential candidate John McCain's Wisconsin campaign, argued that the federal Help America Vote Act requires the accountability board to check the names of everyone registered to vote since Jan. 1, 2006, against driver's license and Social Security data and remove any ineligible voters from the rolls. [...]

Sumi said only the U.S. attorney general could bring a court order to enforce the federal voting act.

A similar case in Ohio resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's rebuffing Ohio Republicans' efforts to force Ohio's election overseer -- a Democrat -- to give local election boards lists of 200,000 voters whose names didn't match other databases.

Rebuffed at every turn.

AUDIO: Two Radio Ads Up in North Carolina about early voting

By GottaLaff

I just got back from work, so I'm a little behind. While I catch up, here are two radio ads that Paddy spotted that target African American voters in North Carolina:

One-stop early voting began today in the swing state of North Carolina, and PowerPAC has radio ads targeting African-American voters to urge them to get out and vote early. We're going up on a half-dozen Black radio stations in six major media markets throughout the state. Take a listen to the first ad, "Protect," here:

The second ad, "Hair Salon - Part 2," is based off of an ad PowerPAC did during the Primary season in South Carolina, which got a mention on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect:"

VIDEO-- Colin Powell: Country First (No complacence allowed)

By GottaLaff

If you're thinking to yourself that there's little more than two weeks before election day and Obama has a solid lead in the polls, don't be so sure. [...]

McCain's final strategy relies on two pillars. The first is aggressively playing to voters' fears of electing a black president. Make no mistake: not just his campaign in a general sense, but McCain himself and his top handful of advisers, are banking on the residual racism in a changing America to get them over the finish line. The second is an aggressive use of innuendo to convince casual voters that Obama is in league with Islamic terrorists bent on killing Americans. [...]

Stripped down to its components McCain's message to voters is this: "Don't forget. He's definitely black. And he may be a terrorist." That's the message. The nuts and bolts is a concerted effort to keep Democrats from voting -- through intimidation, by striking new voters from the rolls, which is going to happen to lots of them, clogging polling stations to create delays that keep late day (predominantly) Obama voters from voting altogether. Smears in the air and voter suppression on the ground. [...]

[T]he really corrupt and vicious part of McCain's effort only comes now because it's only in the last couple weeks that you can pull stuff that the press won't get to call you on before election day -- after which it doesn't matter.

Watch the video. Pay attention to Josh Marshall's words. Do your part. Hope for the best.

H/t: Spaznuski for the video.

BREAKING: Supreme Court rules against Ohio GOP!

By GottaLaff

I'll update as soon as I can find something to link to. This was just on MSNBC!

Newly registered voters win. Democrats win. Lower courts were wrong to get involved in this on behalf of Republicans, the Supremes said. The voter databases being checked against the DMV, looking for mismatches are the issue. The state can handle this how it wants now.

The Supremes didn't weigh in on election issues here. They just said the Republicans probably wouldn't succeed, and the state takes it from there. The ballots will be processed on October 25th as planned. And the state has been informing counties of the mismatches, but there's no word on if they'll continue to do that.

The state of Ohio wins.

UPDATE:

The Supreme Court sided Friday with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.

In a brief unsigned opinion, the justices said they were not commenting on whether Ohio is complying with a provision of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 that lays out requirements for verifying voter eligibility.

Instead, they said they were granting Brunner's request because it appears that the law does not allow private entities, like the Ohio GOP, to file suit to enforce the provision of the law at issue.

About 200,000 of 666,000 voters who have registered in Ohio since Jan. 1 have records that don't match. Brunner has said the discrepancies most likely stem from innocent clerical errors rather than fraud but has set up a verification plan.

Gramm-pa McCain's ads backfired: Obama rakes in the cash

By GottaLaff

From the Just Desserts Department:

One official close to the campaign said that September's fundraising haul set a new record, surpassing the $66 million Obama raised in August. Another aide, asked about the campaign's take, would only describe it: "big."

Moreover, the assault that John McCain has launched against Obama's character - including repeated criticisms of the Illinois Democrat's association to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers - has largely backfired. Obama sources shared internal campaign polling figures that show a sharp fall in positive feelings for the Republican ticket. Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain's unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent, notably higher than anything detected in recent public polling.

Gov. Sarah Palin is fairing just as poorly if not worse. In New Hampshire, an official with knowledge of internal polling says the Alaska Republican's favorable rating has nosedived to 36 percent, with 56 percent viewing her unfavorably.

And how's about all them new attack ads?

At this point, Obama might welcome the move. His campaign's data suggests that the remaining undecideds are those voters who tend to be non-political -- a group that does not respond well to negative advertisements. As such, much of what Chicago headquarters plans to do going forward will echo the economic message it has pushed in recent weeks.

Here comes my favorite part. Ready? Ready?

There will, however, be one new ripple. On Monday, Obama's communication's shop is expected to go on the offense on issues of voter protection after a week in which Republicans cried foul about registration efforts in various states and painted the community organizing organization ACORN as a criminal enterprise.

Obama aides will attack Republicans for what they view as efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.

Yes! Yes, yes, yes! This is what I've been waiting to hear. I've got every possible anatomical part crossed in hopes they can have some affect on the despicable voter suppression efforts by the McUnAmerican campaign. Even though it's a ripple and not a wave, even though it's hundreds of lawyers and not thousands, it's something.

Won't it be nice to get democracy back again?

H/t: Ellen

Losing Your Right to Vote 101

By GottaLaff

Class, settle down! This is important. Bucky, David G., cell phones off, please. Eve? Will you please stop whispering to Chris and Margali? Ady, Molix, leave Paddy's coffee alone! Jon, how many times have I told you not to crack jokes in the middle of a lecture on voter suppression? Ellen and TheKingFiphtin, rolling your eyes at me will not win Obama this election! Pay attention, kiddies. Our country's at stake. Class is in session:

In Pennsylvania, two Pittsburgh-area elections officials are suing to permit a dress code at polling places, after a Pennsylvania Department of State memo advised counties last month that voters' attire doesn't matter.

In Virginia, where backers of both Barack Obama and John McCain are pushing for registration of college students in this battleground state, many students were wrongly advised by officials that registering could adversely affect their parents' taxes.

In Michigan, campaign officials are suing to prevent lists of foreclosed homes being used to prevent voters from voting at their local precinct.

And in Ohio, a legal skirmish over same-day registration and voting has not prevented hundreds from casting absentee ballots a month before Election Day, even though they do not plan on bring out of state come November 4.

Across the country, voter registration leading up to a highly-anticipated presidential election has been up, but so are concerns that bureaucracy, misreadings of election law, or just plain stupid mistakes may cost many Americans their right to exercise their vote.

Okay, class, it's time for a pop quiz on the following methods to disenfranchise voters. This is an open-book test. You may go here to find the details you need:

• No Shirt, No Shoes, No Vote?
• Sorry, You've Been De-Registered
• Lost Your House, Lost Your Vote?
• Old Enough To Vote, But Not Here?

If you still need help finding answers, you have my permission to go to CanIVote.org. or VotersUnite.org.

Class dismissed.

Kirsten, Mainy, Fernando! Once and for all.... Put the margaritas away!

Why the debates won't matter

By GottaLaff

I've been posting about election fraud. A lot. Over and over and over and over and over again. I was just about to post about this (sorry for the length, but this is important):

A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election.

Michael S. Connell was served with a subpoena in Ohio on Sept. 22 in a case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. Connell, president of GovTech Solutions and New Media Communications, is a website designer and IT professional who created a website for Ohio’s secretary of state that presented the results of the 2004 election in real time as they were tabulated.

At the time, Ohio’s Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, was also chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio.

Then Commenter Chris turned me on to this piece, about why the debates won't matter:

[M]y fear is that the Electoral College results will hang on the swing state voting systems' vulnerability to sabotage.

It's already happening.

• In El Paso County, Colorado, the county clerk -- a delegate to the Republican National Convention -- told out-of-state undergraduates at Colorado College, falsely, that they couldn't vote in Colorado if their parents claim them as dependents on their taxes.

• In Montgomery County, Virginia, the county registrar issued a press release warning out-of-state college students, falsely, that if they register to vote in Virginia, they won't be eligible for coverage under their parents' health and car insurance, and that "if you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding."

• In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Democratic voters received a mailing containing tear-out requests for absentee ballots addressed to the clerk in Caledonia -- the wrong location. In Middleton, Wisconsin, Democratic voters received absentee ballot requests addressed to the clerk in Madison -- the wrong address. Both mailers were sent by the McCain campaign.

• Florida, Michigan and Ohio have some of the country's highest foreclosure rates. [...] If you're one of the million Americans who lost a home through foreclosure, and if you didn't file a change of address with your election board, you're a sitting duck for an Election Day challenge by a partisan poll watcher holding a public list of foreclosed homes. In states like New Mexico and Iowa, the number of foreclosures is greater than the number of votes by which George W. Bush carried the state in 2004.

• In the 2006 election, according to the nonpartisan Fair Elections Legal Network, black voters in Virginia got computer-generated phone calls from a bogus "Virginia Election Commission" telling them that they could be arrested if they went to the wrong polling place; in Maryland, out-of-state leafleters gave phony Democratic sample ballots to black voters with the names of Republican candidates checked in red; in New Mexico, Democratic voters got personal phone calls from out of state that directed them to the wrong polling place.
  

• The reason behind Alberto Gonzales' attempted purge of US Attorneys was that some of them wouldn't knuckle under to Karl Rove's plan to concoct an "election fraud" hoax that would put Republicans in control of the nation's voting lists.
  

• And if all of that doesn't alarm you, consider the new report on electronic voting systems [pdf] from the Computer Security Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which concluded that "all voting systems recently analyzed by independent security testers have been found to contain fatal security flaws that could compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the voting process.... Unless electronic voting systems are held up to standards that are commensurate with the criticality of the tasks they have to perform, the very core of our democracy is in danger."

• [O]n Election Day, some polling places in minority precincts in battleground states will [...] discover that so many people want to vote that it will take hours of standing in line to vote. That is, of course, unless they run of out ballots.

[...] Josef Stalin is reputed to have said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." I think he had it half right. Those who decide who cast the votes also decide everything.

Oy.

Voter fraud vs. Election fraud

By GottaLaff

Brad of The Brad Blog just now on Thom Hartmann (quick liveblog):

"Voter fraud": It's a phony scam to keep Democratic voters from casting their votes. Voter frauds have had only 21 convictions, but John Fund likes to talk about it as if it's a huge crime wave.

Their favorite whipping boy is ACORN, who signs up millions of voters who verify every registration that they get. They call them, and if they can't get hold of them, they flag it as possibly illegitimate and put them aside.

Election fraud: [ "Voter fraud" is being used (foreclosure lists in Michigan; or, no match/no vote in Florida, eg: if they're missing your middle initial, your name no longer matches, you can be dropped) and the campaigns are not being tough enough.] It's the voting machines that can be corrupted, and we'd never know it if they messed with them. That is election fraud. The system is gamed.

When it's inside a computer, you can't see it, so you can't stop it. Oklahoma got their optical scan machines years ago, then threw out the voting machine companies and ran them themselves. It's all publicly overseen, as opposed to privatized.

Even if you've voted in the primary, call your registrars, go online to see if you're registered. Do not assume you are registered.

Go to: VotersUnite.org and/or The Brad Blog for more info.

"A national campaign to disenfranchise voters will receive a national response"

By GottaLaff

I've been all over the disenfranchisement/caging efforts of the Republican party, including the DNC/Obama lawsuit against the Michigan G.O.P. and Greg Palast's warnings.

Via a longtime reader of TPM (an excerpt):

The court is more likely to rule narrowly than to recognize those claims in its decision. But by intervening directly in a local case, the Obama campaign is signaling that a national campaign to disenfranchise voters will receive a national response. And by reframing a technical debate over local election laws as a broader discussion of fundamental rights, the Obama campaign has already won. The GOP has long employed the chimerical notion of "voter fraud," and preyed upon unpopular groups like students, non-Anglophone Americans and ex-felons. But they made a strategic miscalculation by going after homeowners suffering foreclosures. And by linking this effort at disenfranchisement to the others, the Obama campaign is going to make them pay.

We must never tolerate attempts at voter suppression. Now Obama's team is doing something about it. That's called leadership.

(The filing is here.)

H/t: I don't remember, but thank you!

Election Protection: Largest voter-protection effort in American history

By GottaLaff

With every fiber of my being, I hope this works:

A group of civil rights lawyers is launching what it bills as the largest voter-protection effort in American history, planning to raise and spend millions of dollars to station hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers at polling places across the country to help voters having trouble with the polls on Election Day.

The non-partisan group, called Election Protection -- to be announced at a press conference later this morning -- is being headed up by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal group established in 1963 in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement.

While the group ran a similar effort in 2004, the new effort will be on a far grander scale, reflecting a growing sense that private efforts to combat the bureaucratic ineptitude and premeditated shenanigans that continue to mar the voting process just haven't been up to the task.

"This will be the largest voter protection effort in the history of the country," project head Jonah Goldman, a longtime civil rights and election reform lawyer, insisted in an interview yesterday with Election Central. The backbone of their effort is a hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, that voters can call to have their questions answered, and to report problems. [...]

Election Protection 2008 vows to employ hundreds of lawyers and law students at call centers across the country on Election Day. "We've expanded our volume, our capacity from 2004, and we expect to be able to handle over a quarter of a million calls this time," says Goldman, who's also director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections.

On top of that, the group plans to enlist tens of thousands of volunteers to physically assist people get to their polling station. [...]

Goldman added that the group would also be taking on outright efforts to disenfranchise voters. For instance, we've seen recent allegations that the Michigan Republican Party is trying to prevent people on foreclosure lists from voting -- as well as efforts in Virginia to prevent college students from registering where they go to school.

Good. Good, good, good.

Group warns some states may be unprepared for election

By GottaLaff

Oy:

As the ranks of new voters swell, a nonpartisan watchdog group predicted Tuesday that voters in three Southeastern states may face problems voting on Election Day.

Common Cause, a citizen’s lobbying group, examined voting preparedness in 10 states where the presidential race is expected to be tight and was most concerned about Florida, Georgia and Virginia.

Inadequate state voter databases, strict voter registration and identification rules that could disenfranchise voters as well as too few voting machines are among the biggest problems, the group said in a report.

The group looked at likely swing states, including Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

With a record turnout likely throughout the country, inadequate preparation for the election could be particularly problematic, said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause. [...]

In Florida, Common Cause pointed to strict voter registration and voter identification laws that have the potential to prevent thousands of voters from registering to vote.

People registering to vote in Florida must provide an exact match of their identifying information to existing state databases or risk having their voter registration denied, Common Cause said. The group said the policy results in the rejection of thousands of valid voters because of minor clerical errors. [...]

Jennifer Krell Davis, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, said the state has taken steps to prevent problems. She said the state also informs voters of any errors, and they can present election officials with information verifying their identity in person, by mail, fax or e-mail.

State law also allows voters to verify the information up to two days after Election Day, Davis said.

Common Cause cited Georgia’s state voter identification law as “harsh” because it requires a government-issued photo identification card.

In Virginia, Wang was critical of laws about student voting and the state’s strict residency requirements.

“Virginia has a history of making voting more difficult for students,” Wang said.

Valarie Jones, a deputy secretary for the Virginia State Board of Elections, said the board has clarified its policies for students in the past week and provided the information on its Web site. [...]

Wang said there is time before Election Day to make some improvements, but more long-term changes are needed.

“I think [election officials] are trying,” she said. “But I don’t think they’ll have the laws or policies in place to ensure they’ll be ready.”

Read the report

State-by-state breakdown

Why, after 8 years, are we still grappling with this? It's almost as if there's a reluctance to rectify all these... Never mind.