Stealing Votes

I've stayed away from stories about voter fraud because I'm leery of conspiracy theories. The GOP has been screaming about ACORN, even though the problems there are with voter registration, not voter fraud. And ACORN turned in many of the bad voter registration forms. As others have pointed out, will Mickey Mouse show up at the polls? But putting all caution aside, I just read Greg Palast's article, "How McCain Could Win," on Truthout's website, and my anxiety level just went up about four or five more notches. Here are a few details to make you sweat:

• Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll....[snip]
• Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year's Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population....[snip]
• Swing state Indiana.[snip]....566,000 registered voters in that state don't have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements.
• Swing state Florida.[snip]...the state's Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new "verification" process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white).
  (See Palast's entire article at Truthout.org: "How McCain Could Win," Greg Palast, Nov. 3, 2008.)

Read more of the article for many such gems as the following, and you'll want to go to bed with a bottle of whiskey and a request for a wake-up call November 5th:

In the last election, 1,389,231 ballots were zeroed-out, "spoiled," because the machines lost them, couldn't read them, mangled them or simply didn't register them. But it's not random, not by a long shot. In New Mexico in 2004, I found that 89 percent of blank and spoiled ballots were cast in minority precincts - a sum of uncounted ballots way over the Republican "victory" margin in that state.

Add to these stories the individual anecdotes of folks waiting in long, long lines in metro-Atlanta, and you, too, will begin to wonder why voting is so difficult in this country, why voting isn't streamlined, with extended hours in all states and a national roll of eligible voters. One of my co-workers described to me how she stood in line three hours Thursday morning to vote. Near her in line was a woman with her daughter, a new voter. The daughter's enthusiasm began to flag; she had never voted before, and she had not anticipated having to stand in line so long for the privilege. The mother and my friend continued to encourage the young woman--who finally made it to the front of the line only to be told that she was not registered to vote in that county. Oh, yeah, there will be lots of those tomorrow. Get ready.

Rachel Maddow's commentary on the long lines at the polls: