Election Day is seven days away, but the specter of another “Florida” looms. There are unreliable voting machines, inaccurate voter databases, rejected military ballots, confusing ballot design and unlawful voter purges.
Florida is in the running to be the next “Florida,” along with Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
And Ohio. President Bush has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the status of 200,000 newly registered voters whose names were flagged as mismatches in a state database. If challenged at the polls, they will be given a provisional ballot.
In the 2006 election, as many as 20 percent of provisional ballots were not counted in some states.
Americans should be outraged that $3 billion later, states still are not ready. The 2002 Help America Vote Act was intended to help voters and restore confidence in the electoral process. Instead, vendors have helped themselves to taxpayers’ money.
Clearly, electoral reform must be on the policy agenda for the new Congress. But first we have to get through next Tuesday.
Already, the phones are ringing off the hook at the voter assistance hotlines. As reports of voting irregularities continue to come in, folks are getting jittery.
But some are twittering to protect the vote.
Beka Economopoulos, one of the organizers of the Twitter Voter Report, wrote:
I asked Volunteer Coordinator Matt Cooperrider how folks can get involved:
For more info, go here.
