Election Day is 25 days away, but allegations of voter registration fraud are already making headlines, and filling the airwaves and court dockets.
Republicans are going nuts over ACORN, which is accused of submitting questionable or duplicate voter registration applications in battleground states. House Republican leader John Boehner fumed:
The latest allegations of voter registration fraud by ACORN are further evidence that this group cannot be trusted with another dollar of the taxpayers’ money.
Election cycle after election cycle, this organization has been at the forefront of breaking the law in order to promote their left-wing agenda. All the while, they have been the recipients of millions of dollars of federal funding through various federal programs and third-party groups.
In an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell characterized ACORN as a “rogue organization.”
In an op-ed piece, Blackwell wrote:
The right to vote is a fundamental right. It is violated when a qualified voter is denied his or her vote - and also when a legal vote is canceled out by an illegal vote.
Mind you, this is the same Ken Blackwell who in 2004 directed county boards of elections to reject voter registration applications that were not printed on 80-lb heavy stock paper.
Meanwhile, voting rights activists are sounding the alarm about the racial disparity in election preparation in several battleground states.
The Advancement Project released a new report, “The End of the Line?,” whose findings include:
- In many jurisdictions, the number of voting machines, privacy booths, and poll workers will likely be insufficient to accommodate all those who may turn out to vote on Nov. 4, 2008. This will likely result in extremely long lines at the polls and “lost” voters unless these problems are addressed beforehand.
- Machines, privacy booths, and poll workers have been misallocated in many jurisdictions, which will likely result in some precincts within a jurisdiction having long lines due to insufficient resources while neighboring precincts have an efficient Election Day because they have been provided ample numbers of machines, privacy booths, and poll workers.
- In some jurisdictions, the allocation of polling place resources is likely to have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. In other words, there will be fewer voting machines or poll workers per voter in high minority precincts than in low minority precincts.
Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, said:
Folks, I have monitored elections in Ethiopia and Nigeria, and conducted democracy workshops in Kazakhstan and Angola. If I were an international observer, election preparations in the U.S. would not pass muster as “free and fair.”