The mass removal of US voters from the election rolls could undermine Obama’s poll lead.
The Independent online – Open House
London UK – 28 October 2008
Around 13 million US voters have been purged from the electoral rolls since 2004. That’s 10% of the 120 million votes cast in 2004 and twice as many voters than have been added through recent massive voter registration drives.
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=565833
The proportion of electors dropped from the voters’ lists is staggering: 17% in Colorado, 15% in Washington State, 14% in New York, 13% in Nevada and 10% in Missouri.
This means that millions of Americans will not be allowed to vote on 4 November. It could cost Barack Obama the White House, even if he is ahead in the opinion polls on 4 November.
This sensational claim is confirmed by the New York Times (NYT). Its researchers have found that in some states for every new voter registered in the last couple of months, two voters have been removed – negating Obama’s massive voter registration drive. This voter purging could mean fewer people voting in 2008 than voted in 2004.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
In Colorado, for example, which has seen a significant population increase since the last presidential election, the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The NYT also reports that Louisiana, Michigan and Colorado are deleting registered voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is illegal except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Deleting voters who have died or moved inter-state accounts for only some of this purge. The NYT discovered that in Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan the number of people removed from the election rolls since 1 August exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period by 300% to 400%.
The NYT also reports that people who have failed to vote in two or more previous elections are being dumped from the voter rolls, often without being informed. They may decide to vote this time, but when they turn up at the polling booths they will find their names erased and their eligibility voided.
Journalists from the NYT also unearthed other unethical tactics to exclude voters. Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Alabama and Georgia are improperly using the less reliable Social Security database to verify registration applications for new voters, instead of using the more accurate and up-to-date state and local records. Vote applicants whose Social Security data doesn’t match their electoral registration data are being denied the right to vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
According to analysis by the NYT:
“Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.
“The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid.
“Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.
“In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 non-matches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 non-matches.”
Some states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require a “perfect match.” New registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms – their Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen – fails to exactly match data listed in other government records. Typos by government clerks are resulting in voters being scrubbed from the rolls.
In the first few days of early voting in Florida, 5,000 voters have already been rejected, mostly because of typos and bureaucratic blunders in the spelling of their names.
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=565833
Non-match discrepancies could result in hundreds of thousands of US citizens – perhaps millions – losing their right to vote. Even those who are allowed to remain on the register may be required to vote using a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted.
Republicans are planning to use non-matches as the basis on which to challenge the voting rights of Democrats, which could affect the outcome of the presidential poll in close-run battleground states. In one such state, Ohio, the Republicans have begun legal action to challenge 200,000 new voters.
The evidence of vote suppression is independently corroborated by a BBC Newsnight investigation by reporter Greg Palast. You can watch his eye-popping report here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7617204.stm
Palast says that of the millions of voters who have been purged from the rolls, most seem to be poor and black voters who are more likely to vote Democrat.
During elections in New Mexico earlier this year, one in nine voters found that their names had disappeared from the voter rolls. Whole streets of voters in poor neighbourhoods just disappeared from the rolls.
The 2004 tactic of removing or challenging innocent voters who share the same or similar names is still being pursued by some states, especially in cases where they happen to correspond to the names of convicted criminals.
It has happened before. During the last presidential election, one in four Ohio voters who registered in 2004 turned up at the polling booth only to discover that their names were not on the voter roll – an exclusion rate of 25%.
Palast argues that the next President of the US may not be chosen by counting the votes, but by blocking the voters. His damning report calls into question the credibility of US democracy;
Democrat Party leaders are too high on their “Yes we can” hype to kick up a fuss about this massive disenfranchisement of their voters. They naively assume that their big voter registration drive and Obama’s poll lead will give them victory, regardless of the election bias.
But that is what they said about John Kerry in 2004. This combination of arrogance and complacency puts at risk the freedom and fairness of the 4 November ballot. Obama looks set to win, but don’t bet on it.