Vote Corruption Signs

We’re all aware by now of the huge dangers in having no paper trail of votes – the maker of election machines is pro-Bush.

Oregon officials have opened an investigation into alleged improper voter registration practices, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury said Wednesday. The investigation follows a television report in which a paid-per-registration canvasser said he had been instructed only to accept registrations from Republicans, and that he "might" destroy those from Democrats. And Oregon’s vote-by-mail system (the state has abolished polling-place elections) is a regular target of critics.

In West Palm Beach, Fla. — Ground Zero of the 2000 post-election fight — a computer crash Tuesday that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting machines to be postponed was trumpeted by critics as proof of the balloting technology’s unreliability. And a coalition of unions sued Florida elections officials Tuesday, arguing that thousands of voters have been disenfranchised by the rejection of their voter registration forms. The Democrats filed a similar suite last week.

In Nevada, elections officials recently rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls.

Milwaukee’s mayor has requested more ballots for the Nov. 2 election, but the county executive has refused to provide them, citing concerns about voter fraud. Mayor Tom Barrett complained that the 679,000 ballots the county agreed to print were less than the number prepared for elections in 2000 and 2002. He asked for almost 260,000 additional ballots, expecting a large turnout next month. Milwaukee reported having 382,000 registered voters in September and a total of 423,811 residents old enough to vote.

In Pennsylvania, the federal government asked a judge earlier this week to give military families and overseas voters until after the Nov. 2 election to submit absentee ballots for president because of an ongoing court fight over Ralph Nader’s ballot status.

Keep everyone accountable in this election!

When you vote, don’t forget that the entire House of Representatives (435 members) and approximately one-third of the Senate (34 of 100 members) are also up for election.