Suppress the vote!
OK, first and foremost I don’t know what the answer is. But it’s clear our election process is _completely screwed up_ in this country. Was it screwed up before and we just didn’t notice? Possibly. But before when interest was low and landslides were the rule, it probably didn’t make a great deal of difference.
Our registration process is far too screwy for words. On one hand we have Democractic voter registration drives “where the registrants can’t be identified”:http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/20/loc_fraud20.html. And I’m already pretty uncomfortable with the idea of paying voter registration teams per name, but “paying people in crack”:http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/109818540796130.xml? Yikes.
On the other hand, Republicans in Nevada have been “shredding Democrat registration forms”:http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe. In Philly they’ve taken the (comparatively) high road, “only _accepting_ registrations from Republicans”:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04294/398767.stm.
We’ve had accusations of people calling voters and telling them the polling places have moved when they haven’t, people insisting on last-minute moving of polling places, absentee ballots printed and mailed with incorrect congressional races listed, absentee ballots printed _without John Kerry_ listed, attempts to reject registrations based on the _quality of cardstock used for the form_, and openly partisan governmental oversight in Florida and Ohio.
Some people even claim _the city of Knoxville_ is uprooting “Kerry/Edwards signs from private property”:http://www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog/archive_2004_10.php#3609 while leaving Bush/Cheney signs intact.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are “hiring people to screen voters at the polls”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/politics/campaign/23vote.html?oref=login, which, given the voter suppression efforts outlined above, makes me feel pretty queasy.
Registering Mickey Mouse to inflate your own paycheck (or get a bit more crack) is one thing. Doing your best to make sure people who are registered to vote either _can’t_ or _give up trying_ reserves you a place in a much deeper level of hell.
I’ll get over feeling helpless in a moment. Until then, go read David Anderson. “He’s pissed”:http://progressivealliance.blogspot.com/2004/10/stealing-election-2004-edition.html.