....The New Voters Project, a national grassroots youth voter mobilization initiative, announced last week that it has registered 74,000 young people to vote in Wisconsin....
....However, the registrant boom comes with an asterisk. City clerks from around the state and Rock County have said that many of the registrations are missing an important piece of information.
Rock County Clerk Kay O'Connell said local clerks are dealing with loads of forms from the non-partisan project that don't include necessary copies of registrant identification, such as Wisconsin driver's licenses....
....Wulf said the New Voters Project is also unnecessarily registering voters.
She said 21 percent of the forms Janesville has received are from people who are already registered....
In Tennessee, a temporary employee of the left-wing group Tennessee Citizen Action is being investigated for submitting 200 fake voter registration forms.
In Cleveland, Ohio, the NAACP and liberal group Americans Coming Together are under investigation for their involvement in 1,000 suspicious registrations. A Lake County prosecutor, Charles Coulson, said: "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level," Coulson said Thursday. "I grew up in Chicago and this looks like the politics of Mayor Daley in the '50s and '60s."
In Michigan, liberal groups PIRGIM (the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan) and Project Vote are entangled in a four-county voter fraud investigation.
In West Virginia, two Republican officials investigating voter fraud have received death threats from opponents.....
.....(A) Times article about Ohio and Florida reports that “Steve Rosenthal, the chief executive of Americans Coming Together, or ACT, a soft-money group that is trying to register Democrats, said he believed they would. "I think what's happening on the streets, below the radar, is what's going to make the big difference on Election Day," said Mr. Rosenthal, who said his organization and the other groups "would register two and a half million new Democratic voters nationwide.”
Americans Coming Together has been in the news lately for its voter registration activities in Ohio. More than 1,000 voter registration forms and absentee ballot requests may be fraudulent in Lake and Summit counties, where investigations of irregularities are broadening.
Lake County Sheriff Daniel Dunlap said Thursday that he will investigate an attempt to register a dead person and other possibly fraudulent documents that were submitted to the Lake County Board of Elections…
Elections officials have said hundreds of absentee ballot applications and dozens of voter registration cards are in question. Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson, also involved in the probe, said the problems are more significant than originally thought. "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level," Coulson said Thursday. "I grew up in Chicago and this looks like the politics of Mayor Daley in the '50s and '60s."
Lake election and law enforcement officials said their investigation is centered on absentee registration attempts by the nonpartisan NAACP's National Voter Fund and an anti-Bush, nonprofit group called Americans Coming Together, or ACT Ohio…
In one other instance, an elderly nursing home resident who usually signs with an "X" appeared to have a firm, cursive signature when she registered.
"We are going to have to see who's alive and who's well," Dunlap said.
"We're going to have to burn up some shoe leather." In Summit County, meanwhile, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation has agreed to assist the Sheriff's Department in the examination of 803 suspect voter registration applications.
Bryan Williams, director of the Summit County Board of Elections, said high interest in this year's presidential election has resulted in unprecedented numbers of voter registrations, absentee ballot requests and irregular voter applications.
Williams said the suspect voter registration applications include some with nonexistent addresses while others from the same street all have the street identically misspelled.
Still other voter registration cards bear strikingly similar handwriting, suggesting one person submitted a group of fraudulent voter registration cards. Wait, when else has Americans Coming Together been in the news? America Coming Together, contending that convicted criminals deserve a second chance in society, employs felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio, and perhaps in other states among the 17 it is targeting in its drive. Some of the felons lived in halfway houses, and at least four returned to prison.
A review of federal campaign finance and state criminal records by the Associated Press revealed that the names and hometowns of dozens of ACT employees in Missouri, Florida, and Ohio matched those of people convicted of crimes such as burglary, forgery, drug dealing, assault, and sex offenses. Hmmm. In Ohio, you say? And Florida? And, according to another AP article, Iowa is another state that American Coming Together is working in?
So - this organization hires individuals - some of whom are felons - and pays them $8 to $12 per hour to collect filled-out voter registration forms and applications for absentee ballots. Is it possible that some of these ACT workers are simply going through the phone book and writing down names and addresses, and forging signatures?
Hmm. Florida requires photocopies of ID and a Florida driver’s license number or Florida identification card number, or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Same for Ohio.
Iowa requires an ID number that can be either a driver’s license number or a Social Security number, date of birth, sex, name, address and signature. Do the various Secretaries of State check this information? The Times article about Ohio reports that Matt Damschroder, the director of the Board of Elections, he had to throw out many of the cards he got because the voters were already registered. “One woman had signed a card three different times,” with three different groups, he said.
Maybe on Election Day we will see a massive tsunami of new Democratic voters showing up at the polls. Or perhaps Americans Coming Together will realize that felons don’t make the most reliable employees.
written by: Deborah Sherman (I-Team Reporter) and Nicole Vap (Executive Producer Investigative)
The I-Team has uncovered some disturbing evidence of voter registration fraud. 10 p.m. Oct. 11, 2004.
DENVER - With just 21 days left until an election in which every vote will count, the 9News I-Team has uncovered voter registration fraud that could cause chaos on Election Day for hundreds, possibly thousands of Colorado voters.
9News has discovered a record number of fraudulent voter-registrations across the state. Secretary of State Donetta Davidson tells 9News she is concerned about what the I-Team has uncovered and wants those responsible prosecuted. "It has just gone rampant," she told reporter Deborah Sherman in an interview Monday afternoon.
Most of the fraud has come from registration drives, where people at grocery stores or on the streets ask you to sign up. 9News has learned many workers have re-registered voters multiple times by changing or making up information about them. 9News has documented 719 cases of potentially fraudulent forms at county election offices, show fraudulent names, addresses, social security numbers or dates of birth in Denver, Douglas, Adams, Boulder and Lake counties. Information from other counties is still coming in.
Some voter registration application forms are completely bogus. Others belong to legitimate voters, who have had one or two facts changed that could affect their registration when they show up at the polls November 2nd. Tom Stanislawski registered to vote six years ago. But this summer, someone signed him up again and changed his party affiliation. "My concern would be I'd walk in November 2nd and be unable to vote," he said.
Some of the registration drive workers earn $2 per application or about $10 an hour. One woman admitted to forging three people's names on about 40 voter registration applications. Kym Cason says she was helping her boyfriend earn more money from a get-out-the-vote organization called ACORN or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN works with low or moderate-income families on housing issues. Cason said her extra registrations earned her boyfriend $50.
Gerald Obi says workers pressured him to keep registering to vote so they too could earn extra cash. When asked how many times he had registered this year, Obi said, "about 35 times."
ACORN's state director said they are victims of the fraud as well and told 9News the group is cooperating with local investigators. Ross Fitzgerald says the group has fired workers for the fraud. "Our goal is to register as many people as we can," said Fitzgerald. "If they're fraudulent, that hurts our numbers." Clerk and Recorders from several counties met Monday with Secretary of State Donetta Davidson to discuss this problem, and the problem of felons registering to vote. "I have to question whether we should be allowing people to accept money for voter registration," said Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Carole Murray.
Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson agreed and said she will be looking at ways to reform the system.
....Colorado could end up writing an ugly sequel to the Florida election nightmare of four years ago.
County clerks have been swamped with a surge in voter registrations, thousands of felons are on the voter rolls, and there is widespread confusion about how provisional ballots will be counted and voting rules will be enforced....
....When it comes to the voter rolls, things started getting confusing when counties began seeing a surge in voter registrations. No one is sure how many new voters signed up, but the figure could be well over 100,000.
Secretary of State Donetta Davidson stunned county clerks by effectively scrapping the Oct. 4 registration deadline after people complained their registration forms had not been turned in by various get-out-the-vote campaigns.
More problems could result from provisional ballots - essentially backup ballots that are used when voters think they are properly registered but their names do not appear on the rolls.
People who do not show up on voter rolls will be asked to swear they are eligible to vote in order to get a provisional ballot. The problem? If they aren't on the rolls, election judges cannot confirm whether they are telling the truth....
....Davidson also has acknowledged that there are about 6,000 felons registered to vote in Colorado. She is updating information from corrections officials to distribute lists to county clerks, who will have to purge their rolls of convicted felons still serving their sentences or out on parole.
The secretary of state is downplaying the concerns about Florida-like fiasco, but has criticized Attorney General Ken Salazar for keeping her "out of the loop" when it comes to investigating voter fraud.
Bruce Altschuler, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, said similar problems are cropping up in every battleground state.
"The fear or hope, as the case may be, by both parties is this election could turn out to be as close as last time," Altschuler said. "Both sides are leaving no stone unturned in the search for potential voters and the potential for hanky-panky and lawsuits."
If Colorado ends up close, there is little question the losing side would challenge the results, based on any mistakes that might have been made in preparing for the election or counting votes.
"It would certainly be my hope that there's no need for any kind of legal action after Election Day," said state Republican Party Chairman Ted Halaby. "We also have to be realistic, and we have the issue of provisional ballots, and we have widespread reports of vast fraudulent registration. It is a cause for concern."
Odd, I have it on good authority that Bush stole the election in Florida. Kerry said so.......
Voter fraud from Navy Times
By Dave Lowry October 18, 2004
No more absentee ballots for this officer
In the 2000 federal election, I voted by stateside absentee ballot, sending my ballot by United Parcel Service from Texas to Florida. It was delivered on time; I know this because UPS recorded document receipt by the Office of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections at 3:09 p.m. on Election Day, almost four hours before the 7 p.m. deadline.
For the next seven months, I felt proud of myself for taking part in the election process. I was sure my vote had been counted, because I had proof it was delivered on time. Then a reporter from the New York Times called. He had a list of thousands of Florida voters whose absentee ballots had not been counted — and my name was on the list. The Office of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections stamped my ballot as being received nine days after the election.
What happened? I believe Broward County officials fraudulently set aside many absentee ballots, most sent by regular mail. Why? Because there is no tracking system on regular mail. Voters who used regular mail had no way to prove when it was delivered. The mistake they made was throwing mine in with the others. Fraud was committed. And I proved it.
On Aug. 18, after more than three years trying to get my vote counted, the Florida Elections Commission validated my claim. They agreed that my vote was received on time and had not been counted. But the two-year statute of limitations had expired. So certain elections officials will not be charged with fraud — a first-degree misdemeanor — for failing to count my vote.
However, on Sept. 2, the Florida Elections Commission sent a written request to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections to open my ballot and count my vote.
The lesson: If you want greater assurance of your absentee ballot being counted, don’t send it by regular mail. Send it certified, return receipt requested. Use any delivery service that has a tracking system.
If enough absentee ballot voters do this, it will send a strong message. Elections officials will be dissuaded from playing political hanky-panky with your vote. But if you really want to make sure your vote is counted, you may want to vote in person at your designated polling place, even if you have to take leave and travel to do it.
Ludicrous advice? Perhaps. But I believe that most absentee ballots are never counted. They usually come into play only when an election is so close that the absentee ballots could change the outcome — that is, when the number of valid absentee ballots received is greater than the margin of victory.
Only once in my 26-year military career have I lived close enough to my polling place to vote in person. I am still stunned by the revelation that the one time I voted in person was probably the only time my vote was ever counted. I will never again vote by absentee ballot. On Nov. 2, I will take a day of leave and travel to my polling place.
We need to implement a nationwide electronic voting system that allows troops to walk into any polling place across the United States and cast their ballot. And service members based overseas should be able to vote over the Internet.
We have the technology to implement nationwide electronic voting. But defense officials recently postponed plans to further test a new electronic voting system developed by Accenture eDemocracy Services.
The electronic voting project was successfully tested in four counties during the 2000 election, but was sidelined in March 2004 because of security concerns. The expanded pilot program, dubbed Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, was intended to be used in 50 counties across the nation during the 2004 election, but again was postponed because of concerns about the “legitimacy of votes cast over the Internet.”
Billions of dollars’ worth of financial transactions take place over the Internet every day. The accuracy of those transactions is nearing perfection. The error rate is so small it is negligible. More important, the errors are correctable.
Some hackers may try to interfere with electronic voting, but my bet is, they’ll prefer to spend their time on something that has potential monetary gain. If you believe hackers could interfere with electronic voting to the extent that it completely invalidates the entire election process, then you’ve been watching too many late-night reruns of “Mission Impossible.”
As a group, active-duty military personnel are among the most disenfranchised voters in the nation — and that’s a disgrace. Our democracy must do a better job of ensuring all votes are counted — especially the votes of service members, who pledge their lives to preserve the rights and freedoms of all Americans.
The writer is an active-duty colonel serving at the U.S. Army Reserve Command at Fort McPherson, Ga. E-mail him at davidlowry@bellsouth.net.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
COLUMBUS - Thousands of cards mailed by county election boards to newly registered voters in Hamilton County and throughout the state are being returned because the people can't be found.
John Williams, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, said the situation indicates that there might not be as many new voters as some expect in a state deemed crucial in the presidential election. Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett on Tuesday said it's a result of statewide registration fraud conducted by independent groups that support Democratic candidates.
"By most accounts, their work can only be considered sloppy, haphazard and, in some cases, downright illegal," Bennett said, noting that the state party plans to take out full-page ads in Ohio newspapers encouraging citizens to stop voter fraud.
Democratic Party spokesman Dan Trevas said the fraud uncovered in Ohio equates to "minor errors" when viewed in the bigger picture.
"The vast majority of those registered for the first time are intent on voting," he said. Bennett cited instances in 10 counties where potentially fraudulent voter registration forms were submitted.
He said many were submitted by groups he terms "auxiliaries of the Democratic Party": the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and America Coming Together.
The groups paid people to register voters. Some registrations were filled out for dead people, some contained fake addresses, and others named fiction characters such as Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins.
Jess Goode, spokesman for ACT in Ohio, has denied wrongdoing by his group. He said the Republican Party is scared of the number of new Democratic voters headed to the polls in two weeks.
An estimated 7.9 million people have registered in Ohio, up from 7.1 million at the beginning of the year. Williams is currently investigating fraud by someone working for ACORN who he said submitted voter registrations for about 35 people who don't exist.
Newly registered voters in Hamilton County are mailed a card telling them where to vote and what political districts they live in. But thousands of those cards were returned because the people, or the addresses listed on voter registration forms, couldn't be found.
"There is quite a number," Williams said, noting that not every returned card is a suspected case of fraud. "People do actually move.''
State GOP records, confirmed by Williams, show that through Oct. 4, Hamilton County mailed 63,403 cards to new registrants, and 4,152 were returned - a rate of 6.6 percent.
The number was third-highest in the state behind Cuyahoga County's 14,461 and Franklin's 6,917, according to GOP records. In Butler County, 255 cards mailed to new voters were returned, while 24 were returned in Warren County, according to GOP records. Clermont County numbers were not available.
Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the county elections board, said an updated number of cards returned is 5,808 out of 150,000 mailed not only to new voters, but also to those changing addresses, for a return rate of less than 4 percent.
Burke said fraud makes up a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in Ohio.
"I think Republicans are attempting to justify what they intend to do on Election Day by raising questions of voter fraud and overplaying this," he said.
What both the Democratic and Republican parties in Ohio intend to do is use a 51-year-old law that allows them to place challengers at polling sites. The parties are recruiting lawyers, law students and others to ensure that people are allowed to vote, or to potentially challenge voters' eligibility.
Bennett said his efforts are likely to focus on heavily Democratic areas where many new voters have been registered. Democrats expect to match the effort.
As further evidence of registration fraud, Bennett said the Ohio Republican Party sent out its own letters to newly registered Ohio voters, encouraging them to vote Republican. In the counties where new registration was highest, 3 percent to 9 percent of the letters were returned because the people were not located.
"I can say ... as someone who's been in state politics for 40 years, that the normal rate of return is less than 1 percent," he said. "These results are really unprecedented and frightening."
Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, joined Bennett Tuesday and said Ohio's issues of voter registration fraud cases are alarming and part of a national problem.
"Whether it's for profit motive or political motive, fraud is being committed in the registration process in a way that makes more possible fraud on Election Day," he said.
"I'll bet you this. If Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy vote on Election Day, they'll vote for John Kerry."
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