DUCKPOND

There are other elections going on. Canada and New Zealand come to mind. There is public disruption and reported violence in Bangkok. There is the now the great global financial crisis that sweeping through economies, and who knows where that would lead. The French Prime Minister said we are looking into the economic abyss. And then there are elections in The United States.

The tricks and treats of voter suppression were expected, and there are signs these are happening. Naturally, it seems, this tactic is a Republican Party specialty. Why would not the tried and true methods be employed that have worked so well in the past?Steven Rosenfeld, writing at AlterNet reports:

There is a new feeling Democrat Party circles that Barack Obama will win and win big in November. The latest polls show Obama moving ahead in swing states, edging John McCain by more points than polling margins of error. More importantly, as voter registration starts to close on Monday in half the states, the number of new voters who are likely to support Obama and Democrats in November significantly outpaces registration by new likely Republican voters.

The Republican response to Obama’s rising fortunes has been to go negative and attack his character, history and judgment. But while Sarah Palin and John McCain, and their campaign’s television ads, are leading this front, the GOP has launched another, less-seen attack: targeting the credentials of likely Obama voters.

In just the past two weeks, Republican officeholders, party officials or their allies in swing states such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Indiana and Montana have sought to present hurdles to likely new Democratic voters in the form of barriers to early voting in Ohio and Indiana, legal challenges to new registrants in Colorado, Wisconsin and Montana, and threats to voters who may have lost their homes in foreclosures in Michigan who would be ineligible to vote if they did not update their registrations with their latest address.

Moreover, the Republican National Committee has launched a national media offensive against ACORN, a low-income advocacy group that registered 1.2 million new voters this summer, calling it a “quasi-criminal” group after its partisans found two problematic registration forms in a Florida County out of more than 130,000 new voters registered by ACORN in that state. Another GOP disinformation campaign was seen in Philadelphia, where flyers appeared telling voters in minority neighborhoods they might be arrested for outstanding traffic offense while voting in November.

These tactics not new and are anticipated by Democrats. Moreover, they only represent the most visible “election protection” issues facing the Obama campaign and party. Less visible, but perhaps more pernicious, are private contractors with partisan ties who have been hired by state and county election officials to program the software used in computers that count the vote on Election night. It is one thing for Democrats to come out of the starting gate with a lead in voter registration and momentum in the polls; it is another to hold that lead at the finish line, when the votes are counted.

The question one month before Election Day is whether the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee have an election protection strategy that not only deals with more overt forms of voter suppression, but also with ensuring the accuracy of the vote count. The answer is not yet on electronic vote counts, according to dozens of background conversations with Democratic Party lawyers, donors, state party staffers and others working with the DNC since the Democratic Convention in Denver.

As I recall soon after 2000 all we dumb foreigners who suggested something should be done were told the familiar line about, “we Americans understand technology and money will be made available to fix the problem”. Of course, back then there was money available.
Turns out when you count the vote, you can determine the outcome. The Administration that wanted to spread democracy to ungrateful foreigners in the Middle East and South West Asia, would have done better to defend and promote democracy at home, which would have been a contradiction.

Given the wonder of the American system, it seems, that a suspicion that voting is likely to be flawed encourages people not to vote. That apparently is what the DNC believes. Catch 22.

Elsewhere:

Harvey Wasserman gives some of the inside story at Common Dreams, and advises that he actually gets to vote with a paper ballot – what an innovation? It is wonderfully ironic that voting machines were introduced to stop electoral fraud.