Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

I can't say that I follow American politics all that closely, but it is not hard to recall the Bush-Gore presidential race of 2000 and the debacle surrounding electronic voting and flawed vote counts.
With the November 2008 polling day coming ever closer, the first concerns are surfacing about irregular purging of voter registration rolls in at least three US states.

"The purge issue is only going to rise in profile in the coming weeks. Several voting rights groups are studying the process in a number of swing states and hope to issue reports later this summer. Among the issues being studied is the accuracy of the database matches used to purge voters. When California first implemented a data-matching program in 2006, some counties had error rates as high as 40 percent, meaning a registered voter who appeared to have moved would have been incorrectly purged without further efforts to confirm their residency and voter registration status."

It has been reported that last month in Colorado a Bush appointee purged one in every five voters registered in that state.

There is no uniform eligibility requirements for voluntary voter registration across America and the mishmash of conflicting state and federal legislation may make the run up to November quite interesting for the rest of us watching from afar.

What is evident is the fact that it would be relatively easy under current rules for a US state apparatus to disenfranchise groups thought to be unsympathetic to the candidate favoured by its governor and it wouldn't cost real money to do so - just stationery and postal costs.
While even the dead may be turned to advantage in other instances.

Both Democratic and Republican voter registration drives are frequently problematic also and prospective voters can become very confused.

"Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.
The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance."

It's times like this that I'm thankful to be living in Australia - our voting system seems eminently sane compared with this American brand of political insanity.