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A surge of new voters is on the horizon but there’s evidence that not everyone may get their chance to cast one

LatinaLista — With excitement mounting for the November elections and more people registering to vote, state election officials may find themselves on the receiving end of frustrated civic pride if they don’t prepare now for what’s coming.
One of the frustrating revelations of the Wall Street meltdown has been the fact that it might have been averted. People, from company CEOs to cable show stock analysts, saw the financial crisis looming as far back as three years ago. They warned us all but no one listened.
What’s ironic is that this country could be on the verge of yet another crisis. This time it has the potential to shake the very foundation of our democratic system of government. Again, no one is taking seriously the warnings.
It all has to do with the November 4 election and the possibility that there will be people either unable to cast their ballots or not have their votes counted because of a system that failed to properly prepare for the anticipated deluge of new voters.
Continue reading A surge of new voters is on the horizon but there’s evidence that not everyone may get their chance to cast one

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  • Evelyn
    October 1, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Please check to see if you are still registered to vote. Also help spread the word. Send to media outlets, Obama campaign, Democrats campaign headquarters, etc. They must take this threat seriously.
    ~~~~~~~~~
    New Study Details Massive Voter Roll Purges Underway in At Least 19 States
    Posted by Brad Friedman, Brad Blog at 2:41 AM on October 1, 2008.
    CBS Has Noticed Massive Voter Disenfranchisement, Why Hasn’t Obama or the DNC?
    Tonight’s CBS Evening News finally covered what may well be the November Surprise that we’ve been trying to warn about for months here at The BRAD BLOG: Massive voter roll purges being done in secret, with little or no oversight, and often under federal Justice Department cover, in states and counties around the country.
    And the Democrats, who likely have the most to lose via such secret purges, are doing little or nothing about it.
    The CBS story, posted below (appx 2 mins) starts with an elderly New Jersey voter who was suddenly removed from the voting rolls after thirty years, for apparently no reason whatsoever, before launching into findings from a new non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice study on “Voter Purges”.
    We’ve yet to read this Brennan report, but the brief coverage from tonight’s Evening News notes 10,000 voters purged in Mississippi, 21,000 in Louisiana and “to top it off, another new study discovered 19 states are ignoring federal law (the National Voter Registration Act), banning systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election.”
    Among those 19, are a number of battleground states.
    The report lists: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Masachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, as places where massive purges have recently taken place.
    CBS ends by noting that their New Jersey voter has now been restored to the rolls, but they warn, “come Election Day, don’t count on thousands of others being as fortunate”…
    CBS’ coverage doesn’t even note that many states have now contracted the same private companies who did such a crappy job on their voting machines (companies like Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia) to manage, with the same lack of oversight, entire newly computerized state voting rolls. Names will be dropping from rolls this year by error or by evil…
    This likely November Surprise may be just one of many.
    There is so much front-end voter suppression going on, at this point, it has all but obscured the massive problems that will occur with voting machines around the country when they break down, denying voters the ability to even cast a vote, much less have it counted accurately or verifiably.
    In Pennsylvania, for example, where almost the entire state votes on unverifiable touch-screen voting machines, the Democrats in charge of the state have recently declared that paper ballots needn’t be given to voters until all voting machines in a particular precinct break down. Why isn’t Obama and the DNC raising holy hell about that?
    So CBS News has noticed. Where the hell are the Democrats, and why aren’t they raising holy hell about all of this stuff everywhere. Instead, all we get when we inquire is the same old John Kerry/DNC line, “We’ll have thousands of lawyers on call on Election Day, should anything go wrong, blah, blah, blah.”
    In the meantime, the Republicans are out with phony “reports” and lawsuits damned near every day — and not just on Fox “News” — declaring “evidence” of completely non-existant “voter fraud” by “Democrats”.
    Yet, in the meantime, the Dems continue to bring a knife to a gunfight, and, as we’ve noted many times of late (most recently here and here) seem to have no clue that they are in a War on Democracy being waged by their GOP opponenents.
    Once again we urge you — even if you’ve voted in a recent primary election — to check to make sure you are still registered!
    Here is a link .
    http://www.votersunite.org/info/RegInfo.asp
    http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/101051/new_study
    _details_massive_voter
    _roll_purges_underway_in_at_least_19_states/

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