Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Some folks rooting for Bush are worried about two recent New York Times articles.

Article one on Sept 26 reported:

A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

Article two in today‘s paper reports:

In the state's 20 most populous counties, which account for about 60 percent of the vote, more than 140,345 absentee ballots had been applied for as of last Wednesday, according to a survey of county auditors by The Des Moines Register. Under Iowa law, anyone can request an absentee ballot, no questions asked, and roughly three times as many Democrats as Republicans did so in the counties studied by The Register. Early voting began on Thursday, 40 days before Election Day.

So - is there panic in Republican circles? Is a surge of new Democrats flocking to the polls going to quash the GOP’s hopes in these three states?

Don’t jump to conclusions, warns Christine Iverson of the Republican National Committee. She points out that on Sept. 17, the RNC announcedthat it had registered 3,047,073 voters. Of course, those new voters could be in places besides Ohio, Florida, and New Hampshire.

Interestingly, the 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.”

And 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.

[Posted 09/28 05:10 PM]