Voting 2008 Blog

While the majority of the voting fraud allegations in the run-up to election day have focused on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a wave of lesser-publicized voting fraud and suppression cases have popped up around the country, primarily in same battleground states where the bulk of the ACORN controversies have taken place.

The Sheriff of Greene Country, Ohio, announced that he was investigating hundreds of voter registrations filed during a five-day window of same-day voting and registration, only to cancel the investigation after a public outcry of attempted vote suppression. The Sheriff decided to investigate the validity of the registrations despite rulings from four separate state and federal courts that the same-day registration and voting window was valid and without any evidence or reports of voting registration fraud in Greene County.

A Virginia Court denied a request by the NAACP to extend voting hours and reallocate voting machines to heavily black precincts in Virginia, where an unprecedented number of voters are expected to turn out.  The lawsuit, filed today by the NAACP, alleged that the state was not prepared to handle the large number of African-American voters expected to vote on Election Day.

Though Judge Richard Williams denied the two most significant requests made by the NAACP, he did order the Virginia Board of Elections to publicize the fact that those in line by 7:00 p.m. will be allowed to vote, as well as the availability of curbside voting for the elderly and disabled.

Despite numerous allegations of voter fraud in various precincts around the country in the run-up to the November 4 election, voting on Tuesday went off with nary a hitch. Of course, there were long lines, voting machines that malfunctioned, and senate races that remain too close to call, but nothing remotely close to the voting debacles that plagued America following the 2000 and 2004 elections (Florida and Ohio, I'm looking at you.)

Except in Minnesota.

Four days after the polls closed in Minnesota, the race for the Senate between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken remains both ugly and too close to call. Under Minnesota Law, a recount is automatically triggered when the margin of victory for the winning candidate is within 0.5 percent. Coleman caused outrage in the Franken campaign this week when he suggested that, were he in Franken's position, he would forego a recount and concede defeat. As of this morning, the voting differential between the parties was down to 221 votes.

Coleman's campaign has expressed suspicion in the recount, pointing out that Franken picked up more than 100 votes from a single precinct in Minnesota's Iron Range district, stating that such an increase from a single polling place was a statistical improbability.

The official recount is scheduled to begin on November 19, once all the counties in Minnesota have certified their results.

A source close to Senator Ted Stevens' campaign tells LawServer tonight that, after a counting of approximately 35,000 absentee ballots, Stevens' lead, which had been over 3,000 votes, has been reduced to a margin of 3 votes. The source told LawServer that Stevens is "hemmoraging" votes in the early/absentee category.

Approximately 25,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted. Another 35,000 challenged and provisional ballots will be counted next week.

The old maxim "vote early, vote often" is jokingly tossed around in Chicago every election cycle. And while jaded Chicagoans have, for decades, thought nothing of votes cast by the ineligible to vote, the underage, and the deceased, they had no idea that goldfish were voting. Especially dead goldfish.

Much to the amusement of the entire nation, a dead goldfish named Princess Nudelman was sent a voter registration card by the Lake County, Illinois Clerk's Office, touching off the latest firestorm of voter fraud allegations to hit less than two weeks before the 2008 general election takes place on November 4.

With one day left until election day, decisions in many of the lawsuits filed over the course of the last few weeks are starting to come down. On Friday, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court denied a request by the GOP that would have forced the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), to turn over lists of the more than 140,000 voters it claimed to have registered and required ACORN to air public-service announcements instructing voters to bring photo IDs with them to polling places. While the GOP argued that Pennsylvania's election system was not adequate to guard against voting fraud, Judge Robert Simpson Jr. stated that the GOP did not prove that ACORN was fostering voter fraud.

In other ACORN news, Florida Governor Charlie Crist stated that he did not believe that ACORN and voter fraud were significant problems in his state. Meanwhile, Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed disappointment with the way the Department of Justice is investigating allegations of voter fraud. In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Boehner accused the DOJ of "playing politics" with voting fraud allegations and urged Mukasey to station criminal prosecutors at Ohio polling places.

With less than a week to go before election day, the drumbeat of voting fraud allegations continues unabated, much to the chagrin of those of us tasked with staying on top of the daily developments.

As has become usual, most of the news surrounds the belle of the voting fraud allegations ball, the Association Of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). While the FBI revealed that it is looking into the validity of as may as one-third third of the 1.3 million voter regisration applications submitted by ACORN, and as many as 12 continue to question ACORN's voter registration efforts, ACORN itself fired back at critics, announcing two separate lawsuits in New Mexico that allege voter suppression and intimidation. In addition, ACORN released a 30-second television ad calling on Republican presidential nominee John McCain to end attempts voter suppression and intimidation.

If you guessed that, over a week after the general election ended, we'd be talking about a recount, you were right. But the recount isn't coming in the presidential race, as many expected. Rather, there are still three Senate seats up for grabs, and election workers in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia are pouring over every hanging chad and butterfly ballot, trying to send some lucky Senate candidate to Washington.

Up in Alaska, where incumbent Senator Ted Stevens holds a 3,000 vote lead over democratic challenger and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich,  a source inside Ted Stevens' campaign tells LawServer that there are still over 81,000 early/absentee ballots to be counted, and over 20,000 ballots are in dispute. Many of those ballots are expected to be counted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. As many of the early ballots we votes cast for President-Elect Barack Obama, they are expected to break heavily in favor of Begich. A final tally is expected by Wednesday, November 19, as Alaska waits for the voting rolls from far-slung communities to trickle into the Secretary of State's Office.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, incumbent Republican Norm Coleman's lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken continues to shrink. Earlier this week, Coleman lost a court action that aimed to block the counting of 32 absentee ballots in heavily-Democratic Hennepin County, claiming that the votes were either not counted on Election Day or were not kept in a sealed container. Though 32 votes may not seem worth the trouble, keep in mind that Coleman's lead has shrunk from 724 votes on Election Day to 206 at last count. 

Minnesota may be one state where all the howling about voters registered by the Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) could actually lead to a real challenge. ACORN registered more than 43,000 voters in Minnesota in the run-up to the election, and if the drumbeat of  charges of election fraud by Coleman's campaign are any indication, it's not long before the ACORN issue gets dragged into the recount. A finally tally is expected once the recount is completed on or before December 19.

Finally, we turn to Georgia, where incumbent Republican Saxby Chambilss fell short of the 50% needed to avoid a run-off with Democratic Challenger Jim Martin, who received 47% of the vote. Voters in Georgia will go back to the polls on December 2, 2008, to determine who will represent the Peach State in Washington. However, with no Barack Obama on the ballot to lure African-Americans and other Democrats to the polls, the conventional wisdom in Washington seems to be that Chambliss with weather this challenge.

With word out of Alaska this week that incumbent Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving member of the Senate, lost his re-election bid to Democratic challenger Mark Begich, all eyes turn to Minnesota's seemingly never-ending battle for a Senate seat between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

As Minnesota entered the second day of the official state-wide recount, Democratic challenger Al Franken appeared to be gaining votes on incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune,  Coleman's lead has shrunk to just 136 votes, down from 742 on Election Day.