The most effective and enduring is the disenfranchisement of ex-felons, citizens who have served their time and are no longer charged with anything. Florida, Texas and Virginia account for nearly 1.5 million citizens, largely poor and black who were denied the right to vote. They paid their debt to society but they can't participate as citizens because their vote is stolen by the remnants of a racist inspired post reconstruction movement in both the former Confederate states and cooperating state legislatures across the country.
Voter suppression also includes tactics like false notices announcing changes of election dates; police cruisers at intersections near voting places; threats that voter will be challenged; poorly trained poll workers who send registered voters away; special identification requirements proven to reduce the vote (e.g., photo identification); and much, much more.
The newest rage is "cleansing" centralized registration database. The Florida pre 2000 voter registration purge of tens of thousands of minority voters cost Al Gore the election and inspired federal policies supporting registration cleansing around the country.
Then there are the seemingly endless examples of electronic voting machines improperly recording and counting votes plus security problems. There are no real methods to check electronic voting. Even if you could and proved fraud, state recount laws are very difficult to invoke and highly restrictive. In Virginia and Florida, for example, it is illegal to recount the paper forms for optical scan voting machines as part of a recount.
What a total mess and a complete mockery of the democracy that we deserve. But when you add up all of these strategies, based on past performance, they work at the margins - maybe a 3-4% shift in votes to the Republican candidate.
"Net New" Democratic Primary Voters
There will still be election fraud at multiple levels in 2008. It's a national tradition dating back to the Whig Party chasing off immigrant voters in the early 1800's. But in terms of outcome, this election can be an accurate reflection of the wishes of a majority of voters even with the typical switched votes and varieties of voter suppression.
The solution to election fraud and the best policy for election protection is voter increases accounted for by those "net new" Democratic primary voters. The voter turnout in the presidential primaries was extraordinary in many states. In some cases, like Virginia, the total voters in 2008 more than doubled the total from 2004.
The surge of voter turnout in the primaries began in the mid Atlantic states and carried on through the southeastern seaboard. In addition, swing states showed the same extraordinary trend, a trend that helped Obama win with "net new" primary voters.
At the same time, turnout in the contested Republican primaries was paltry by comparison. Clearly, Republicans were not motivated.
For example, look at the mid and southeastern Atlantic results, the states that gave Sen. Obama a clean sweep.
There were 4.9 million voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary and 2.6 million in 2004. That's 2.3 million "net new" Democratic primary voters for 2008. + North Carolina had state caucuses in 2004. The 2004 Democratic primary figure is an estimate. (Source CNN 2004, 2008)
In the mid and southeastern Atlantic states, there were nearly 4.9 million Democrats voting in primaries compared to 2.2 million Republicans. With the exception of Delaware and Maryland, the states above are traditionally Republican states. Democrats dwarfed Republicans in 2008 primary turnout. In addition, Democratic turnout nearly doubled from 2004 to 2008. Democratic primary votes increased from 2.6 million in 2004 to 4.9 million in 2008 (using the estimate for N.C. 2004), an increase of 2.3 million "net new" Democratic primary voters.
Let's look at the critical swing states. A similar, somewhat less dramatic pattern emerges. The one exception to the pattern is Florida. The Republican state legislature moved the Florida primary back to late January. The Democratic National Committee warned that the election could not be used to select delegates to the national convention. This substantially suppressed turnout by Democrats. While Florida Democrats doubled their 2004 turnout, they were nearly equaled by Florida Republicans who faced the same restrictions on the early primary.
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