They're at it again. Whether it's discouraging voters from registering, frightening newly-registered voters with investigations that might discourage them from going to the polls, or news stories that make people think they might be investigated if the register, it's now open season on unregistered and unlikely voters.
Two things to remember here: if you're volunteering to register voters, it only takes one bad apple to spoil everyone's efforts. Keep it clean.
And if you see a fear-mongering story like those below, speak out. Write a letter, do something, to make sure every eligible voter in your community has the right and the ability to help decide this election.
Cleveland's The Plain Dealer has this story on alleged voter fraud by the NAACP and ACT, with 1,000 registrations and absentee ballots under investigation.
"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.
The National Voter Fund could not be reached Wednesday or Thursday at its Washington, D.C., offices.
A spokesman for ACT Ohio, however, said the group believed the allegations would prove groundless.
Several registration applications submitted by campaign volunteers for a candidate are also being scrutinized, Lake elections board Director Jan Clair said.
None of the officials would identify the candidate, however.
Dunlap said the probe will include visits from detectives to addresses of the voters in question.
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 March, the Chicago Sun Times reported on an investigation:
The registrations are among 10,000 filed between Aug. 12, 2002, and Jan. 29, 2004. The election board used handwriting analysis to determine that 10 percent to 20 percent of the registrations are apparently for nonexistent people or addresses, or vacant lots.
The bogus registrations are believed to have been submitted by two deputy registrars who claim to be associated with the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Commission, according to board Chairman Langdon D. Neal. The board expects to hand over its findings to prosecutors, he said.
The commission did not return calls for comment Thursday. Neal said it has submitted about 10,000 valid registrations in the last two years, and the election board does not believe it is encouraging voter fraud.
The board began the investigation in January after noticing a spike in the number of returned mailings to addresses in the ward.
Cook County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado -- the ward's Democratic committeeman -- came up with a list of his own of suspect registrations.
He even found four new registrations for his home. And he lives alone.
"I was livid. I went out, and we searched and found that at a gas station there were 17 new registered voters and four at a mechanic's shop," he said.
Maldonado noted the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Commission had recently gotten grant money to increase voter registration.
"It's sad that a couple of bad apples took it upon themselves to destroy what could have been a good initiative at increasing the number of registered Latino voters," he said.
And in the Lansing City Pulse, there's this story from two days ago:
The Ingham County Sheriff's Department is investigating a case of voter registration fraud that county Clerk Mike Bryanton said could involve a "significant number" of forgeries.
Lansing City Clerk Debbie Miner said "hundreds and hundreds" of voter registration forms could be fraudulent.
The forged registration applications came from a community activist group, the Public Interest Research Group's Community Voters Project, Bryanton said. He said they have not determined how many applications were fraudulent, but that "a significant number of them appear to be problematic."
Bryanton said the organization hired college-age people at $50 a day to collect registrations. He said they were also being paid a bonus if they collected more than a certain number per day. Bryanton said he understood "two or three" have been terminated.
Bryanton said examples of suspicious registrations were "eight people" whose address was the same apartment unit; non-existent addresses; and names that matched addresses of people with similar names in the phone book.
Then there's this Winston Salem Journal story on complaints about the NAACP's voter registration program:
oters in Forsyth County and throughout North Carolina have complained of being pestered by callers who tell them that they are not registered and ask for personal information such as Social-Security numbers.
In many cases, the callers said that they represent the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the State Board of Elections. Some people complained that the callers did not identify themselves at all.
The local NAACP and the State Board of Elections said they had not called any individual voters, but the national civil-rights organization, based in Baltimore, Md., is conducting a voter-registration drive in 22 states, including North Carolina.
Marshall Tutor, the elections investigator with the State Board of Elections, said yesterday that most of the problems appear to stem from that effort.
John White, the director of communications for the NAACP, said that telemarketers hired by the organization are making calls based on 2000 census data and voter-registration rolls. Some people who are registered may have received calls, he said.
And from The Detriot Free Press a story stirring fears over GOTV volunteers:
Overzealous or unscrupulous campaign workers in several Michigan counties are under investigation for voter-registration fraud, suspected of attempting to register nonexistent people or forging applications for already-registered voters, election and law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Officials in Wayne, Oakland, Ingham and Eaton counties have been contacted about the problem, which appears to be an outgrowth of unprecedented efforts by political interest groups to register thousands of new voters before the November election.
State Elections Director Christopher Thomas said he hoped criminal prosecutions would result. Thomas, who has held his post for more than 20 years, said the scale of voter-registration drives this year and the irregularities were like nothing he had seen before.
Although there is little likelihood that phony registrations could be used to affect the outcome of an election because of safeguards in place, alleged fraud undermines confidence in the system and burdens local elected officials, Thomas said.
What really frightens me is how many of these stories are investigations into efforts to register minoritiies.