Its not Who Votes that Counts, Its Who Counts the Votes

Senator McCain said on Meet the Press yesterday that he guarantees he will be the next president. This is quite a departure from his and Governor Palin's stump speeches, where the candidates are often quoted saying that Senator Obama has already written his victory speech and is measuring for drapes in the White House. This bravado scares me because it was only eight years ago the Vice President Gore won the election only to have it ripped away from him by the Republican political machine in Florida.

There are already many reports in different states that the voting equipment is faulty and not recording the votes correctly. In 2002, the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) set standards for voting systems, created independent bodies to oversee elections and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters who eligibility is challenged at the polls. That all sounds great in theory, but the truth is that the HAVA has actually made it harder for people to vote.

According to the U.S. Election Assistance Committee, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications rejected since 2003 for numerous reasons, including unreadability and changes in signature. Some states, including Iowa and Florida, will reject registrations if there is not a perfect match to other government databases. This could possibly leave your right to vote up to the person entering your data into these government databases; if they make an error your name can be purged from voter rolls because it doesn't match your voter registration. For example, my wife had to purchase a copy of her birth certificate in order to get a driver's license and register to vote when we moved to Colorado because she signed her Nebraska driver's license with her middle initial instead of her middle name.

Jack Abramhoff, a well-known Washington lobbyist, worked to cram the HAVA with favors for his Republican clients. He and the primary author of the legislation, Republican Congressman Bob Ney (he of "freedom fries" fame) from Ohio, were imprisoned for their role in a conspiracy to defraud the United States because Ney received many favors from Abaramhoff. Republican election officials have used the provisions in the HAVA to restrict voters and not count votes under the guise that there is rampant voter fraud in the United States. According to recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voter fraud from Barnard College, federal courts have found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005.

If polls are any indication, Senator Obama is going to win this election in a landslide, but maybe Senator McCain knows something we don't know. If McCain wins in Pennsylvania, we may be in for a long night and an even longer four years.