How the Republicans Win (Steal) Elections (Part I)

I share Marty Kaplan's concern for the integrity of the electoral process and the potentially devastating consequences it could have for the November election. As he notes, it is already under attack (as it was in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000):

"In El Paso County, Colorado, the county clerk -- a delegate to the Republican National Convention -- told out-of-state undergraduates at Colorado College, falsely, that they couldn't vote in Colorado if their parents claim them as dependents on their taxes.

In Montgomery County, Virginia, the county registrar issued a press release warning out-of-state college students, falsely, that if they register to vote in Virginia, they won't be eligible for coverage under their parents' health and car insurance, and that 'if you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding.'

...If you're one of the million Americans who lost a home through foreclosure, and if you didn't file a change of address with your election board, you're a sitting duck for an Election Day challenge by a partisan poll watcher holding a public list of foreclosed homes.

In the 2006 election...black voters in Virginia got computer-generated phone calls from a bogus 'Virginia Election Commission' telling them that they could be arrested if they went to the wrong polling place; in Maryland, out-of-state leafleters gave phony Democratic sample ballots to black voters with the names of Republican candidates checked in red; in New Mexico, Democratic voters got personal phone calls from out of state that directed them to the wrong polling place."

In these ways (and more in Part II), the Republicans systematically disenfranchise voters which poll heavily democratic: the poor, minority, and students.