What can we do, now, to prevent Pubs from suppressing Dem votes in 2008?

[chowder]

@don't ask

Well you guys have to rise up and resist Mugabe’s attempts to rig the election.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah me to, I thought the vote had been given to boozers (the buildings) not the afficianodos of the falling down water

[BrainGlutton]

@chowder

. . . not the afficianodos of the falling down water

[chowder]

@BrainGlutton

Sorry, misspelt Afficionado which means ardent follower, falling down water is Britspeak for beer

[BrainGlutton]

Relevant editorial:

Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don’t pan out. Consider a list of supposedly dead voters in Upstate New York that was much touted last October. Where reporters looked into names on the list, it turned out that the voters were, to quote Monty Python, “not dead yet.”

Or consider Washington state, where McKay closely watched the photo-finish gubernatorial election of 2004. A challenge to ostensibly noncitizen voters was lodged in April 2005 on the questionable basis of “foreign-sounding names.” After an election there last year in which more than 2 million votes were cast, following much controversy, only one ballot ended up under suspicion for double-voting. That makes sense. A person casting two votes risks jail time and a fine for minimal gain. Proven voter fraud, statistically, happens about as often as death by lightning strike.

Yet the stories have taken on the character of urban myth. Alarmingly, the Supreme Court suggested in a ruling last year ( Purcell v. Gonzalez) that fear of fraud might in some circumstances justify laws that have the consequence of disenfranchising voters. But it’s already happening – those chasing imaginary fraud are actually taking preventive steps that would disenfranchise millions of real live Americans.