New Poll Shows Obama Leads North Carolina by 6%
 Printer-friendly
|
 Email article |
Related subjects: The Vote, U.S. Elections, U.S. Politics, Vote 2008 Comments Off
Concerns about efforts to suppress voter turnout now mounting
A Public Policy Polling survey of North Carolina voters gives Sen. Barack Obama a 6% point lead over Sen. John McCain, in a state no Democrat has carried since 1976. Reports suggest that new voter registration favors Democrats 6 to 1, and some have expressed concern that Republican party operatives may try to stop first-time voters from casting votes, challenging their registration or misdirecting them to incorrect polling places. The state may move toward Obama because he is “connecting” with voters on economic issues.
Obama’s campaign has launched a massive grass-roots voter-registration drive, which has successfully registered more voters than any recent effort in the state. The state’s Democratic governor says the state has a “responsibility and a Constitutional duty” to make sure every registered voter is able to cast their ballot. He said that vote-suppression efforts have occurred, are real and “not a myth”, and that his government is instructing election workers that all registered voters must be given a chance to vote.
It is already estimated that some 395,000 voters have been cross-checked against the Social Security database, for possible expulsion from registration rolls in North Carolina, as many as 2 million in Georgia, 1 million in Alabama, and over 700,000 in Ohio. This may constitutean illegal use of the federal database, and one which may also violate the individual civil rights of American citizens, who cannot be expelled from registration lists later than 90 days prior to an election.
[ad#cafsen-intext]
Today, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough observed that he believed Obama could win 350 Electoral College votes, “if the election were held today”. George Will wrote in his Washington Post column that “it is not eccentric to think he could win at least 350 of the 538 electoral votes”. Even Karl Rove’s analysis of the electoral map last week gave Obama a firm hold on no less than 260 Electoral College votes, leaving him in need of only 10 more votes to win the election.
The Republican party began organizing against new voter registration drives in battleground states in 2000, and intensified its efforts in 2004, alleging a widespread “voter fraud” crisis. The allegation was that liberal groups were illegally registering voters not qualified to vote in specific precincts, then somehow casting ballots for deceased or fictional voters. A federal judge has found there is no evidence of such activity, and that even in specific isolate cases of incomplete or erroneous registration documents, there does not appear to be any conspiracy to commit fraud.
In Ohio, in 2004, with a Republican governor and the Republican secretary of state officially presiding over the election process, the Republican party installed “challengers” at polling places across the state, who were empowered to “challenge” the legality of individual voters, based almost solely on their physical appearance. A later court ruling suggested the tactic was flawed in that in was not evidence-based, and did not include safeguards to protect against race-based voter-suppression or to provide for alternate provisional ballots for challenged voters.
| Printer-friendly
|
Email article |
CafeSentido Partner Sites: