Have You Been Purged?

While John Fund, Wall Street Journal hack, writes drivel like "Stealing Elections", about the alleged and vastly exaggerated problem of voter fraud, hundreds of thousands have been purged from voter rolls. Most of them won't know it until Election Day.

One thing you can do RIGHT NOW to make sure that your voter registration is valid is to visit CanIVote.org.

You may also check the deadline for voter registration in your state at Declare Yourself. Do it now: the deadline is looming in many states.

Voter purges and caging lists are not a new phenomenon, but they have come to the fore in the closely contested 2000 and 2004 elections.

As usual, the answer lies in common sense and comes from the desire to address the problem honestly rather than partisanly. Myrna Peréz of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law issued a report that makes common sense suggestions on how to fix the problem of voters erroneously removed from voter rolls.

I agree with most of the report's Policy Recommendations, except for the one on the use of provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are already used when voter registration is not confirmed, but a large number of provisional ballots end up not being counted. Provisional seems to have become synonymous with discardable. To give voters provisional ballots, without safeguards that valid votes will be counted, makes no sense.