"Voter fraud" is also a convenient way for conservatives to reassure their racist base without having to explicitly say anything specific. The implicit message is that they are out to protect the "legitimate" votes of suburban and rural whites from being "outweighed by fraudulent" urban minority votes.

Those on the left need to start hectoring the right about what their message really is. In the face of a total lack of evidence, it's clear what they are really talking about. We need to push them into admitting it. We shouldn't allow them to get away with these racist coded messages.

People here -- Republicans and talk radio types don't understand that an international student can get a Texas ID. I recently stumped a local right wing radio type on that very point. An ID proves who you are, but not your citizenship. I was surprised :( to hear that someone who has a 50K think tank -- or so he says -- was so ignorant.

Bottom line always -- dems want people to vote -- republicans don't.

I'm glad Mr. Epps wrote about this; it makes my blood boil. It follows the standard GOP boilerplate methodology:

1) Take Republican partisan objective

2) Camouflage it as a national crisis/need

3) Come up with "fix" that meets 1 while appearing to address 2.

They do this with everything.

And to see them pretend to uphold democracy while actively suppressing votes, and then joking about it, amazing. The only thing left for them is to beat up would-be voters, if they're from the wrong party. Seems like every other dirty trick's been done.

For that matter, why not just move the entire country to the vote-by-mail system we use in my home state of Oregon? It's quick, it's convenient, it leaves a paper trail

I think one standard voting system needs to be used across the country, but I'm curious about the VBM system -- given the spottiness of mail service (at least in Chicago, where the mail service is usually a shambles), how do they guarantee that some votes don't get "lost" (say, paper trail leads to a bonfire -- whoopsie, lost votes).

Not to be too cynical, but I think there's nothing the GOP won't try if it means disenfranchising "enemy" voters.

If we can't have these traitors perp walk on these matters, then I'd have to guess the boys will be in Iraq another several years.

These overt and "ha ha" violations of law - and haven't we all known about them since election night 2000? - intimate we would be wise to go after this weakness, the obvious Achilles heel - of the right. That they need to steal elections and scuttle the constitutional rights of their countrymen to gain and hold power suggests the poor position and policy our nation has been made to suffer.

We should not even have this discussion. The right to vote is obvious.

Shame on anybody who tries to make this an issue. You try to take advantage of fair-minded people by trying to blow smoke up our butts. Be abashed. Slink back.

I recommend "Brave New Ballot", a book by a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Ok, so elections have been razor-thin the last few cycles. Isn't that mostly due to the insanely low voter turnout we have in this country?

One of the easiest methods to increase voter turnout would be to make Election Day a national holiday so that working people can take the time to vote.

My personal view is that voting should be mandatory for all eligible citizens, with not showing up to vote punishable by some kind of fine (re: Australia's system).

Something has to be done, something that can reasonably pass Bush's veto power... election day = holiday is it.

Making Election Day a holiday sounds like a good idea if you have a nice salaried office job and you're super politically active. But that also puts you in the demographic least in need of extra incentives to vote.

Have you ever noticed that most business are still open on national holidays? Stores don't run themselves, fruit doesn't pick itself, hotels will be extra-full and have extra loads of laundry to wash. The voters who are most in need of an election day holiday are exactly the kind of workers who would never get that day off.

Furthermore, people who do get the day off aren't going to spend the entire day voting and doing GOTV canvassing (except the ones who already do that). They're going to take the 3-day weekend up at the lake, and be less likely to vote. We had a special election in my area that fell on a Tuesday during the local K-12 schools' Spring break. The campaign I was volunteering for (the Democrat), saw this as a major disadvantage in our get-out-the-vote efforts. We were in a mad rush to sign everyone up as absentee before the deadline, then work our tails off calling them to remind them to send in their absentee ballots before taking off on vacation.

Voting illegally has huge risks, and tiny rewards. I can't think of many voluntary situations where there's the potential for such scrutiny. A non-citizen immigrant, legal or illegal, can be convicted of a felony and then deported for voting in federal elections. It adds one vote to the total.

Vote suppression has tiny risks and huge rewards. The staffer who circulated flyers to Latino areas in Orange County warning 'immigrants' that they couldn't vote (making no distinction between non-citizens and naturalized citizens) got fired from a campaign. Big whoop. These tactics can take thousands of votes from the total.

The recent hearings on the Holt bill to counter vote suppression brought out Steve King, one of the GOP's most notorious bigots, and Brian Bilbray, whose special election victory was sealed by a bullshit 'scandal' over the prospect of illegal aliens voting. They just don't want brown and black folks showing up to vote.

Put simply: if I were in the US illegally, the last place I'd show up is at the polls.