use this thread to summarize and link to reports of voter suppression from various blogs ...

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I was nearly turned away because of a clerical error in my voter registration. My husband and I moved to Washington state in August, and immediately we registered to vote. It took nearly three months of
phone calls, re-registering, and error correction on the part of Pierce County, however, to get us registered. We originally requested to vote at the polls, but our first set of registration cards
indicated that we would be voting absentee. I called the county auditor's office to correct the information, and they assured me that the system had been updated and we would receive new cards. The new cards came, but a few days later, absentee ballots arrived in the mail. Again, I called the county auditor to report the error. They told me that the system was correct, that we were to vote at the polls, and that we were to shred the absentee ballots. Today, we showed up at the polls, waited in line for over 90 minutes to vote, but when our turn came we were not allowed to vote because their records showed that we were to vote absentee. They tried to make us fill out provisional ballots, but we refused: we wanted to take zero chances with risking our ballots being rejected. I told them that I had called the county and had been told to vote at the polls. Their answer: "Well, that just means that you could vote at the polls with
provisional ballots." Nobody ever told us that bit of information! I'm not sure if that answer was true or not. So we asked if we could still mail in the absentee ballots, which we hadn't gotten around to
shredding yet. They said yes, as long as they were postmarked today. So in the end, we were able to vote, but the fact that registration and voting was so difficult and fraught with misinformation and
incompetence is appalling.

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I am a first-time voter who registered in Fulton County, GA; mailed my registration and had it postmarked by the deadline. This morning I contacted the Fulton County Election Office to verify my registration status. I was told that yes, I was registered, and given the polling location (which I already knew from looking it up beforehand, but I wanted to verify with them.) When I arrived at the polling location, I was not found in their system. The manager of the polling location looked on her various other lists and I was on none of them. She tried to call some phone number to have it verified but after 5 minutes stated that it was too busy for her to get through the line. I was forced to vote provisional and was extremely unhappy about it. I went home, but then went back with my father and complained. They were apologetic this time and gave us some phone numbers to call. After I got home again, I was more angry and left a message with CNN's voter complaint hotline (1-877-462-6608), and contacted the election office again, who once again confirmed to me that I was registered. Unfortunately since I had already cast my ballot, there was nothing I could do to change it.

The current voting system is messed up. How can I be in the actual county's database but not in the polling location's? It is an inferior, backwards system that needs rehauling. The polling location I was at was not even busy at all, but I saw that other provisionals had been cast before I had gotten there, so others probably went through the same crap.

Also, though it may be irrelevant, the poll location manager was rather unhelpful and condescending to me, and also seemed to hint that I registered too late, though I know I registered before the deadline.

I'm extremely unhappy with my first voting experience.

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Republican poll watcher at my Jackson Heights polling location standing by the entrance and asking forcefully and repeatedly if people entering have ID. When confronted by the polling supervisor he lies, says he didn't ask for ID. Many of the voters are two-and-three-job-working immigrant Americans who could lose the time, and so the right, to vote if they don't have their ID with them.

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Early voting in Marathon, Texas was incredibly disappointing.

The Poll, scheduled to be open at 0900, was not open until 0935. This would not have annoyed me except that in the 2008 primary election the Marathon ballot box was temporarily lost resulting in a legal investigation. One Poll worker was at the Poll on time, but did not have the key to open the door to the Community Center. About two dozen people left before the Polls opened. I was approximately the 7th voter and while I voted, it was obvious that the assigned Poll worker did not know how to active the electronic voting machine. After I voted, a voter informed me that the Marathon voter registration list was not at the voter registration table. I returned inside and inquired about the Marathon voter registration list and discovered that it had JUST been located. In addition, one Poll worker asked the only other Poll worker if a group of high school observers, that were being given a tour of the inside area where voting was actively happening, could watch them cast their vote on the electronic voting machine. In reviewing the Texas poll worker on-line course, I discovered that most of the basic learning objectives were not followed: room layout; the electronic voting machine facing the door; no distance markers; no voter rights posters; allowing non-voters in the voting area; a poll working wanting to allow non-voters watch them vote.

This experience shook my faith in the security and professionalism of our current democratic process. In casting one of the most important votes in my adult life, I came away less confident in our election system.

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Some friends of mine live in eastern Oregon,
on property that is behind a locked gate and has no street address
They have been denied the opportunity to vote because they use a PO box and
do not have a street address
There are three people of voting age living on this property

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Hillsborough County Florida
I have voted for 20 years under my name in Florida and was listed as "Green Party"
I have changed my address several times in the past, and had no problem. This year in February,
I changed "my address" to my new address, and "my party" to Democrat. I never received a voter's card. So I called them and they said I was registered. I requested another card st this time in May. Again I received no voter's card. So, I and applied again in June. Since I still had no card for 3 months after my second request, I filled out the forms and mailed them in again. I finally gave up on receiving a card a few weeks ago. Then, Finally on Friday, ( a week and a half before election day) I received my voter's registration card. They changed the spelling of my name on it which is already in the computer. Now I will have to put up a fight to vote. It took them 8 months to finally send me their phony card with their typo/change of my name.

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Oct. 09, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
"For six months we have been handing the Board of Elections smoking gun after smoking gun, saying, 'We want you to prosecute these people,' " said Matthew Henderson, regional director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN. "They sat on them, then staged this raid where they acted as if they didn't know us."
Secretary of State Ross Miller (A REPUBLICAN), whose office is spearheading the probe, said it was necessary to collect evidence about serious problems that could prompt felony charges.

ACORN is a nonpartisan organization, but it has a liberal political agenda and ties to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. But with the election less than a month away and Nevada one of a half-dozen top swing states, partisans rushed in to make hay of the controversy, with its dark undertones of dirty political tricks. The Republican National Committee on Wednesday pointed to reports of suspect ACORN work in states including Missouri, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Indiana, and questioned its motives and agenda.
.Miller said although some evidence of fraud came from ACORN itself, other information came to authorities separately, leading to the determination that the organization's files had to be comprehensively examined to determine the scope of the problem. In the current election, ACORN's political action committee,has endorsed Obama for president. Because of those ties, Republicans link Obama to the spate of problems with ACORN and say he should have to answer for its alleged actions. "This is something they (the Obama campaign) should have to speak to, considering this group is engaged in systematic voter registration fraud not just in the state of Nevada but across the country," the RNC's Diaz said.

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By Jay Reeves
The Associate Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen stopped a voter registration drive for inmates Thursday under pressure from the Alabama Republican Party.
In a letter to state Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard, Allen said individuals conducting the program "were not doing anything for the inmates that they could not do themselves by simply contacting the Secretary of State's Office for the voter registration postcard."

Still, Allen said he decided to stop the drive because of a section in the state code that prohibits using state-owned property to promote or advance candidates for election.

NewsFlash Home | More Alabama News

Ala. GOP pressure ends prisoner registration drive
9/18/2008, 6:22 p.m. CDT
By JAY REEVES
The Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen stopped a voter registration drive for inmates Thursday under pressure from the Alabama Republican Party.

In a letter to state Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard, Allen said individuals conducting the program "were not doing anything for the inmates that they could not do themselves by simply contacting the Secretary of State's Office for the voter registration postcard."

Still, Allen said he decided to stop the drive because of a section in the state code that prohibits using state-owned property to promote or advance candidates for election.

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"While it is not clear that assisting voters to register would violate those provisions, I cannot expose departmental employees to that possibility," he wrote.

Read the entire article here:

http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-38/1221771858303520.xml&storylist=alabamanews

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so here's what happened... blah blah right wing blah blah

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