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In a very disturbing story from the NY Times, it seems like the 2008 voter issue problem is systematic purging of voters from voting rolls. In 2000 the problem was malfunctioning electronic voting machines, in 2004 the problem was with provisional ballots, and now this:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

The numbers are staggering:

In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches.

Digging into the numbers across many swing states, the Times found that,

In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period -- about 7,100 -- or the number of people who moved out of the state -- about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

And in Ohio, which Bush won by only 150,000 votes, we have this:

On Monday, the Ohio Republican Party filed a motion in federal court against the secretary of state to get the list of all names that have been flagged by the Social Security database since Jan. 1. The motion seeks to require that any voter who does not clear up a discrepancy be required to vote using a provisional ballot.

Republicans said in the motion that it is central to American democracy that nonqualified voters be forbidden from voting.

The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, said in court papers that she believes the Republicans are seeking grounds to challenge voters and get them removed from the rolls.

Considering that in the past year the state received nearly 290,000 nonmatches, such a plan could have significant impact at the polls.

In our country, where every voters' right to cast a ballot is sacrosanct, stories like these really question the vitality of our democracy. It's particularly egregious that the country doesn't take the day off to vote, but even more astonishing that the voter registration process is so complex and designed to make it difficult to vote.

Even the Iraqi's got it right with the purple thumb system: stick your thumb in some purple die after you vote and - voila! - you have the perfect way to check whether someone has voted or not.

Let's hope these bureaucrats get it together before November 4th.

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