Gordon Sasser first got the feeling that something strange was going on when the telephone pierced the silence of a weekday afternoon at his house on the swampy fringes of Tallahassee, northern Florida.

An automated voice had some surprising news: did he know that he could now cast his presidential vote by phone, and could do so right now, using the keypad? Mr Sasser's suspicion that somebody was trying to trick him into thinking he was casting a vote - presumably so that he wouldn't cast a real one - was far from unique.

James Scruggs, another Tallahassee resident, remembers a similar unease about the young woman who phoned him at home, insistently offering to collect his absentee ballot to ensure its safe delivery.

Then there was the elderly woman who called the local elections office last week to register her husband for an absentee vote. According to office staff, as she hung up she made a point of thanking them: she wouldn't have thought to get in touch about her husband, she said, if it hadn't been for their helpful call the night before, when someone had taken her own details, assuring her that she was now registered and would receive a ballot.

But the elections office makes no such calls.

Gallup Poll Racially-Biased - October 19, 2004
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/000808.php

According to data obtained by Steve Soto over at the Left Coaster, Gallup's latest LV sample--the one that showed Bush with an 8 point lead--has only 14.5 percent minority representation and only 7.5 percent black representation.

How plausible is this as a representation of the election day electorate? Not remotely plausible. In 1996, minority representation among voters was 17 percent; in 2000, 19.4 percent. In 2004, the minority proportion of voters should be more than this, because minorities are growing, not declining, as a percentage of the US population. So 14.5 percent for nonwhites as a prediction of the 2004 electorate is very, very unlikely. It would defy both recent history and powerful demographic trends.

As for 7.5 percent blacks. C'mon. Blacks were 10.1 percent in 1996 and 9.7 percent in 2000. And they're 12 percent of the voting age population. There's just no way in the world blacks will only be 7.5 percent of voters in 2004.

So, in effect, Gallup's likely voter approach is disenfranchising minorities in assessing American voters' inclinations on the coming election. That's wrong and Gallup should stop doing it.

A victory by Bush has got to look believable, so likely Democrat voters weren't polled.

Local 10 Uncovers Big Ballot Mystery - October 26, 2004
http://www.local10.com/politics/3854230/detail.html

Local 10 has received many phone calls from viewers in Broward County who say they have not received the absentee ballots –- and the news from the elections office doesn't sound good. Local 10 has learned that many as many as 58,000 ballots that were supposed to mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 could be missing.

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office is saying only that the situation is "unusual," and they are looking into it. Gisela Salas, Broward Deputy Elections Supervisor, said, "I hate to say 'missing' at this time because that has not yet be substantiated. Some ballots are starting to arrive. But there is an extraordinary delay."

An elections office representative told Local 10 that the office has investigated with the U.S. Post Office what might have happened to the ballots, but so far, no one has been able to figure it out.
"It is unusual. It's a puzzle on the part of our office and the postal service," Salas said. "Our office did make the delivery and the post office assures us they were processed. What happened is in question."

New Florida vote scandal feared - October 26, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm

Watch the video at the top of the BBC web page.

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list". It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

Electronic vote machine too easily corrupted - 6 March, 2004
http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/relatedarticles/12730.php

Many locales are quickly adopting the touch-screen technology. Should citizens in these places be concerned that their votes can never be independently verified?

Many people think so. In fact, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., has proposed a law to require touch-screen systems to print out a paper record for each voter to verify and turn in as an official backup copy of his or her vote.

It seems like a simple solution. After all, the makers of these election systems also make bank ATMs, which easily produce written records of their transactions at the user's request. Unfortunately, the Republicans in Congress want nothing to do with the measure.

State Democrats reacted quickly when the Republican Party, trying to garner last-minute support with New Hampshire's swing voters, began paying part-time workers $75 this weekend to devote a day to the Bush campaign -- especially in liberal areas like Hanover.

Democratic field organizers in the area alerted supporters and volunteers Friday about students from nearby colleges who had been paid to hold Bush-Cheney signs and wear campaign stickers on the Green.

An Election Spoiled Rotten - 1 Million Kerry Votes Already Stolen - November 1, 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204V.shtml

It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is already down by a almost a million votes. That's because, in important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been overlooked—overwhelmingly in minority areas, like Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater chance of their vote being "spoiled." Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on the trashing of the election.

John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled until Tuesday night.

Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed one million votes.