Several days ago I posted an entry entitled "Shot Across the Bow: An Election in Doubt." In it I detailed all of the abuses and questionable situations that have already, ahead of time, thrown this presidential election in doubt. To add to that list, here are just a few of the things that have come up in the last several days. While the long lines and glitches in early voting have received much attention (if it all has you down, see the Daily Show's Election 2004: Fiasco Preview [video link]), today we'll focus on the various Republican efforts at voter suppression. And, yes, despite the fact that the GOP loves to say that provisional ballots are just a-okay, and no should be alarmed, this of course is not the case. As the NAACP noted on Thursday:

Party officials in a number of states have assembled teams of lawyers to challenge provisional ballots, writes Overton, and he predicts that many provisional ballots cast by legitimate voters -- especially minority voters -- will be discarded or otherwise go uncounted as a result of these challenges. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this weekend that the process has already begun, as the Ohio Republican party challenged the validity of over 35,000 voter registrations in the state.

"In recent months, election boards around the country have been swamped with new voter registrations, a bulk of which were from minority or low-income neighborhoods," Overton says. Because newly registered voters are less likely to show up on voter rolls, he says, poll workers might try to make them cast provisional ballots rather than "investigating to determine whether a voter is truly eligible." In Chicago voting in March 2004, only 7 percent of provisional ballots were counted.

(See also John Sweeney's op-ed from Thursday.)

1) The Republicans deny with great indignation any suggestion that there may attempts to suppress the vote on racial grounds. But then, who, praytell, is passing out a flier in Milwaukee's African-American neighborhoods with the following "warnings":

(Click on image for detail)

2) Multiple stories about Republican operatives challenging black and hispanic voters. First there's this story (via Atrios) about a man in Ohio being asked to show up in court to prove his right to vote -- supposedly because his home address is in doubt. The challenger is one "Megan Harrington, President of the College Republicans at the University of Toledo. […] Miss Harrington can be reached at: utcr2004@yahoo.com or at megan.harrington@toledo.edu." I'm sure she'd love to hear from you.

There's more.

3) This gem (audio link) from Wednesday's All Things Considered (transcription mine):

Almost every hispanic voter in rural Atkinson county [Georgia] has been asked to appear at a hearing tomorrow night; they’ve been told to bring proof of citizenship

Included among the 95 voters challenged is Antonio Hernandez, born in Texas 30 years ago and having lived in Georgia for the last 20. He's been asked to bring proof of citizenship to the hearing. Frank Sutton, the leading challenger, asked the registrar for a list of all hispanic voters in the county and came back a week later challenging three quarters of them. He's convinced that the vast majority of them are not U.S. citizens.

4) The only good news (more here), and it may be very temporary, in the voter challenge morass is that a federal judge has temporarily blocked Republican efforts to challenge the legitimacy of up to 23,000 voters in Ohio.

5) Alas, Republican Party leaders in Florida, not content with their previous efforts to suppress the vote, are compiling a list of challenges as well.

Meanwhile, state Republican leaders said they are protecting "the integrity of the process" by compiling a list of voters who they say are improperly registered and should not be allowed to cast ballots Tuesday.

"I presume they will use it as a basis for challenges," said Howard Simon, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida. "And when they're using a list that's very likely inaccurate for challenges, I think we're in for hand-to-hand combat at the precincts."

More to come soon, I'm afraid.