Problem w/ paper ballots in AK (both mail-in and absentee)

[clear eye]

From the 866-OURVOTE hotline website <http://www.ourvotelive.org/responses.php?op=show&id=9383> :

"Caller is a paid poll worker. She is concerned that early voting and absentee ballots are compromised, due to their design. Alaska ballots used to mix up the order of candidates, now they are all in alphabetical order. They are making voters fold the ballots, and because the fold is on Barack Obama's line, the machine may be spitting out the Obama votes with greater frequency than others. She complained to the person who designed the ballots to no avail. She was told it was in fact possible that Obama ballots could be rejected on that basis. She is concerned even non-Obama ballots may be rejected because of the folds. Many voters have been complaining about this. She has been calling various agencies and organizations in an effort to have someone determine whether voters who use these ballots will have their votes accurately counted."

Shouldn't the state Democratic party, w/ or w/o the help of the Obama campaign, have brought this issue to court?

[bushisanidiot]

1. Members of both parties should be complaining about this.

This is a democratic only issue. I would think that both Obama's and McHate's campaigns have received complaints about the faulty ballots. If not, they need to be contacted before the election!

[clear eye]

2. These ballots are mostly being used now, not on election day n/t

[mucifer]

3. as long as votes have existed they have been tampered with.

Groucho Marx wrote in his autobiography that on election day they would vote, then go to the election day parade, then vote again. This was NY City around 1900.

[Wilms]

4. Paper ballot fraud is the reason lever machines came to be used. n/t

[clear eye]

6. That was retail tampering. Stuffing or stealing ballot boxes on a precinct by precinct basis.

It was used to "deliver" a precinct for a particular local candidate who was part of thoroughly corrupt local party apparatus that had a monopoly in a certain city or county. There was a real danger of getting caught in each instance. It was never used in voting for President, with the possible exception of the West Virginia primary in 1960, which we Dems don't like to think about much. When you ruin every mail-in ballot in a state at once that's a whole new level of (wholesale) tampering. Sorry if the difference is less comforting than thinking everything is just as it's always been.

Fortunately Alaska has only 3 electoral college votes. It still isn't a good idea to allow criminal election fraud on the grounds that one action, by itself, won't make much difference. A bunch of small things add up.

[rainydaywomyn69]

5. It would make sense, wouldn't it? It's not like this hasn't happened before

so I have no brilliant answers for you. I am hoping that Obama has lots of election lawyers on hand. I heard that he did. Only thing is that apparently they are coming on Election Day and so many are voting ahead of time...