Well, maybe YOU shouldn’t be, but that guy next to you? Or that woman over there by the door? Yeah, they maybe should be concerned. What if *you* are that woman by the door? What if you are the guy sitting next to the person reading this post? Well, you might want to be concerned about your vote counting. Or, I should say "you should be concerned about your vote being counted".

See, not everyone will be immediately impacted by this. Plenty of folks will actually have their vote counted. However, many won’t.

It turns out that a few different states are going through voter purges. This is basically when the state’s election officials decide that they should "reduce voter fraud" by trimming down the voter rolls (the list of voters in that state). The thing is, there isn’t a federally standardized way of doing this. As a result, some state officials seem to be using questionable tactics to remove people.

Now, I’m not advocating that there should be a federally sanctioned way to do this, but maybe a federal oversight committee might be a good idea, to make sure this process isn’t being abused.

Back in 2004, according to journalist Greg Palast (his site: http://gregpalast.com/ ), Republicans would send registered mail letters to low-income areas in certain states asking for registered voters to confirm their addresses. If they never heard back from these people, their names were challenged and many were removed.

This means that anyone who doesn’t take the time to sign for registered mail, or sees the Republican party return address and blows it off, or is serving overseas, or is on vacation, or whatever, could have had their vote challenged.

Now, it’s happening again–right now, in fact. CBSNews.com is reporting (here: http://www.cbsnews.com/…0682.shtml ) on a new study from the non-partisan public policy and law institute, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law:

calls the nationwide process "chaotic," "shrouded in secrecy", "riddled with inaccuracies", "prone to error" and "vulnerable to manipulation."

"What’s wrong with the process is it’s happening in secret. It’s happening with no accountability," Michael Waldman, the center’s executive director, told CBS News.

Nice, huh?

Here’s a bit more from the article:

‘Officials are making tons of errors, and voters aren’t given a chance to correct the errors,’ he said.

Waldman also says some voters will show up on Nov. 4 who are supposed to be registered to vote and will be told they are not listed that way. If that happens, he says, ‘don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Cast a provisional ballot and call a voter hotline.’

I’ve actually heard that provisional ballots are no good, either. They don’t get counted until after the other ballots and I’d be concerned that they might not get counted at all–I mean, it’s not like our system doesn’t have plenty of flaws. In fact, I’m a little surprised that I haven’t heard much about electronic ballot machines lately.

There is nothing secure about electronic ballot machines–nothing. As an amateur hacker, myself, I can tell you that anything electronic can be hacked–anything. I once hacked a camcorder into an Altoids tin. I’m not kidding.

Think a paper trail fixes things? Not quite. The machine can just write one thing on your receipt (you voted for Obama) but then record something else (a vote for McCain). The only way a recount would be required is if the election was a tie. What if the machine got the vote intentionally or even accidentally wrong for a few thousand voters in each county?

Yeah, kinda makes you think about the 2004 election wen somehow Americans were stupid enough to vote for Bush again.

However, this isn’t about Republican operatives manipulating the vote–this is about each American voter being able to confirm their vote.

**Computers screw up all the time.**

I think we can all agree on that.

Yet, many states are trusting the votes to computerized ballot machines.

I wish I could provide a solution beyond suggesting you contact your state and local officials and find out what they’re doing about this. You can educate yourself with one of the many documentaries out there. I recommend the one I helped with: “Stealing America” learn more about it at StealingAmericaTheMovie.org. Check out the trailer here:

I’ll be posting more on problems with our election system in the coming days. Just an FYI for any new readers, I’ve been writing about election irregularities for years. It’s hard to cover everything you want to cover.