One thing to keep in mind is that just because you have registered to vote in the past or that you recently registered through a voter registration table, there is a chance you might not currently be registered to vote based on efforts by the GOP to disenfranchise voters.
First, the GOP has been pushing states to purge voter rolls leading up to the 2008 election. Thus, even if you have registered, there is a chance that your voter registration has been purged, particularly if you have not voted in recent elections.http://www.alternet.org/rights/62133//snip
AlterNet found many of the states targeted by the Voting Section have outdated voter rolls, especially in rural counties, where the registrations of people who have moved, died or been convicted of felonies need to be removed. That is the standard practice of local election officials and required under federal election laws. However, AlterNet found that some states facing Justice Department pressure to purge voters have long been targeted by GOP "vote fraud" activists, especially where concentrations of minority voters have historically elected Democrats -- such as St. Louis, Philadelphia and South Dakota's Indian reservations. One of those Republican activists who is now a Federal Election Commission member, Hans Von Spakovsky, started the department's purge effort in January 2005 when he was a political appointee overseeing the Voting Section's legal agenda, according to former Voting Section attorneys who worked with him then.
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Second, even if you recently registered as a Democrat at a voter registration table, there is a chance that your voter registration information was thrown away if you registered as a Democrat as was the case in 2004 in Nevada and Oregon where thousands of voters who registered as Democrats had their form destroyed by GOP paid voter registration companies:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/14/politics/main649380.shtml/snip
In Nevada and Oregon, Sproul allegedly canvassed voters for which candidate they intend to support. If voters were leaning Republican, the group is said to have assisted in their registration. If they leaned Democratic, the group allegedly ignored them or later destroyed the form.
It is illegal to destroy voting registration material.
"I’ve never seen this before. The allegations that are being made just totally offend me, not only because they are illegal," Bradbury said. "Regardless of whether it is a Democratic, Republican or Independent form, there is no better way to disenfranchise a voter than to say you are registered and then throw away a voter registration form."
Both Oregon and Nevada are considered battleground states in the presidential election. Though polls show Oregon likely to go to Democrat John Kerry, Nevada remains a dead heat between Kerry and President Bush.
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