'Provisional' Democracy Will Democratic lawyers make voter fraud easier?

Friday, October 22, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Here we go again. If you thought the aftermath of the 2000 election was messy, this year's Presidential contest may well make Afghanistan's recent vote look like ancient Athens. A major problem--or opportunity, if you're a lawyer--is something called 'provisional balloting,' as we'll explain below.

Let's first stipulate that both parties plan to fight over votes, and that both sides have some scoundrels who will cheat. But in the run-up to this Election Day, by far most of the accusations and the lawsuits have come from the Democrats. Even before votes are cast, they're accusing state ballot officials of conspiring to deny voters access to the polls.

Newsweek--hardly a Republican organ--reports that nearly every big battleground state 'is being hit with a crush of Democratic Party lawsuits charging that the application [of antifraud laws] is arbitrary and unfair.' In Florida, Democrats have filed no fewer than 10 suits against GOP officials. In New Mexico, Democrats managed to overturn a token photo ID requirement.

The race card is a big part of this strategy, as the nearby liberal political mailer shows. John Kerry and John Edwards regularly tell crowds that a million blacks had their votes 'stolen' four years ago and that countless others were kept from the polls. Never mind that Janet Reno was the Attorney General in 2000, and that she dispatched platoons of lawyers to search for evidence of disenfranchisement and found nothing worth reporting. Yet on Saturday Mr. Edwards told a group of mostly black supporters, 'We know they're going to be up to their old tricks, right, trying to keep you from voting.'

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