Charges, Countercharges Exchanged Over Fraudulent Voting

Democrats charge that all the talk about fraud is designed to provide cover for what is expected to be an aggressive effort on the part of Republicans to challenge the eligibility of Democratic voters at the polls. In New Mexico, for instance, a crime task force was set up by the Republican U.S. attorney to investigate allegations of voter-registration fraud. To date, said New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, a Democratic member of the task force, "they haven't come up with anything at all."

Some allegations of fraud involve felons voting in states where it is illegal for them to do so, such as Florida and Colorado.

Four years ago in Florida, local newspapers found, felons illegally cast votes in the disputed presidential election. This year, some counties have done little to purge their rolls of felons. For instance, in Miami-Dade, spokesman Seth Kaplan said the last time the rolls there were purged of felons was in May. In Colorado, the Republican secretary of state has come under fire for similar inaction.

Some of the hottest charges this year have involved allegations that groups working to register voters for one party ripped up the registrations turned in by voters not inclined to vote for their candidate.

There are criminal investigations into allegations that workers for a Republican Party-funded company threw out Democratic registrations in Oregon and Nevada. Likewise, there are allegations in Florida that a worker for a Democratic-leaning group ripped up Republican registrations.

But while both parties have seized on these instances, election officials are skeptical. In Clark County, Nev., where a local television station broke one of the stories last week, Democrats unsuccessfully sued to extend the registration deadline for the alleged victims, who were said to number in the hundreds, if not the thousands.

Registrar Larry Lomax said he has not received, as a result of the story, an unusual number of complaints from people who say that they registered but are not on the rolls.

"There's more political rhetoric this year, there's no doubt about that," Lomax said. "But I haven't seen any evidence that substantiates either side's position."