How to Make Another Florida

You know, the most Orwellian name going around isn't Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind, or even Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's the Republican Party. A republic, you will remember, bases its legitimacy on the concept of regular, free, honest elections, making leaders accountable to the populace as a whole. Not happy with the foiled attempt to once again purge Florida's voter roles, the GOP is now resorting to outright voter fraud, via wildcat front companies.

From KLAS TV in Las Vegas (as in Nevada, 5 electoral-vote swing state):

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.
The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.
[...]
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate. [Emphasis added]

There is no mystery. The voter list hijinks, openly advocating a policy of "suppress the Detroit vote", now this. The GOP has made vote suppression a pillar of its campaign strategy, and it is clearly willing to break the law and betray the very spirit of democracy if it will deliver even a slight advantage. None of us here like Bush, but I don't believe anybody would tear up Republican votes and throw them in the trash. That is not what this election is about.

In any case, this is one of the most important issues for the next three weeks. We cannot wait for the FBI or anyone else to investigate. The media should be talking about this, raising the alarms (how about a color-coded voter fraud system?), and -- I know this may shock them -- investigate. I mean, what happened in Las Vegas (and maybe Reno too) is a major crime, and the criminal has now moved on to the next town. This is national news. If enough of us talk about it, maybe it will be.