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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (12487)	11/3/1998 8:49:00 AM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

A sample check of 400 democratic voters in California found only 10 of them were citizens of the US. Vote early and often.

To: Zoltan! who wrote (12487)	11/3/1998 9:37:00 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Frederick County News-Post October 15, 1998 Officials blocked from giving ballots to nursing home residents By Matthew Barakat News-Post Staff A federal judge in Baltimore issued an order Tuesday preventing Frederick County elections officials from distributing absentee ballots to nursing homes without proper supervision. The temporary restraining order issued by Judge William Nickerson in U.S. District Court was sought by a group called Citizens for Democratic Elections. Baltimore City as well as Dorchester, Queen Anne's and Caroline counties are also affected by the order. Currently, county election officials work with the activities directors of local nursing homes to get absentee ballots to residents who request them. The nursing homes send a list of residents, and the elections office sends applications and eventually ballots via the home's activity director. Deborah Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Voting Integrity Project, a national nonpartisan election watchdog group that participated in the lawsuit, said placing so many ballots in the hand of one nursing-home administrator is a system fraught with the potential for fraud. "There's the potential for coercion of votes," Ms. Phillips said. "You could have members of the nursing-home staff telling residents that if you don't vote for a particular candidate, there's no Jell-O on Saturday." Maxine Pratt, director of the Frederick County Board of Elections, said she believes the current system works well, but that there won't be any problem complying with the ruling. She said it's likely that either staff or elections supervisors, one Democrat and one Republican, will visit each home to supervise the absentee voting. "We want it to be as open and honest a process as possible," she said. "We have no problem sending a bipartisan team. It's not going to be easy on the staff. It means our board members and our staff members are going to have to work harder, but we have no problem with that." At the same time, though, she said the present system has worked well. "We've always found that the activities directors of these nursing homes are not politically motivated. They're there to make sure the residents are happy," Ms. Pratt said. "But we don't want to do anything that anyone perceives of as fraud. We want to do what's best for the residents of these nursing homes." Ms. Pratt said a number of safeguards were already in place. To begin with, all absentee ballots contain signatures which can be matched against the signature on a resident's voter registration form. Also, ballots were sent to only those who requested them, and then were sent in sealed envelopes to each individual. But Patrick O'Brien, chairman of Citizens for Democratic Elections, said there is evidence that fraud has occurred in counties other than Frederick. He said there is an affidavit from an employee of a Carroll County nursing home that every resident is a registered Democrat and every one voted in the last election. Mr. O'Brien said CDE would be willing to remove Frederick County from the list of defendants in the lawsuit if they are willing to adopt proper safeguards. Otherwise, the group will seek a permanent injunction. The case will continue this Friday, and Mr. O'Brien said it's possible that other counties will face injunctions similar to those imposed on Frederick County. Mr. O'Brien said the new safeguards wouldn't discourage participation by elderly voters. "I would be very much opposed to any system that discouraged participation," Mr. O'Brien said. voting-integrity.org >>>Last Maryland gubernatorial election was decided by less than >>>6,000 votes. There are 12,000 absenteed ballots sent to nursing >>>homes. >>> >>>Another interesting article was Washington state being caught >>>sending out marked absentee ballots.