More voting calamities imminent

Whoa! More proof that the mechanisms of democracy here in the USA are in need of a serious overhaul. It isn't just a Detroit issue, btw. I'm not going to rehash my plan to fix this; it was spelled out three posts ago. Look it up.

DETROIT'S FLAWED REGISTRY: Many erroneous names found on city's voter rolls

November 3, 2005

BY KATHLEEN GRAY, JOHN BEBOW and BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

On the verge of one of the most hotly contested elections in recent years, Detroit's voter rolls are riddled with problems -- filled with the names of voters who are dead, duplicates or people who no longer live in the city. The flawed registry is of concern, election experts say, because it could invite voter fraud. Detroit's city clerk routinely has sent applications for absentee ballots to thousands of people on the voter list for each election -- even to homes of people who have been dead for years, the Free Press found.

As many as 299,000 names on the city's 2004 list of 644,351 registered voters may fall into those categories, Mark Grebner, one of the state's foremost authorities on voter patterns, said Wednesday. Other consultants and state officials agree that Detroit's voter lists carry lots of names that should be purged, though they may quibble with the number.

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