Democratic Election Protection Strategy's Missing Link: Electronic Vote Counts

There is a new feeling in Democrat Party circles that Barack Obama will win and win big in November. The latest polls show Obama moving ahead in swing states, edging John McCain by more points than polling margins of error. More importantly, as voter registration starts to close on Monday in half the states, the number of new voters who are likely to support Obama and Democrats in November significantly outpaces registration by new likely Republican voters.

The Republican response to Obama's rising fortunes has been to go negative and attack his character, history and judgment. But while Sarah Palin and John McCain, and their campaign's television ads, are leading this front, the GOP has launched another, less-seen attack: targeting the credentials of likely Obama voters.

In just the past two weeks, Republican officeholders, party officials or their allies in swing states such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Indiana and Montana have sought to present hurdles to likely new Democratic voters in the form of barriers to early voting in Ohio and Indiana, legal challenges to new registrants in Colorado, Wisconsin and Montana, and threats to voters who may have lost their homes in foreclosures in Michigan who would be ineligible to vote if they did not update their registrations with their latest address.

Moreover, the Republican National Committee has launched a national media offensive against ACORN, a low-income advocacy group that registered 1.2 million new voters this summer, calling it a "quasi-criminal" group after its partisans found two problematic registration forms in a Florida County out of more than 130,000 new voters registered by ACORN in that state. Another GOP disinformation campaign was seen in Philadelphia, where flyers appeared telling voters in minority neighborhoods they might be arrested for outstanding traffic offense while voting in November.

These tactics not new and are anticipated by Democrats. Moreover, they only represent the most visible "election protection" issues facing the Obama campaign and party. Less visible, but perhaps more pernicious, are private contractors with partisan ties who have been hired by state and county election officials to program the software used in computers that count the vote on Election night. It is one thing for Democrats to come out of the starting gate with a lead in voter registration and momentum in the polls; it is another to hold that lead at the finish line, when the votes are counted.

The question one month before Election Day is whether the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee have an election protection strategy that not only deals with more overt forms of voter suppression, but also with ensuring the accuracy of the vote count. The answer is not yet on electronic vote counts, according to dozens of background conversations with Democratic Party lawyers, donors, state party staffers and others working with the DNC since the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Compared to 2004, the DNC -- which is spearheading the election protection effort while the Obama campaign takes the lead on voter registration -- has made incredible progress. Unlike 2004, the DNC has surveyed election systems and procedures in every county in America. It has created and recruited a new national network of attorneys willing to march into court on its behalf. It has drawn up state legal manuals, descriptions of the voting machinery and has a campaign with a fabulous communications network that enables party leaders to reach its ground forces. This is unprecedented for Democrats, laudable and necessary.

But as Republicans turn to ever more negative campaigning and tactics, the DNC -- which does not comment publicly on this subject -- has yet to finalize its plan to safeguard the finish line in this election: the vote count in swing counties in the swing states. As one person involved in this process said Monday, "If only they had this missing piece, it would all work so much better."