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GUEST: Eric Marshall, Campaign Manager with the National Campaign for Fair Elections, which is an Initiative of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Eric is also a member of the Election Protection Coalition and the National Network on State Election Reform

Activists seeking to ensure fair elections face significant challenges ahead of the upcoming Presidential ballot in November. With serious questions about the vote in Ohio during the 2004 elections, and Florida during the 2000 elections, Congress has largely failed to address documented problems in the nation’s electoral system. Primaries in important swing states such as Pennsylvania have already seen breakdowns in voting machines, intimidation at the polls, and registration roll problems. Following the Supreme Court’s recent controversial decision to uphold Indiana’s Voter ID law, the state saw students and nuns unable to cast their ballots in the recent Indiana primary due to strict photo ID requirements. In other states, voter suppression tactics similar to Indiana’s law which claim to target electoral fraud, end up challenging the eligibility of otherwise legally registered voters. Voter caging, which compiles lists usually aimed at African-Americans by sending “return to sender” mail to residences of registered voters, is one such tactic that is unlikely to be banned at the Congressional level prior to November. Touch-screen voting machines, deceptive election practices, database and purging errors are just a host of other challenges that remain ahead of the 2008 elections.

For more information, visit www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org, and www.stopdeceptivepractices.org.