A Cumberland County official is using apple pie recipes to confirm voter addresses, WRAL reports.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota voters testified Tuesday their ballots had been unfairly rejected as Republican Norm Coleman argued thousands of disqualified absentee ballots should be counted in the U.S. Senate race.

“Perhaps my signature is not as good as it once was,” Gerald Anderson, of St. Paul, told the three-judge panel hearing Coleman’s lawsuit. “It gets cloudy and crooked. I am 75 years old.”

But that shouldn’t have disqualified his vote, he said: “I want it back. I’m entitled to my vote.”

A statewide recount gave Democrat Al Franken a 225-vote edge.

The personal stories that Anderson and five other voters told are just one front on Coleman’s effort to have more votes counted. Coleman’s legal team had intended to submit copies of thousands of ballots as exhibits, but the judges disqualified them as evidence Monday because campaign workers had marked on some envelopes. On Tuesday, much of the panel’s time was spent with state officials, lawyers and court staff working out a plan to get about 11,000 rejected absentees to St. Paul from counties throughout the state.

Actual testimony didn’t begin until afternoon in the case, expected to last weeks.

It wasn’t clear whom Anderson supported; neither Coleman’s nor Franken’s attorneys asked. And Anderson wasn’t sure why his vote was rejected, only guessing that it was his signature.

Minnesota law cites four reasons for rejecting absentee ballots: The name and address on the ballot’s envelope do not match a name and address on the voter rolls; the signature on the envelope doesn’t match the voter’s signature on file; the voter was not registered when he or she voted; or the voter went on to vote on Election Day too.

Coleman is arguing that in many cases, those standards were applied differently from county to county, violating the constitutional standard of equal protection.

Hundreds of improperly rejected absentee ballots were opened and added to the count during the recount phase through a process set up by the Minnesota Supreme Court – a process that gave both campaigns a say in which ballots were added.

Franken’s attorneys argue that only about 654 remaining absentees were rejected improperly and merit being brought into the count.

“My answer is that it is still not a huge factor but becoming more and more so by the year,” the PPP writes.

A study by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University suggests that even with record lines and the increasing popularity of casting ballots early, the overall rate of voter turnout for the 2008 election will not reach record levels.

RALEIGH, N.C. - North Carolina’s overall voter turnout was less than projected, but it still made history.

Unofficial results from Tuesday’s election show more than 68 percent of the registered voters cast ballots during the early voting period and on Election Day. More than half of the votes were cast during early voting.

State elections director Gary Bartlett said Wednesday it could ultimately reach 70 percent when all the provisional ballots are counted.

The best turnout in recent history came in 1984 at 69 percent.

More than 4.2 million ballots already have been counted. That’s well above the 3.5 million cast in the 2004 elections. Elections officials had projected a turnout of 4.6 million votes, but long lines on Election Day didn’t materialize, possibly due to rain in much of the state.

WASHINGTON – Voter turnout will be the highest in decades, dwarfing recent presidential elections, experts predict.

The only question dividing experts is how huge will it be. Will it be the largest since 1968, largest since 1960 or even, as one expert predicts, the largest in a century?

Soaring early voting levels hint at a big turnout, but that could just be the same voters casting ballots earlier instead of more voters hitting the polls. Weather should generally be favorable, according to forecasts.

What early voting numbers mean and how much of the youth and Hispanic votes turn out are the big factors political scientists look at when trying to predict how many eligible Americans will vote.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University is so optimistic he’s predicting the highest level in a century.

“We’re going to definitely beat the turnout rate in 2004, the question is by how much,” McDonald said. “We have a chance to beat the 1960 turnout rate.”

“It’s not just an election of a generation, it’s an election of generations with an ’s’,” McDonald said Friday.

He’s not alone. The dean of voting turnout predictions, Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, this week amped up his turnout forecast. Initially he said it would be around 2004 levels, but now he is looking at a turnout that would be the highest since 1960.

“It’s driven by 90 percent of the American people thinking the country is on the wrong track,” Gans said Friday. “The only question is how many Republicans are not going to show up.”

MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky predicted the highest levels since 1968, which he said is still quite impressive given that the polls show this election is not that close and fewer people tend to vote when the race isn’t tight.

The McCain campaign released a strategy memo earlier this week, saying “turnout is going to go through the roof,” and predicted that more than 130 million people would vote. And Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on Friday said, “we think turnout is going to be higher than that” but wouldn’t give a number. Four years ago, 122.3 million people voted for president.

Calculating turnout rates isn’t uniform. McDonald bases his turnout calculations on eligible voters, not just those over 18 and he subtracts felons and foreigners and others. Other people have different calculations for eligible voters; some experts just use the percent of the voting age population, regardless of eligibility.

McDonald predicts 64 percent of the eligible voters will cast ballots. That’s more than 2004’s 60.1 percent and a hair above 1960’s post World War II high of 63.8 percent. The high for the 20th Century, using McDonald’s calculations, was 65.7 percent in 1908 when William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan.

Record heavy early voting – people lining up to vote early in
Florida and elsewhere, Georgia getting more than twice the early votes it did in 2004 – is one key factor, McDonald said. Democrats are voting in person earlier than Republicans, he said.

Gans isn’t swayed by the number of early voters, but their enthusiasm and willingness to brave long lines to vote early “indicates a very high motivation.” And that along with increased voter registration made him up his forecast.

Other factors pushing forecasts up include high voting in the primaries, record donations by small contributors, and general interest in the race, McDonald said. Dan Schnur, head of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Politics, points to record television ratings for nominating conventions that offered no suspense.

Indications are that turnout by African-Americans will increase by about 20 percent, said MIT and Harvard political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere.

The only bad weather forecast is rain in the Pacific Northwest and along a small stretch of Southeast coast; McDonald didn’t think that would matter much.

The only dampening factors are the youth vote, which hasn’t shown much in early voting, and as the race looks less close, some people may stay home, experts said.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Since the 1972 election, after the adoption of the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age to 21, we regularly hear that this will be the year that “young voters” will make the difference. And just as regularly, young voters fail to show up at the polls in the numbers predicted.

An online voter guide produced by UNC-TV and the North Carolina Center for Voter Eudcation is now available.  

See Guide

The guide features candidate profiles and in-depth multimedia interviews with the nominees, along with voting facts and election coverage.

Voters can also watch a series of forums with candidates for the N.C. Supreme Court and N.C. Court of Appeals, along with the contenders for state auditor, commissioner of insurance and state superintendent of public instruction, airing statewide at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26 on UNC-TV.

Voter fraud allegations by John McCain and Republican Party officials in recent days appear intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Although the Republicans don’t say this, their comments could be aimed at several goals, experts said, ranging from simply energizing their conservative base to laying the groundwork for possible election challenges.

In any case, spokesmen for both the national Republican Party and the McCain campaign don’t deny the implication that their comments raise questions about the legitimacy of the election outcome.

“I hope the election does not have this problem,” said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, when asked Friday whether he was suggesting the election outcome could be illegitimate. “We’ve got 18 days. We think
John McCain could win this election, and we don’t want a pall cast on it.”

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama campaign charged Friday that the U.S. Justice Department is collaborating with the GOP in seeking to create doubt about the validity of the election process.

That accusation, from Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer, was based on a news story leaked from the Justice Department, saying that the FBI was investigating charges of voter fraud against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a liberal group that has done voter registration work nationwide.

Because the leak violated Justice Department policy, and because of the lack of significant evidence of vote fraud involving ACORN, Bauer said, the department appears to be succumbing to political pressure to hype the accusations.

He called it a repeat of the Justice Department’s politically motivated firing of U.S. attorneys in 2006. An inspector general’s report concluded they were fired because they had displeased Republicans by not prosecuting allegations of corruption and voter fraud against Democrats.

Bauer called it “an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the worst kind of politics,” and said the inspector general’s probe should be expanded to include the leak and all allegations of voter fraud and voter suppression.

A McCain campaign spokesman called the accusation “outrageous,” “absurd,” and “almost a parody of the Obama campaign’s attempt to intimidate their political opponents.”

There have been several state investigations into voter registration forms submitted by ACORN, which sometimes pays registrants to get prospective voters to fill out and sign forms. ACORN acknowledges its workers have sometimes falsified forms to get paid without doing the work.

In probably the worst case so far, prosecutors in Washington state charged seven ACORN employees with turning in more than 1,800 phony registration forms in 2006.

King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg emphasized the defendants’ aim was to get paid, not influence elections, and the workers were cheating ACORN. None of the phony forms led to illegal voting.

He said ACORN applied “lax oversight,” and the organization signed a consent decree promising better oversight.

ACORN says that in some cases it has alerted elections officials when it suspected workers were turning in falsified forms, but that once it receives the forms, it’s legally required to turn them in.

Because of checks by elections officials, if a fraudulent form is submitted, that doesn’t mean a voter will be registered or vote illegally.

A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law examined recent claims of fraud made by parties, elections officials, journalists and bloggers, and concluded, “We are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast.”
Nonetheless, McCain, his top campaign aides and Republicans have repeatedly suggested that ACORN’s work threatens the legitimacy of the election.

They’ve criticized Obama for his links to ACORN, including having represented the organization in a court case, and having paid an affiliate for work on his campaign.

In Wednesday’s debate, McCain said ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history, … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” He added in a TV interview that “several thousand votes could obviously tip the entire huge state of Florida.”

In a news conference call with reporters Friday, Davis said “rampant voter fraud” has created a “cloud of suspicion that seems to right now hang over this election.”

In a conference call Thursday that focused on what they said was extensive election fraud in Florida, Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz and counsel Sean Cairncross accused ACORN of “attempting to subvert our election system and election laws” and “trying to defraud the electoral system,” in Diaz’s words.

Even McCain allies consider these accusations overblown.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Secretary of State Kurt Browning have both denied there are any significant problems with ACORN voter registration activities in Florida, and Diaz and Cairncross couldn’t give any figures indicating there were; they pointed to one form signed by “Mickey Mouse.”

Browning has said he has a good impression of ACORN, and that there have been only scattered incidents of problems in its registration work.

Crist pooh-poohed the allegations of fraud, saying there’s “less than is being discussed. As we’re coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who sort of enjoy chaos.”

Asked whether Diaz and Cairncross were suggesting the results of the Florida election might be tainted, RNC officials wouldn’t respond on the record. One party official, asking not to be named, responded only,

“ACORN’s activities have the effect of undermining confidence in the integrity of the election process.”
University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett said there could be several motives behind the accusations by McCain and his allies: to “rally the conservative base”; to create pressure for elections officials to scrutinize and possibly toss ACORN’s voter registrations, which focus on Obama-leaning young and minority voters; or to lay groundwork for a legal challenge of the outcome.

“If it came down to as close as in 2000, or to just one or two states with close votes, then it could be trying to plant the seed for a challenge,” he said.