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Click2Houston.com Related To Story UPDATED: 9:08 am CDT October 10, 2008 HOUSTON -- Note: The following story is a verbatim transcript of an Investigators story that aired on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2008, on KPRC Local 2 at 10 p.m. Local 2 investigates dead voters. The push to register voters for this year's presidential election is breaking records. More than 1.9 million people are registered to vote in Harris County alone. But how many of the people listed on the voter roll are actually eligible to cast a ballot? Investigative reporter Amy Davis shows you how hundreds of voters could sway...

For the first time since 1964, Democrats actually have a chance of winning Virginia's 13 electoral votes. Barack Obama is up 4.8% according to the Real Clear Politics average, and according to Nate Silver, Virginia could be one of this election's decisive swing states. And, in a state with 161 colleges and 483,159 students, the predominantly Democratic youth vote could play a huge role in tipping the election Obama's way. But there's a hold-up: Virginia's local laws make it exceedingly difficult for students to register in their college towns. Indeed, though other states like Idaho and Tennessee also make student...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Will they be checking for out-of-state IDs at the caucuses? The major presidential campaigns are flooding the state with hundreds of field staffers, and there's at least some concern that those operatives could show up for the Jan. 3 precinct caucuses and distort the outcome of the opening test of the presidential nominating season. Spokesmen for the leading campaigns reject that suggestion, saying there are strict rules banning operatives brought into the state from actually participating in caucuses. They note that the number of operatives potentially involved is far too small to have an impact...

(WJZ/AP) Baltimore, MD -- Several top Maryland Democrats are urging Governor Robert Ehrlich to push for an extension of the deadline for voters to postmark absentee ballots. In a letter to Ehrlich dated Sunday, the group asked the governor to instruct his appointees on the Maryland Board of Elections to allow ballots postmarked on election day to be counted. The current deadline is today. The letter cites shortages in absentee ballots because of the high number of requests this year. The letter comes on the heels of a similar request by a coalition of attorneys' groups and civil rights organizations....

"Vote early -- and often." We hear this quip every time an election rolls around, and with good reason: Electoral fraud is as old as the ballot box itself and still happens in the United States. Just last year a judge in Washington state ruled that some 1,678 illegal votes were cast in its 2004 election -- more than enough to change the outcome of the governor's race. Few concepts matter more in a republican democracy than the credibility of "one person, one vote." Yet no nationwide standard exists to prevent fraud at the voting booth. Some states, including Virginia,...

High turnout prompts a probe by secretary of state SAN DIEGO - A dead man sending off for a mail-in ballot for the March primary was just one of the clues that brought investigators from the Texas attorney general's office to Duval County. Assistant District Attorney Jon West had only been on the job for about three months when the voter fraud allegations started surfacing. The post office returned several rejected mail-in ballot applications to residents who said that they had not sent them. And in one case, a woman complained that her father could not have sent a mail-in...

Several boxes full of ballots for this week’s Italian general election were found in Rome today, officials said, after Premier Silvio Berlusconi rejected the centre-left’s victory claim and demanded a recount. The boxes, at least five, carried the symbol of the Interior Ministry. They included electoral material and were found by someone in a rubbish bin, said Vincenzo Giulivo, head of the polling station. The ANSA news agency said the ballots had been filled out. The election on Sunday and Monday was one of the closest in Italian history. Romano Prodi’s centre-left opposition has won control of both houses of...

One of Chicago's most powerful aldermen has a conspiracy theory for the voting problems experienced during the March primary. Alderman Ed Burke wants to know why the Chicago board of elections would pick a Venezuelan company to supply the city's new voting machines, a company Burke believes has the ability to rig an election for political gain. Both the voting machine company and the board of elections are calling alderman Burke's suggestion of a conspiracy absurd. This happened during a city council hearing Friday on problems during last month's primary. Alderman Ed Burke, whose wife just got appointed to the...

A circuit judge in St. Louis has sentenced a woman who turned in voter registration cards in the name of dead local politicians to probation, community service and relaxation training using transcendental meditation. Michelle Robinson, 36, pleaded guilty Friday on charges of 13 violations of election law and of possession of crack cocaine and a crack pipe. Robinson worked for a campaign called Operation Big Vote that aimed to boost the participation of black voters in the 2001 St. Louis mayoral election. But some of the cards she turned in on Feb. 7, 2001, were made out in the names...

EVERETT - A statewide computer sweep of voter registration records in Washington found 11,500 voters listed as dead by the state Health Department. The sweep this month also found 36,000 voters who appear to be registered in two counties. The manager of the new $6 million database project, Pam Floyd, says the names have been flagged for further scrutiny. Snohomish County immediately canceled the voter registrations for the more than 1,400 dead people. The state has 3.5 million registered voters. Monthly sweeps are planned for duplicate and deceased voters. In March, officials plan to create the first comprehensive list of...

HARRISBURG-- A bill that would require Pennsylvania voters to show ... identification at the polls or be forced to cast a provisional ballot has passed the state Senate. The ... bill was approved ... 29-21, and sent to the House, which has already approved a measure with similar requirements. However, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rendell and an ACLU official criticized it as putting up obstacles for voters. "The governor is concerned that identification requirements may discourage people from voting and eventually disenfranchise people," said Rendell's press secretary. If [it] becomes law, the requirements would be in force for the 2006...

The discovery of uncounted ballots in a King County elections facility could change the tenor of the governor's-election lawsuit, and it comes just as Republicans fine-tune their case in the final weeks before trial and drop some previously high-profile claims. Already, attorneys for both sides say the news of 94 uncounted, valid absentee ballots means scrambling to change plans for last-minute collection of evidence. They will expand the list of officials they want to question under oath and will change the nature of questions they'll ask King County's top two election officials, who were already scheduled for depositions. News of...

Ever hear of how republican's always call the liberal left "Whiner's"? Well, take a look at Wa. State, ...who are the Whiner's now? LOTS OF LAUGHS! Boy, the shoes on the other foot now! I think it's great, don't you? These people deserve it..! Has anyone seen the comedian on HBO, who gave a discription of a "Republican"? Wow was that great, and very very true.

Democrat Christine Gregoire will be sworn in as Washington's Governor today, possibly thanks to voters such as Mary Coffey, James Courneya and Rosalie Simpson. Why do we mention them in particular? Because, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently reported, they're all dead... Revelations of the formerly living casting ballots in elections isn't new to American politics, although it's something most of us thought was a relic of the late Richard Daley's Chicago. But this isn't the only jaw-dropper to have come out of Washington's gubernatorial race, which Ms. Gregoire claims to have won -- on a third recount, by 129 votes...

details to come, just heard

Reader Brian Thomas forwarded a very detailed letter [to Rossi] ... describing his experience as a recount worker. [On 12/20/04] in a second count of a box of absentee ballots I found, in the middle of ballots with Christine Gregoire votes, a ballot on which the bubble next to Christine Gregoire had been filled in and ‘X’ed out twice. ‘X’ing out a bubble being the correct procedure for canceling a vote on an absentee ballot. Next to the ‘X’ed out bubble was printed the words “no vote” with an arrow pointing to the name Christine Gregoire. I showed the ballot...

SEATTLE, Dec. 22 - After a bitter and protracted recount fight in the Washington governor's race, elections officials announced Wednesday that the Democratic candidate, Christine O. Gregoire, was leading her Republican opponent by 10 votes - a minuscule margin but a stunning reversal of the Nov. 2 election results. The preliminary results elated Democratic Party officials and came only hours after the party scored another victory, when the State Supreme Court agreed with the Democrats' contention that more than 700 newly discovered and erroneously disqualified ballots in heavily Democratic King County should now be considered. Since those ballots came from...

BC-APNewsAlert,0037 OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - The Democratic state chairman says recount results from King County give Democrat Christine Gregoire an eight-vote victory in Washington's governor's race. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) AP-NY-12-21-04 2312EST

New Mexico is going through what seems to have become its traditional post-election vote-counting dilemma, with confusion and rhetoric in great supply. One feeds the other and it's not good for the integrity of the process. This year brought a new wrinkle with thousands of provisional paper ballots on top of a bumper crop of absentee and so-called in-lieu-of-ballots. More than 19,000 of these ballots remain to be verified or counted, or both. It's anyone's guess how many will be disallowed if the voter's eligibility cannot be confirmed. The number of outstanding ballots -- and potential votes -- is greater...