More on Stolen Votes

From today's Times:

In Florida, voter registrations are being thrown out on pointless technicalities. Missouri is telling soldiers to send nonsecret ballots by e-mail through a Pentagon contractor with a troubling past. Nationwide, eligible voters are being removed from the rolls by flawed felon purges. And nearly a third of this year's votes will be cast on highly questionable electronic voting machines. No wonder a large percentage of Americans doubt that their votes will count. The election system is crying out for reform.

After the 2000 election mess, Congress responded with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, an anemic piece of legislation. Its major promise was that any voter whose eligibility was in doubt could cast a provisional ballot, whose validity would be determined later. But that promise is being broken, as states invoke legal technicalities to throw out provisional ballots. The law failed to address many other deep flaws in the system, like routinely misapplying ID requirements and suppressing minority votes.