Another Reason to Vote Early« Thread Started on Sept 24, 2004, 6:31pm » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another Reason to Vote EarlyIn an effort to suppress minority turnout, our opponents are focusing on poll challenging. Most jurisdictions allow each party to place a poll challenger in every precinct to ensure that only those who are legally registered can vote. Under the GOP strategy, challengers will contest as many democratic looking voters as possible and hope that they will leave without voting or cast a provisional ballot.In response to the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in 2000, the Help America Vote Act 2002 mandated that every person be allowed to cast a provisional ballot if they claim that they are registered to vote but their name does not show up on the roll. The problem is that states have different rules governing how provisional ballots are counted.For example, in Florida and Ohio, if a person casts a provisional ballot but it turns out the voter was not in the correct precinct the vote will not be counted. The Republican strategy is to challenge as many democratic voters as possible and should the voter decide to cast a provisional ballot, throw it out on a technicality.With a large number of first time voters and the difficulties faced by many jurisdictions to properly add new voters to the rolls, it is likely that many voters will be forced to cast provisional ballots, which may not be counted.In order to prevent this, it is imperative that you vote early if possible and if you have to vote on Election Day do everything you can to cast a regular ballot before agreeing to cast a provisional one.