From California to Ohio to Pennsylvania and Florida, the voter anger and frustration is palpable.  The calls to our 1-866-MyVote1 hotline paint a picture of citizens who want very much to vote for the elected officials of their choice, and who are stymied at every turn.  Some send in the right paperwork for absentee ballots, and then, mysteriously they don't receive them.  A caller from Warwick, Rhode Island, called the weekend before election day, noting she had not received her absentee ballot.  "I am a disenfranchised, elderly, immobile voter, " she said, the emotion rising in her voice.

Others registered at their Department of Motor Vehicles, only to find out that for some reason, the Board of Elections never received their applications.   "No one knows anything, no one has any answers, no one could produce any records, and they all say, `Golly, we're so sorry," said a voter in Brevard County, Florida.

Election day is tomorrow.  Across the country, hundreds of thousands of citizens will be going to the polls casting votes in very close elections. When elections are close, political parties are tempted to use every tactic available to advance their candidates, sometimes skewering democracy in the process.

On Saturday,  The New York Times reported that thousands of lawyers from both political parties are at work in many states with tight races, noting "the legal machinery of a messy fight is shifting into high gear."

In Maryland, Republican poll watchers are operating from a party guide that instructs them that the "most important duty" of a poll watcher is to monitor voting in order to ensure that everyone who votes is qualified to vote, and to challenge any voter that raises any suspicions.  Nobody wants fraudulent votes cast, but the idea that poll watchers would be scrutinizing every voters' move with suspicion seems to fly in the face of what a democracy is all about.

According to the guide, even asking for help from a poll worker raises red flags.  So does any hesitancy when a voter is asked for name and address or date of birth.

Common Cause sent a letter to Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich asking him to publicly disavow the guide and to use his influence with the Maryland Republican Party to get the guide withdrawn.  The only response the Governor has given so far is to say he doesn't know a thing about it!

USA Today has a front page article on the various efforts by political groups - both partisan and non-partisan - to protect votes this election cycle.

According to the article:

We hope, of course, that they won't be needed.  But realistically, Tuesday will come and there will be instances of voter intimidation and discrimination, on top of voting machine malfunction and pollworker mistakes.

And that's why we're going to be there, with the 1-866-My-Vote-1 phone line, where voters can call in to get information on where to vote, and to report any problems they encountered at the polls.  In 2004, 1-866-My-Vote-1 logged several tens of thousands of calls, enabling us to pinpoint the hot spots and identify problems almost as they happened.

This Tuesday, we'll be there again.