Obama's down in the early September polls? Means nothing. Up? Ditto.

There is one action that can make all the polls irrelevant, and that is to get all our voters to the polls. The polls over-sample Republicans.

While voting machines remain a problem, I think they're going to be concentrating their greatest efforts on caging in the coming election. They tested the techniques out last time in Ohio, and they're going nationwide this time. While we're putting our energy into defending against what they did last time--i.e. electronic vote-flipping--they're on to the next tactic, leaving us attacking the position they occupied 4 years ago.

We need to short-circuit the ongoing caging operations. It won't work to just try to get people to check on their registrations and make sure they are still registered. You won't be able to reach everyone. You won't be able to reach half of them. And may people will lack the time, energy and other resoucrces to do what you ask of them.


Here is one approach that occurs to me (Comments from one & all are welcomed):

It depends upon being able to get hold of the lists of returned post cards early enough before the election for us to attempt to contact the caged voters. If that is possible, this can be made to work.

Here's what you would do: Get the list of returned cards (i.e. the names of those who are about to be stricken from the registry list).

Sample the list. For example, if there are 1000 caged voters in a given precinct, draw a random sample of 100 of them.

Go out & try to contact these people. Go to their doors, mail them letters that CAN be forwarded if they have moved, etc. The point here is to establish the degree of accuracy of the caging.

If the caging is identifying a lot of "false positives" (i.e. inappropriately flagging properly registered voters) for whatever reason, you quickly find a friendly judge and get an injunction to prevent the removal of these people from the registration list on the grounds that the inaccuracy of the procedure leads to more harm due to disenfranchisement of legitimate voters than any potential benefit that might arise from eliminating them from the rolls. The argument for the injunction is even stronger if you can show a systematic bias against registered members of one party or the other.