Dems Surging in Voter Registration Nationally BUT Cuyahoga County Looks Very Suspicious

I’ve discussed in detail in a previous post how purging of legally registered voters in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 enabled George W. Bush to win two presidential elections. To summarize briefly: Greg Palast showed (See pages 6-44) how approximately 92,000 voters, most of them Black (54%) and Democratic (90%), were illegally and purposely disenfranchised from the Florida 2000 election, thereby enabling Bush to win Florida and the general election by 537 votes. A report by Victoria Lovegren described the apparently illegal purging of 165,224 voters from heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prior to the 2004 election, for no other specified rationale than that they hadn’t voted recently. In “Fooled Again – How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)”, Mark Crispin Miller documents how tens or hundreds of thousands of voters were purged from other Ohio counties as well, and how those purges were targeted against Democrats by using voting lists obtained from stolen computers.

Apparently, these events did not get enough national attention to prevent repeat performances. State GOP interests have since continued to collaborate with our corrupt U.S. Justice Department. Art Levine notes:


Because George W. Bush won two consecutive Presidential elections primarily because of voter purging, I thought it would be a good idea in 2008 to monitor voter registration statistics over time in Presidential swing states to see if anything suspicious turned up. The results, as detailed below, look pretty good in general. In the good majority of states, Democratic voter registration has far exceeded Republican voter registration, and therefore I see no clear evidence of substantial voter purging targeted at Democrats, as there was in 2000 and 2004. However, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, could be a problem again, as I’ll explain shortly.


RESULTS OF VOTER REGISTRATION MONITORING IN SWING STATES

The voter registration statistics listed below are based mostly on publicly available 2008 statistics. For a couple of states (MO, OH) I had to call the Secretary of State’s office to obtain the statistics, which were not otherwise publicly available. I still have no comparative statistics for Indiana, though I have requested them from the Indiana Secretary of State’s office.

I compared the earliest available statistics for 2008 (or end of year 2007) with the most recently available statistics.

I was able to do statewide comparisons by party for three swing states (PA, NM, CO, NC).

There were two states (FL, NV) where I was able to do comparisons for major counties by party, but for which I have not obtained timely statewide data (Florida’s will be available on October 20th), so I present here some major county data for those two states.

In four swing states (VA, MI, OH, MO) I was able to do comparisons by county and statewide, but not by party, since voter registration statistics in those states are not listed by party. So instead, I looked at counties that have major surpluses of Democratic voters (based on 2004 presidential election results) and compared voter registration gains in those counties with statewide totals.

There are six swing states (WI, MN, IA, MT, NH, ND) for which voter registration information is not very important, since they either have same day registration or no voter registration required at all (ND).


Voter registration statistics in states where statewide data by party is available

Pennsylvania: April 2008 – October 13, 2008
Democrats: 4,200,109 – 4,424,022 (+5.3%)
Republicans: 3,186,057 – 3,229,806 (+1.4%)

New Mexico: May 2008 – October 9, 2008
Democrats: 543,615 – 582,099 (+7.1%)
Republicans: 354,272 – 369,775 (+4.4%)

Colorado: January 2008 – September 30, 2008
Democrats: 880,761 – 997,146 (+13.2%)
Republicans: 1,011,152 – 1,045,457 (+3.4%)

North Carolina: April 2008 – October 11, 2008
Democrats: 2,616,995 – 2,756,751 (+5.3%)
Republicans: 1,933,929 – 1,966,323 (+1.7%)

Comment:
It is clear that in the four swing states where statewide voter registration by party is available, Democratic voter registration has far exceeded Republican voter registration in 2008. That could be because of Republican voters switching to the Democratic Party or because of more intensive voter registration efforts by Democrats than Republicans, or a combination of those two reasons. In any event, these statistics appear to be good news, and Obama is currently winning in all of them, by good margins in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, and by smaller margins in Colorado and North Carolina.


Voter registration statistics in states where party data is available but where timely statewide data is lacking

Florida
In Florida, statewide data is available, but was last updated in August (will be updated again on October 20). Therefore, in addition to the statewide data, I’m including data from two of the counties with the largest block of Democratic voters and largest Democratic margins in recent Presidential elections. I could not find recent data for Palm Beach County, which is another big Democratic county. If substantial voter purging is occurring in Florida this year, certainly Miami-Dade and Broward Counties would be two of the prime targets:

Miami-Dade: December 2007 – September 2008
Democrats: 453,260 – 523,402 (+15.5%)
Republicans: 359,750 – 373,164 (+3.7%)

Broward: December 2007 – October 14, 2008
Democrats: 451,855 – 530,663 (+17.4%)
Republicans: 228,968 – 243,464 (+6.3%)

Total state: December 2007 – August 2008
Democrats: 4,138,604 – 4,453,008 (+7.6%)
Republicans: 3,826,836 – 3,954,884 (+3.3%)


Nevada
Clark County has by far the largest population of any county in Nevada (more than triple that of any other county) and was also the only Nevada county to vote for John Kerry in 2004. Therefore, if Nevada was targeted for voter purging in 2008, certainly Clark County would be primarily involved:

Clark County: July 2008 – October 13, 2008
Democrats: 414,038 – 457,805 (+10.6%)
Republicans: 304,265 – 320,019 (+5.2%)


Comment:
As with the other swing state counties where voter registration statistics are available by party, the data available for Florida and Nevada show a substantial excess of voter registration for Democrats, compared with Republicans.


States for which voter registration data is not available by party

For the states where voter registration data is not available by party, I’ve picked the one or two jurisdictions with the largest mass of Democratic voters and Democratic voting margins in 2004, to compare with statewide data:

Missouri: January 2008 – September 29, 2008
St. Louis City gave more than 80% of its votes to John Kerry in 2004, giving him an excess of almost a hundred thousand votes, which was a larger margin of victory for Kerry than he gained from any county in the state. Therefore, any voter purging efforts in Missouri would almost certainly involve St. Louis City:

St. Louis City: 230,720 – 245,616 (+6.5%)
Total state: 3,542,110 – 3,610,790 (+1.9%)


Michigan: January 2008 – July 2008
Wayne County is by far the largest county in Michigan, and in 2004 it cast 69% of its votes for John Kerry, giving Kerry by far his largest margin of victory of any county in the state, a margin over George Bush of 342 thousand votes. Therefore, any voter purging occurring in Michigan would certainly target Wayne County.

Wayne: 1,348,028 – 1,386,576 (+2.9%)
Total state: 7,141,914 – 7,243,261 (+1.4%)


Virginia: January 2008 – September 2008
Arlington and Fairfax counties were the only counties in Virginia to give John Kerry more than a two thousand vote margin in 2004. They each gave Kerry more than a 30 thousand vote margin:

Arlington: 130,639 – 139,638 (+6.9%)
Fairfax: 634,439 – 657,393 (+3.6%)
Total state: 4,585,828 – 4,789,512 (+4.4%)


Ohio: December 2007 – October 14, 2008
Cuyahoga County is by far the largest county in Ohio. It voted for John Kerry by more than a two to one margin in 2004, giving him a margin of 227 thousand votes. That was despite the fact that nearly a couple hundred thousand voters were illegally purged from Cuyahoga County in 2004, as noted above:

Cuyahoga: 1,066,253 – 1,102,061 (+3.4%)
Total state: 7,765,950 – 8,244,912 (+6.2%)


Comment:
Obviously, it is more difficult to assess voter registration statistics in states where statistics are not broken down by party. Nevertheless, in Missouri and Michigan it is clear that the major Democratic jurisdiction in the state showed better voter registration than the state as a whole – though the most recent data for Michigan is July (October data should be released later this month). In Virginia, the results aren’t as clear cut, but the two major Democratic counties together did a little better in voter registration than the state as a whole. But what happened with Cuyahoga County?


SUSPICIONS ABOUT CUYAHOGA COUNTY

The one very disappointing result in this analysis is Cuyahoga County in Ohio. The small increase in voter registration of 3.4% is far smaller than Democratic gains in any of the states looked at in this analysis, with the possible exception of Michigan (for which we don’t have data any more recent than July). And Cuyahoga County exhibited only about half the increase in voter registration as did Ohio as a whole. Certainly the Obama campaign must have targeted Cuyahoga County for registering voters, since it is quite clear that Obama has to do very well there in order to win Ohio.

Then there is also the fact that it was voter purging in Cuyahoga County that in all probability lost Ohio and the national election for John Kerry in 2008.


Outside pressure on Ohio

But what could be happening in Ohio? Unlike 2004, Ohio now has a Democratic Governor and a Democratic Secretary of State. But I came across an interview today, of the Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, by FOX News. In that interview, Greta van Susteren brought up the phony issue of “voter fraud” and noted that a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against Brunner for “not taking enough steps to prevent voter fraud”.

What this appears to mean is that there is considerable pressure at the federal level being exerted on the election in Ohio this year. Brunner tried to explain that her office has not been able to find any evidence of “voter fraud”, but van Susteren wouldn’t let it go.

Then Brunner made some comments that make it absolutely clear that considerable outside pressure is being exerted on Ohio this year, which suggests to me that someone like Karl Rove may be behind this:


Following that, van Susteren went on some more about “voter fraud”, and then guess who she brought on? Kenneth Blackwell – the architect (probably with Rove) of the theft of the Ohio vote in 2004! I thought that crook was out of the picture.


What does all this mean?

Clearly, the Republican Party is targeting Ohio for election fraud again this year. It seems quite obvious that the orchestrated complaints of “voter fraud” are meant to prepare the ground for massive “challenges” of Ohio voters on Election Day.

Is voter purging being conducted electronically in Ohio?
What this has to do with the disappointingly small increase in registered voters this year in Cuyahoga County is not clear to me, though I suspect that there is a relationship. Presumably illegal purging of voters would not take place without the knowledge and/or complicity of the Secretary of State. And clearly, Jennifer Brunner would not get involved in that. But keep this in mind: When the illegal purging of almost 200 thousand voters in Cuyahoga County occurred in 2004, voter registration was handled electronically – by Diebold! I don’t know if they have the same contract again this year, but I don’t doubt that they do. And if voter purging could be accomplished again electronically, then perhaps it could be done without the knowledge of the Secretary of State.

Are “inactive voters” going to be handled appropriately in Ohio?
And there’s something else too. Ohio voter registration data is not posted on-line. I had to call the Secretary of State’s office to get it, and it took me several attempts, some non-returned phone messages, and a long time to get through to them and get the data. When I finally did get the data (very shortly after finally making phone contact with someone from the SOS office) I noticed that it pertained only to “active voters”. So I asked the person who sent me the data if I could have statistics on all voters, not just “active voters”. The woman explained to me that only “active voters” are important because “inactive voters” are not allowed to vote, since they have “either moved, died, or are incarcerated”. But that’s not my understanding of the situation. My understanding has always been that “inactive voters” are simply voters who haven’t voted in a long while and/or who moved, but may still be eligible to vote in a general election if they still reside in the same county. The reason I mention all this is that the interaction I had with this worker from the SOS office could mean that plans are being made to inappropriately disallow voters to vote in Ohio, whether they are purged from the voter rolls or not.

A word about provisional ballots
And one more thing to keep in mind: There has been a lot of bad-mouthing of provisional ballots since the 2004 election, probably in large part because there were nearly a hundred thousand provisional ballots that were not counted in Ohio in 2004. But keep in mind that the number of uncounted provisional ballots in Ohio in 2004 was less than Bush’s margin of “victory” in Ohio in 2004. I can’t believe that Kerry would have conceded the election so quickly if the number of uncounted provisional ballots was greater than his margin of victory. And if anyone does concede a presidential election when the number of uncounted provisional ballots is greater than the margin of victory, that candidate doesn’t deserve to ever run for that office again. I’m just saying this because there may be a lot of Ohioans voting by provisional ballot this year, and everyone should realize that voting by provisional ballot, though not ideal, is a hell of a lot better than not voting at all.

One last thing
The last thing I want to say is that, all of this taken together makes me very suspicious of what’s going on in Ohio this year – but I don’t know what to do about it. This may take a bunch of lawyers and some people connected with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office to get to the bottom of this. We certainly don’t want a repetition of 2004.

And should be watched very closely, as it is a Dem stronghold.

And I think it's become much moreso in recent years.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hrw7GYLN4qc4DPNrrALrPgO_pRPAD93QKPKG0

"COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio's top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of new voters and make the information available to the state's 88 county election boards.

The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week, but the full court's ruling overturns that decision.

Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday.

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January, with many doing so before the contested Democratic primary election last March between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Certainly, I would think, that Brunner will have the leeway to utilize a reasonable method of ascertaining voter eligibility. Certainly they can't force her to disqualify voters based on the fact that they don't own a home or that they don't have a picture voter ID -- since there is no voter ID law in Ohio.

On the other hand, if voters are being secrety purged from the rolls, and if it's not addressed before the election, it may be too late to do anything about it.

As long as the media is in the hands of the Corporate State, as long as the DOJ, the FBI and various court members have been re-organized by the Bush Administration to be the only legal facilitators of our elections, as long as there is no penalty for the games that are played, as long as the ballots are counted on electronic and hackable machinery, McCain has a great big fat chance to be the third DECLARED Republican Presidential Victor over the last nine years.

Regardless of the fact that obama will be the one who really wins it.

Go Greg!

Was there a huge registration effort that year which may have precluded the need for a massive registration this year? Something happened in 2006 that allowed the Dems to kick out the GOP in this often Red state, and I think it was a Democratic voter backlash.

On the other hand, I agree that the GOP will attempt to contest lots of Democratic votes if the election is close and it will make a difference. If Obama is going to walk away with it, they will not bother. Right now they are issuing challenges all over the country to keep their options open for a long drawn out challenge. They may even be planning a bunch of challenges just to mobilize their own base for the 2010 midterms. I.e. they do not think they can steal this one, they just want their base mad enough that they turn out in 2010 to help them recapture the House.

But I doubt very much that the need for massive registration in Cuyahoga County this year was precluded. As noted in the OP, 303,000 voters were purged in Ohio in 2006 (in Blackwell's attempt to win the Governor election), and undoubtedly many of those were from Cuyahoga County. Furthermore, the figure that I give for Cuyahoga County for December 2007 was just a little more than the official total for the 2004 election -- in which they had undergone massive purges.

In my opinion, nobody will know for sure unless this matter is investigated thoroughly. And I think it should be a top priority to do that.

I agree with you that they are planning massive challenges, especially in Ohio. It is reprehensible what they are doing. They really do not want to lose this election. But you are right that they are probably trying to mobilize their base for 2010 as well.

It seems to me they'd keep copies of all the forms, unless that's illegal. So it shouldn't be that hard to do at least a spot check of those forms that were turned in to see if people are registered, and to look for patterns in the findings of that spot check.

thoroughly to see if indeed people have been illegally purged.

I agree with you that it shouldn't be that difficult to correct once the problem is defined better. But I don't know if anyone connected with he Obama campaign is even looking into it or perceives that there might be a problem.

year, make sure the corporate media can't railroad through an early proclamation of victory.

Even with a handsome Democratic victory, the full scale of the victory needs to be ascertained pretty accurately. They don't deserve employment on government premises as cleaning staff.

I certainly do hope that Obama will think long and hard and take a very good look at things before conceding.

So before you go all off half-cocked with another gloom and doom report, you should look at other mitigating facts...

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/39035.html

I don't see how that is likely to translate into such a comparatively low rate of increase in voter registration in an election year, when states all over the country are increasing their voter registration so much. Especially when they underwent massive purges just two years ago.

Anyhow, this is not a "gloom and doom" report, as you put it. What I'm saying is that this should be looked into by someone with access to the voter rolls, to see what is happening, especially in light of recent history and the fact that the Republicans are obviously trying to set the stage for disenfranchising massive numbers of voters in Ohio this year (See interview with Brunner by FOX News from OP).

You really don't believe that this is worth further investigation, to get to the bottom of this?

75,000-100,000 people right there.

Also, Cuyahoga County voting roles had an extraordinary percentage of registered voters to begin with. The data base needed purging. There were a lot of people double registered. People living in one place who just registered and did not change their address. I would say conservatively that that would amount to close to 10,000 duplications right there.

Look, I was on the board in Cleveland back in the 90's. There is really no chance of one party getting the upper hand on the other since the place is the last bastion of patronage available. There is pretty much one dem for every rep in the place. They watch over each other like you wouldn't believe.

There is incompetence but still, I don't really see, especially now with the people on the board and with Jane Platten as the executive director, that it will be much of a problem. Jane is one of the few people I have met in my twenty years of working in Cuyahoga County politics that would be above reproach. Sandy McNair and Robert Frost are two board members I know very well. They are upstanding people and are partisan for their respective sides.

I initially suspected that there was something very wrong with voter registration in Ohio, and especially in Cleveland, when I discovered a huge discrepancy between reports by the New York Times of massive new voter registration in Democratic areas of Ohio (ten times that of Republican areas) and official voter registration figures. The Times reporters identified 230,000 new voters registered in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County in 2004, compared to official Secretary of State figures indicating only 119,000 newly registered voters in Cuyahoga County.

Norman Robbins, leader of the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition. communicated to me by e-mail that there were 160,894 new voter registrations received by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in 2004 (compared to 31,903 new voter registrations in 2000). This was about 42,000 more registered voters than the 119 thousand increase in registered voters between March and November of 2004 indicated by the official figures (though Normans’ number of newly registered voters in Cuyahoga County is somewhat less than that identified by the New York Times.) The discrepancy between Robbins’ figures and the official figures could be due to purging of newly registered voters, or failure to process the new voter registrations, which Robbins describes in his report.

Confirmation of the probable reason for the above noted discrepancies came from research by Victoria Lovegren, who posted a report at Ohio Vigilance which indicates the purging, apparently illegal, of 165,224 voters from Cuyahoga County alone, for no other rationale than that they hadn't voted recently. Dr. Lovegren notes in her report that this practice violates the National Voting Rights Act. We don't know precisely when these purges occurred, though it was some time between the 2002 and 2004 November elections. Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of these reports is that the purging appears to have been done discriminately, that is, with no specific criteria for who would be purged.

And in addition to that, there is Mark Crispin Miller's meticulous documentation of illegal voter purging elsewhere in Ohio.

So, with Diebold contracted to maintain the voter rolls with their computer programs, why is it so difficult to believe that large numbers of people were disenfranchised in 2004? And how can you be so sure that it won't happen again that it isn't even worth investigating more thoroughly?

And where do you get 75,000 to 100,000 voters? 1% per year comes to only about 20,000 voters since 2006.

CUYAHOGA

973,831

1,096,449

+122,618

CUYAHOGA

1,066,253

1,102,061

+ 35,808

These go from December 31, 2007 to October 14, 2008.

That suggests that something happened between December 31,2007 and the start of the counting period referred to in the PR in January 2008.

Oct. 7, 2008

For Immediate Release


SECRETARY BRUNNER ANNOUNCES SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN VOTER REGISTRATIONS IN 2008



COLUMBUS, Ohio – Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced Tuesday that Ohio’s voter registration rolls grew by 665,949 voters in 2008. The deadline for voter registration was Monday, October 6, 2008.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, there were 7,518,189 active voters on January 1, 2008. After the close of voter registration, there were 8,184,138 active voters. Unlike the simple number of new registered voters, the number of active voters takes into account new registrations, changes in registration, and voters removed from the rolls under Ohio and federal law.

“We are already seeing the results of our preparation for November, with absentee voting a success across Ohio and 665,949 active voters added to the rolls. These are Ohioans from every corner of our state who can now take part in our democracy. Ohioans and, indeed the nation, can be confident that our preparation is yielding successful voting administration in 2008,” Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said.

According to Secretary of State records, the following counties showed the largest net gain of voters in 2008:


Rank

County

1/1/2008

10/6/2008

Net Change

1

CUYAHOGA

973,831

1,096,449

122,618

2

FRANKLIN

761,806

829,427

67,621

3

HAMILTON

549,743

596,722

46,979

4

BUTLER

228,384

258,055

29,671

5

SUMMIT

345,340

374,042

28,702

6

MONTGOMERY

354,972

382,842

27,870

7

STARK

243,349

268,518

25,169

8

LUCAS

286,145

310,905

24,760

9

LORAIN

184,296

201,001

16,705

10

CLERMONT

120,200

133,785

13,585



A complete list of changes in voter registration records is attached.

-30-


Media Contacts:
Jeff Ortega, Assistant Director of Communications, Media, 614.466.0473
Kevin Kidder, Media Relations Coordinator, 614.995.2168.

There was an excel spreadsheet attached with complete data.

According to the files I was sent dated December 31, 2007, there were 7,765,950 active registered voters in Ohio and 1,066,253 in Cuyahoga County.

But the next day, according to the press release, they were down to 7,518,189 in Ohio and 973,831 in Cuyahoga County:

1/2/2008 8:42:58AM
Active voters as of 12/31/2007

01 ADAMS 17,261
02 ALLEN 65,254
03 ASHLAND 36,185
04 ASHTABULA 60,672
05 ATHENS 40,701
06 AUGLAIZE 32,877
07 BELMONT 42,465
08 BROWN 26,854
09 BUTLER 242,150
10 CARROLL 18,897
11 CHAMPAIGN 24,770
12 CLARK 88,041
13 CLERMONT 126,914
14 CLINTON 25,850
15 COLUMBIANA 66,812
16 COSHOCTON 21,152
17 CRAWFORD 28,125
18 CUYAHOGA 1,066,253
19 DARKE 33,308
20 DEFIANCE 25,374
21 DELAWARE 107,740
22 ERIE 51,973
23 FAIRFIELD 99,063
24 FAYETTE 15,317
25 FRANKLIN 772,789
26 FULTON 28,401
27 GALLIA 22,987
28 GEAUGA 66,762
29 GREENE 104,160
30 GUERNSEY 24,010
31 HAMILTON 569,636
32 HANCOCK 51,016
33 HARDIN 17,197
34 HARRISON 10,637
35 HENRY 18,894
36 HIGHLAND 25,005
37 HOCKING 17,831
38 HOLMES 17,532
39 HURON 35,467
40 JACKSON 22,224
41 JEFFERSON 47,511
42 KNOX 36,404
43 LAKE 151,036
44 LAWRENCE 43,431
45 LICKING 101,512
46 LOGAN 28,999
47 LORAIN 187,070
48 LUCAS 295,856
49 MADISON 22,692
50 MAHONING 169,129
51 MARION 39,565
52 MEDINA 114,010
53 MEIGS 15,264
54 MERCER 25,825
55 MIAMI 67,642
56 MONROE 10,003
57 MONTGOMERY 364,031
58 MORGAN 8,768
59 MORROW 24,541
60 MUSKINGUM 50,727
61 NOBLE 8,822
62 OTTAWA 28,845
63 PAULDING 13,136
64 PERRY 21,311
65 PICKAWAY 30,371
66 PIKE 17,910
67 PORTAGE 99,538
68 PREBLE 27,785
69 PUTNAM 24,045
70 RICHLAND 92,185
71 ROSS 41,560
72 SANDUSKY 40,445
73 SCIOTO 47,692
74 SENECA 34,177
75 SHELBY 29,847
76 STARK 249,336
77 SUMMIT 351,795
78 TRUMBULL 148,633
79 TUSCARAWAS 57,028
80 UNION 30,197
81 VANWERT 19,981
82 VINTON 8,752
83 WARREN 128,391
84 WASHINGTON 39,226
85 WAYNE 67,439
86 WILLIAMS 25,681
87 WOOD 94,285
88 WYANDOT 14,965
Total counties: 88
Total active voters: 7,765,950

mine and your figures:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/swing-state-registration_n_132618.html?page=2&show_comment_id=16553159#comment_16553159

It's hard to know what to believe.

could reflect additions that were postmarked on time but not processed in time for her PR to go out.

Here are Cuyahoga registered voter totals from the primary '08:

Cuyahoga 1,053,232

So before you go all off half-cocked with another gloom and doom report, you should look at other mitigating facts...

Congress done NOTHING about this since 2006? Why? How do you expect us to keep contributing if you do NOTHING about vote caging and other foms of vote suppression? Hold hearings? What a joke.

address election fraud by the Bush administration.

More generally, it was a bad disappointment that they didn't take on the Bush administration on a wide range of issues. The decision not to impeach that war criminal was a terrible decision IMO.

First off, Cuyahoga county loses thousands of voters every year. Some move to other parts of the states (Colombus) and some move out of state like I did to Florida. Since 2000 Ohio has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. There is a great migration going on in that state. So that may explain some of the lower numbers.

BTW have you had a chance to take a look at Indiana? Registration up 40% over 2004? Is that right?

For the 2004 election there were 4,296,602 registered voters:
http://www.ai.org/sos/elections/2004%20Municipal%20Registration%20and%20Turnout.pdf

As of April 2008 there were 4,318,587 registered voters, and that includes 406,144 "inactive voters". (I don't know how they intend to handle the inactive voters).
http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/Statewide_Voter_Count_by_County5.1.08.pdf

As I note in the OP I could find no comparative statistics for Indiana for 2008 -- by which I meant that I can find no data more recent than the April 2008 data, with which to compare it to. I have requested more recent data from Indiana but have not received it yet.

So, the bottom line is that I doubt very much that there has been a 40% increase in registration over 2004, but I can't prove it because I can't find any data more recent than April. When statistics like that are espoused, sometimes what they are referring to is new voter registration. By new voter registration they mean the increase in voter registration between some specified date (the beginning of the year?) and Election Day.

Thanks for the hard data and research.