Phrased in that way, the question may come as a shock. The U.S. has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified, at least in rhetoric, by the claim that people deserve the right to vote for their leaders. Most of us assume that the right to vote has long been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Not according to the Supreme Court. In Bush v. Gore (2000), the Court ruled that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.” That’s right. Under federal law, according to the Supreme Court, if you are a citizen of the United States, you have a right to own a firearm that might conceivably be used in overthrowing the government. But you have no right to wield a vote that might be used to change the government by peaceful means.

FairVote, a nonprofit organization that leads the fight for electoral reform in the U.S., points out:

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True the Vote, a Houston-based group that pushes for harsher voter restrictions at the state level, filed a suit in U.S. District Court in D.C. asking the court to grant the group tax-exempt status and to award damages for the IRS's alleged targeting of conservative groups.

The Washington Post reports:

Originally called [King Street Patriots]/True the Vote, the group filed in July 2010 for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) charity organization. In August 2011, the group changed its name to True the Vote Inc.; King Street Patriots has separately been seeking the 501(c)(4) status from the IRS. True the Vote has come under fire for intimidating African-American and other minority voters at the polls.

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Given the professed concerns about election fraud among Virginia Republicans, it seems somewhat astonishing that the man at the center of the Commonwealth's most notorious fraud scandal last year seems to be getting off the hook after initially being charged with 13 criminal counts including eight felony charges.

Colin Small, a Republican Party voter registration supervisor who secretly tossed filled-out voter registration forms into a dumpster last year, had all of his felony charges dropped by the local Republican Commonwealth attorney prosecuting the case yesterday.

Small was arrested and charged with 13 counts -- including destruction and disclosure of voter registrations, as well as obstruction of justice -- in Harrisonburg, Va., in the run-up to the presidential election last year, after he was seen by a local shopkeeper throwing away a bag of registration forms behind his store. Small's felony charges were all dropped on Tuesday, according to local Fox affiliate WHSV.

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From the AP:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported Tuesday that the two ex-employees were charged with a third degree felony. But prosecutors back in January decided to place both of them on probation because neither has a criminal history.

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired by Republicans to do voter registration drives in Florida and other states. But last fall, the state party fired the company and took the additional step of filing an election fraud complaint against the company with state officials.

Rebekah Joy Paul submitted 20 fake voter registration applications, according to the FDLE, while Christian Davis Price submitted seven. Both alleged that they were told they would not get paid unless they submitted a certain number of applications, and Paul alleges that she was instructed not to register Democrats.

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From the Lynchburg News & Advance (via TPM):

The Senate legislation, and a companion measure -- House Bill 1337, sponsored by Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, which cleared the House of Delegates today on a 63-36 vote -- would eliminate the use of a utility bill, pay stub, bank statement, government check and Social Security card as acceptable identification that can be presented at the polls. Voters would still be able to use a voter identification card, concealed handgun permit, driver's license and student ID card.

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It’s lucky that was the case, because the federal commission tasked with making elections function better has been stymied by partisan infighting that has left it with zero commissioners, with Republicans refusing to appoint new ones and blocking Democrats from doing the same.

Congress created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission with the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated over $3 billion to help states improve their election administration and enacted a number of reforms aimed at preventing another debacle like the presidential election of 2000. The act passed with rare and overwhelming bipartisan support -- the House voted 357-48 in favor and the Senate 92-2 -- but the honeymoon didn’t last long and the commission soon fell victim to the partisan bickering that has hamstrung the Federal Election Commission.

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So far, the site doesn't explain the evidence that voter fraud swung the election in these three states, but does offer a Henry David Thoreau quote: "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." "Evidence of vote fraud is very much like that. Those who engage in it are slick and do all they can to hide it, so the evidence is often quite circumstantial," Chambers writes on the site.

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A release claiming to be from hacker collective Anonymous alleges there was more behind Rove's freak-out than first met the eye. The group says that it foiled Rove's attempt to steal the election in Florida, Virginia and Ohio by using the GOP's ORCA system.

Two weeks prior to Election Night, a typical Anonymous video was released warning Rove against rigging the election. "We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor," Anonymous' ubiquitous Guy Fawkes character warned.

Then, following Obama's win and Rove's very public outburst, a group calling themselves "The Protectors," believed to be comprised of Anonymous hackers, sent a letter to election transparency non-profit, Velvet Revolution, claiming to have thwarted attempts by GOP strategists to flip votes and rig the election in three swing states.

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In an interview with Don Carrigan of WCSH-TV, Charlie Webster claimed that there was suspicious activity in rural Maine towns. "In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day," he said. "Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in (these) towns knows anyone who's black. How did that happen? I don't know. We're going to find out."

The Portland Press-Herald reports that when pressed, Webster would not give specifics on where the alleged fraud may have taken place.

From the Press-Herald:

Webster said he has identified five "pockets" of the state where he has concerns about voting irregularities. He would not identify those areas, but said he plans to mail "Thank You" cards to all of the newly registered voters. If a large number of cards are returned because the addresses are invalid, Webster said, he will know he is on to something.

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It would actually be quite easy -- logistically, not politically -- to "fix" American elections. There have been a million sober, bipartisan reports and plans to fix them that have been largely ignored. Paper ballots, universal or automatic voter registration, expanded nationwide early voting and stricter requirements for clear and concise ballots would solve many of the problems we saw this week. Lots of states already have most of these reforms in place. Most other Western nations have a much easier time of voting than we do and their systems are easy to copy and adapt.

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If you have experienced voter fraud, or witnessed anything like it, please document or report it and send it in to us at readermail@salon.com.

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"I think that all of this stuff that has transpired over the last two years is in search of a solution to a problem, voting fraud, that doesn't really exist when you look deeply at the question," Schmidt said. "It’s part of the mythology now in the Republican Party that there’s widespread voter fraud across the country. In fact, there’s not."

Via ThinkProgress.

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Husted has issued a directive that could limit which provisional ballots are counted:

The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted.

Voting rights advocates believe this is contrary to a recent court decision and indeed to Ohio law which requires election officials to record the ID provided by the voter. They have filed a lawsuit which is expected to be resolved before November 17, when provisional ballots will be counted.

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They’re trying to determine if Small was acting on his own, or if he was acting under orders from superiors when he threw out several completed registration forms his canvassers had collected from Democrats. If true, that would indicate a very different situation. Instead of one rogue GOP operative, it would suggest a systematic effort by a contractor playing a key role in GOP voter registration efforts in several key states to disenfranchise Democrats. Marsha Garst, the Virginia prosecutor overseeing the case, told the Washington Post Friday, This is a very important investigation to the state, and we intend to prosecute Mr. Small to the fullest extent.”

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The New York Times reports:

"The lawyers will note how poll workers behave, where voters are directed, if intimidation appears to be occurring, whether lines are long. And they will report up a chain of command where decisions over court action will be made at headquarters in Chicago and Boston."

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Stephen Einhorn, the head of a small Milwaukee-based mergers-and-acquisitions consulting firm, admitted that he was behind the anonymous billboards, which some liberals suggested would intimidate Obama-leaning voters. Clear Channel Outdoor Advertising pulled the billboards after an investigation by NBC's The Grio and One Wisconsin Now, an activist group in the area.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the billboards initially appeared in 2010, but reappeared this election cycle as well:

"The Milwaukee billboards in 2010 replaced the gavel with images of a black man and woman, and a larger picture of a white woman, behind bars, with the words 'We Voted Illegally' emerging from a cartoon bubble, underneath the large headline: 'VOTER FRAUD is a FELONY!' Voting rights advocates protested the boards, to no avail."

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Vote by phone: Residents in Florida, Virginia and Indiana have received phone calls erroneously telling them they don’t need to show up at the polls on Election Day because they can vote by phone. The callers falsely identified themselves as actual election officials. Indiana's Secretary of State's office has investigated the calls and found a suspect firm, while Virginia's State Board of Elections is currently looking into them.

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