Tighten Your Seatbelts

For the last few days, Republicans and their media enablers have been laying the groundwork to declare any close races today as stolen by Democratic election fraud.

What's New? Lacking Evidence, Conservatives Again Stoke Voter Fraud Fears
Zachary Roth | November 3, 2009, 11:12AM


Another election, another boatload of evidence-free Republican claims of voter fraud...

In part because it's the closest of the major races, the New Jersey governor's race has been the focus of the GOP's dire warnings. Here's how the campaign to stoke fears over voter fraud in the Garden State has ramped up in recent days:

• First, Jim Geraghty of National Review sounded the alarm last Thursday: State Democrats, he fretted, had asked that absentee voters whose signatures on their ballot request form didn't match that on their registration form -- 2300 people in all -- be given provisional ballots, rather than have their votes thrown out if they couldn't be contacted by local election officials. Geraghty warned: "Suspicious minds see the as an attempt to create a pool of emergency votes to be used if Christie holds a small lead on Election Night."

• Geraghty followed that up with a post a few hours later, noting that "just about everybody shows a close race, and concerns about voter fraud make Republicans unable to feel optimistic about a close race. Norm Coleman can explain how winning a race on election night doesn't always mean you get to take the oath of office." One of the most rigorous vote counting processes in recent history found no credible evidence of voter fraud in Coleman's Senate loss to Al Franken.

more:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...