With 11 days to go before the November 2 presidential election, officials in the battleground state of Florida are looking into complaints of widespread voter fraud, the state's Department of Law Enforcement said. Over the last several weeks, the department has received numerous complaints from elections supervisors, the secretary of state's office and citizens alleging "sometimes organized efforts" to commit fraud in voter registrations, party affiliation forms and absentee ballots, the department said in a statement. Investigations are under way throughout the state. Some people who thought they were signing petitions apparently "later found out that their signatures or possible forged signatures were used to complete a fraudulent voter registration," the department said. There were also reports of problems involving workers hired to obtain legitimate voter registrations. Some allegedly "filled in the information on the registration forms that should have been completed by the registrants," and in several cases workers "appear to have signed multiple voter registrations themselves using information obtained during the registration drive," the department said. "In many of the situations complained about, the workers were being paid on the basis of each registration form submitted." Most cases of voter fraud are third-degree felonies in Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each charge, the department said.
(Coming in early 2005, "Dems in the Big House")