The "voter fraud" issue has been exploited by the McCain/Palin ticket though repeated evidence (fwiw to such people) has shown it is a non-problem. This is not the same thing as saying it never happens (though in fact evidence is that it close to never does), since nothing is 100% in this world, but that doesn't justify excessive replies that do much more harm than good.
[Consider let's say military recruiting. The voter fraud side will answer critics and say that a few excesses should not lead us to stop recruiting or provide excessive regulations. This for problems that statistically happen much more than voter fraud, as in more than negligible numbers.
In a sense, this turn around is fair play stopped the Republican challenge in Ohio -- the Supreme Court said a private party couldn't bring suit, just like it said earlier a private party couldn't bring suit to enforce a federal student privacy law.]
But, as a Washington Post article today suggests, there IS a real concern with voter suppression. Sometimes it is clearly criminal -- attempts to jam phone banks suggest the attempt to interfere with elections that have led to criminal prosecutions. Laws that encourage false positives, legitimate voters clearly likely to be brought in. Other times, it is a result of troublesome laws and practices that lead to thousands of legitimate voters to be burdened or even blocked at the polls. Just one example:
In Alabama, the centralized system triggered a new controversy over a constitutional ban on voting by people convicted of a felony crime of "moral turpitude." The governor's office in the past year issued a list of 480 crimes that meet the definition, including disrupting a funeral and conspiring to set an illegal brush fire.
Alabama's court administrator and attorney general issued a shorter list of 70 more violent and serious crimes. But Secretary of State Beth Chapman said the longer list was used to identify ineligible voters until three weeks ago.
Among those wrongly flagged by the database was former Republican governor Guy Hunt, who was driven out of office in 1993 after being convicted of a felony ethics violation for misusing inaugural funds. But Hunt, 75, received a pardon that declared him innocent a decade ago.
"Well, he's voted ever since the pardon, so he sure shouldn't be on any list now," said Hunt's son, Keith, in a telephone interview.
The former governor, who has run for office since he was pardoned, was included on a "monthly felons check" sent to a county registrar this year. The document, obtained by The Washington Post, contains 107 names of purported felons, but 41 of them committed only misdemeanors, according to the handwritten notations of a county staffer.
Note the mixed problem -- faulty on policy (even petty crimes) and results (badly administered). This was an issue in the 2000 election in Florida and very well might have thrown the election, given the error rate of "felons" was much higher than the margin of victory. This is much more of a grave threat to democracy than ACORN, no matter what McCain implied during the debate.
The let one hundred people free to prevent an innocent being convicted principle suggests depriving legitimate voters is a lot more important than a tiny number of wrong names on the rolls, names that don't translate into illegitimate votes. But, even if they did, I would be more concerned with legitimate voters disenfranchised. What should get more press and concern on the campaign trail? What does these days?
It goes beyond politics. This does not mean we should ignore the current regime is so much worse; but, neither side is free from sin either. Reality dictates we do not make the perfect the enemy of the good and all that, but the bottom line is clear all the same. The fundamental right to vote is the basis of our system of government. The fact the "wrong" sort of voter will lose out more times than not is not supposed to be the point.