Becoming more and more hysterical at the possibility of losing the presidential election, liberals and their media allies are psyching up the public to expect legal challenges in any states that have close elections. Florida is the focus of their paranoia because of President George W. Bush's narrow wins there by 537 votes in 2000.

They are putting out the spin that, if pre-election polls show Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the lead in Florida but the paperless voting machines give Bush the victory, that means the election is suspect! They have already lined up hundreds of litigating lawyers to rush into court to persuade activist judges to change the results.

After the prolonged uncertainty of the Florida election of 2000, Florida spent millions of dollars to replace butterfly ballots with touch-screen machines. Now we find that they are just as controversial and a challenge is pending in a Tallahassee court.

Democrats are not claiming election fraud, and former Vice President Al Gore didn't claim fraud in 2000. Gore was free to present evidence of fraud or other misconduct, but he had no such evidence and that's why his strategy was to demand a different method of counting the ballots.

This time the Democrats' game plan is to accuse Republicans of suppressing the minority vote, asserting that "ballot security" and "preventing voter fraud" are just code words for intimidating minority voters. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., was in Florida last week accusing Republicans of "trying to keep people from voting." It's good to keep people from voting who are not eligible to vote. Unfortunately, there are many ways that ballots are cast and counted for people who are not eligible.

A New York Daily News investigation discovered that 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both New York and Florida. That's illegal, of course, and punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, but nobody checks registration rolls across state lines and these election frauds go unpunished.

Of the 46,000, 68 percent are Democrats, 12 percent are Republicans, and 16 percent didn't claim a party. The Daily News also found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters voted twice in at least one election, and one man voted twice in seven elections including the last four presidential races.

John Fund's new book Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Dimensions; $16,95) says, "After extensive research, I can report that while voting irregularities are common, the number of people who have spent time in jail as a result of a conviction for voter fraud in the last dozen years can be counted on the fingers of one hand."

Across the country and especially in Florida, Democrats are trying to register felons. This is despite the fact that Florida has disenfranchised felons for as long as it has been a state, as specifically allowed by the U.S. Constitution in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment.

Democrats have conducted voter registration drives in Florida county jails in an effort to harvest the vote of the 31,591 pre-trial detainees. They are eligible to vote if they are not already convicted felons. Continued...