DOPE-Y VOTER TRICKERY TRANSFERS

THE SAGA OF Pennsylvania college students who thought they were signing a
petition to legalize medical marijuana but were instead duped into changing
their voter registration to Republican is getting weirder and weirder.

Yesterday, we told you about the case of a number of students on the
Montgomery County Community College campus in Blue Bell who were apparently
tricked by an unknown group into signing the papers - which in most cases
actually changed their registration from Democrat to Republican.

Now it turns out the exact same scam was pulled on the opposite side of the
state, a couple of hundred miles away at Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, where hundreds of students are now shocked to learn that
they're registered Republicans.

One of the students, a sophomore music major from Blairsville named Richard
Auvil, told the Indiana Gazette newspaper that he felt let down by the
electoral system. "It is disheartening not because my party was so switched
but because the process was tampered with so blatantly."

The biggest mystery, though, is why someone went through the trouble.
Changing party registration before the fall general election doesn't
prevent the victims from going to the polls on Nov. 2, or voting for
whichever candidate they prefer. No one has been identified as a culprit,
and officials at IUP say they have no record of anyone seeking permission
to lobby for marijuana reform.

The most likely possibility is that the apparent statewide scam is because
workers were hired and paid by the number of GOP registrations they turned
in - which would provide a financial incentive, if not a political one, for
the alleged dirty tricks. Of course, the registration changes might also
sow confusion on Nov. 2 and somehow muck up the voting process.

Officials have said that a for-profit firm called Nathan Sproul and
Associates was active in western Pennsylvania in a GOP-funded voter sign-up
drive similar to their efforts that sparked controversial elsewhere. In
Nevada, Sproul officials have denied allegations that its workers ripped up
hundreds of forms from would-be Democrats.