Long before the first vote is cast on Nov. 4, Republicans are crying foul and warning of fraud in the presidential election.

The allegations, which are widespread in the conservative blogosphere, on cable news and talk radio, were echoed during the final presidential debate when Sen. John McCain charged that Acorn, a group that works with low income and minority communities, was “now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

The charges of voter fraud stem from the number of irregular voter registrations turned in by Acorn this year. By some reports, up to 30 percent of the 1.3 million voter registrations the group gathered were faulty. Democrats say the level of problem registrations is surprisingly high, but they dispute the Republican contention that it is an attempt to steal the election, calling such claims outlandish.

Whether or not the Acorn mess is an attempt at voter fraud, partisans have been trying to game the system for as long as there have been democratic elections. Questionable election tactics were used by many of the founding fathers. Even George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not above wooing unmotivated voters to the polls with free rum on Election Day.

Party Machines & Ballot Stuffing

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, most election fraud was perpetrated by political parties and their political machines. Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall machine in New York City is the most famous of these, but there were many others in cities around the country. The party in control of a city's government also controlled the municipal purse strings and could dole out patronage to supporters. There was an economic incentive to stay in power by whatever means necessary, and this often led to election fraud in the form of vote buying, rigged votes, ballot tampering and voter intimidation. Party officials appointed the precinct workers, so fraudulent vote counts and destruction of ballots was relatively easy.

In the second half of the 20th century, there was less opportunity for political fraud as political machines became weaker, election laws became stronger and new voting technology gave poll workers less opportunity to rig votes. The introduction of punch cards and electronic voting replaced manual tabulation and eliminated some opportunities for fraud. Even so, there are several notable examples of party machine fraud in modern times.

Harry Truman got his political start with the help of corrupt Kansas City party boss Tom Pendergast. Truman won a seat in the Missouri Senate in 1934 with the help of about 70,000 votes from phantom voters that Pendergast had on the Kansas City rolls. Pendergast also used armed thugs to steal ballot boxes, ferry repeat voters between precincts and intimidate reporters and election observers. In 1940, Truman won election to the U.S. Senate with the help of St. Louis party boss Robert E. Hannegan, who used similar tactics to help the future president.

Another president, Lyndon Johnson, won his initial Texas Senate seat in 1948 with the aid of massive fraud in the Democratic Party primary. The corrupt Parr machine in Southern Texas literally manufactured votes for several days after Election Day until LBJ had an 85-vote lead and won the election.

John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 with the help of suspected fraud in Illinois and Texas. Among the documented cases of ballot stuffing in that close election was a precinct in Texas's Angelina County where only 86 people voted. Yet the final count was 147 for Kennedy and 24 for Nixon. Fannin County, Texas, had 4,895 registered voters, but somehow they cast 6,138 votes, with three quarters for Kennedy. And there is strong evidence that the Daley machine in Chicago was responsible for Kennedy winning Illinois by 8,858 votes. Kennedy received 456,312 more votes than Nixon in Chicago, whose precincts reported their totals remarkably late. (Kennedy's nationwide victory margin was only 118,574 votes.) Voter turnout in the Daley-controlled precincts was a spectacular 89 percent compared with the nationwide turnout of 63 percent.

Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, Violence

Another tactic used to influence elections is to prevent entire groups of people from voting. It can be done by establishing unfair rules or by violence and physical intimidation. This was the tactic used for more than a century after the Civil War to keep African-Americans from voting in the South. Southern states used poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent blacks from voting. When civil rights workers came south to register blacks, physical intimidation and murder were used against them. This went on until Congress finally passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

There have been recent attempts to prevent certain groups from voting. Before the 2000 presidential election, the state of Florida contracted with a private company to purge the state's voter rolls of 50,000 alleged felons. The state's top election official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was also co-chair of the Florida Bush re-election campaign. About half of the people who were purged from the voter rolls were African-Americans, a group that historically supports Democrats. Most of the people purged were not felons and should have been eligible to vote, but they were unable to because they were not on the official list. After the 2000 election, federal election law changed to require provisional balloting for people whose registration status is in question.

Is Democracy Safe In 2008?

Considering the election scandals that this country has survived in the past, McCain's claim that Acorn's flawed voter registration forms threaten "the fabric of democracy" seems exaggerated. But with both sides expecting this to be a very close election, it could set the stage for legal challenges of voters at the polls and of the election results. If the past is any indication, a close race also increases the likelihood that partisan election officials will be tempted to help their candidate using extra-legal tactics. While recent changes to federal election law make that more difficult than ever, the election system is not fraud-proof.

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