Ohio's voter-registration rolls are dirty, containing more than 122,000 apparent duplicates as well as the names of people who moved out of state in the 1990s, a local murder victim and even a pair of accused terrorists.

Among supposedly eligible voters in Franklin County are suspected terrorists arrested for alleged plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and a local shopping mall. As an imprisoned felon, one is ineligible to vote. The other, from Somalia, is not a U.S. citizen and thus broke state and federal laws when he registered in 1999, officials said.

. . .

Franklin County elections officials blame a computer glitch caused by conversions made to guard against the Y2K bug for 94,000 of the inactive voters.

Matthew Damschroder, county elections director, said a database containing the names of people who were mailed confirmation letters was lost after the county installed faulty Y2K software in 1999.

The Columbia Dispatch

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2004