The U.S. Supreme Court had to intervene in that fiasco because the election was so close the outcome actually depended on Florida. That’s clearly not the case this time, but the fact remains that the Sunshine State is an election disaster. As of late Thursday four major counties—Broward, Palm Beach, Duval and Miami-Dade—had not finished counting all ballots.

Early this morning, election supervisors in Broward and Miami-Dade announced that they finally completed the job late Thursday night after working around the clock for days. Judicial Watch was on the ground in Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest county, with 829 precincts and 1.2 million voters. Its voting website advertises that it’s “ELECTION READY” though there was little evidence of that this week.

Incredibly, Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley had the audacity to insist at a press conference this week that her office “conducted a very good election.” After being pressed by a reporter, Townsley was forced to concede that she was “embarrassed” and “disappointed,” but refused to answer questions about the long lines and major delays at the polls that made national headlines. During early voting lines extended for blocks and frustrated voters waited hours to cast a ballot.   

Now, after the fact, Miami-Dade’s mayor is calling for an investigation. In the local newspaper he pledged to uncover what went wrong by forming a task force that will examine the scandal. Townsley, the beleaguered election supervisor, claims she’s waiting for the “after-action report” to determine what went wrong, assuring that “we will learn from those lessons.”

The scandal broke several weeks ago in south Florida’s Palm Beach County where the supervisor of elections set off a statewide probe after discovering questionable forms coming from Strategic Allied Consulting, an Arizona-based firm. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has paid Strategic Allied Consulting $3 million to register new voters in several states, according to news reports, and Florida’s GOP has doled out an additional $1.3 million.

Now the number of counties in Florida, a key battleground state, that have reported questionable voter registration forms connected to the consulting firm has grown to 10. The tainted forms include discrepancies in addresses, signatures and other identifying information. The scandal has led the RNC and several of its state chapters to fire Strategic Allied Consulting, which is under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

One of Florida’s largest newspapers went so far as to compare this to the rampant, nationwide voter registration fraud caused by the “community group” ACORN during the 2008 presidential election (read all about that in a Judicial Watch special report). “Remember all that talk from Republicans about voter fraud?  Well, it ain’t just for ACORN anymore,” the paper’s political reporter writes in a story published over the weekend. .   

Though any allegation of voter fraud is serious and must be thoroughly investigated by authorities, it seems a bit premature to compare this to the massive ACORN scandal that rocked the last presidential election. Seventy ACORN employees in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud and a congressional report revealed that more than one-third of the 1.3 million registrants submitted by the group in the 2008 election cycle were invalid.

Whether the fraud is tied to Republicans or Democrats, Judicial Watch is monitoring this closely through its 2012 Election Integrity Project to assure that voter rolls are as clean as required by federal law. Through publicly available data, JW has already discovered that voter rolls in several states—including Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida, Alabama, California and Colorado—contain the names of individuals who are not eligible to vote.

The story, out of Florida, is almost unbelievable but JW has all the documentation to prove it. First here is a little background; in 2010 JW launched the Election Integrity Project precisely to pressure states and localities around the nation to clean up voter registration rolls pursuant to Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The goal is simple, to ensure the integrity and legitimacy of the electoral process by removing from the eligible voter lists the names of people who have died or moved. Enacted in 1993, NVRA actually requires this so states and counties shouldn’t need a reminder from an independent, nonpartisan educational foundation like JW.

Never the less, JW obtained publicly available data that indicates voter rolls around the country—including key swing states—contain the names of individuals who are ineligible to vote. They include Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, California, and Colorado.

JW found that there appear to be more individuals on voter registration lists in these states than there are individuals eligible to vote, including dead people. JW warned election officials with letters notifying them of the problem and reminding that they’re required by law to “maintain accurate lists of eligible voters for use in conducting elections.” JW further writes that it’s prepared to take legal action of the voter rolls aren’t cleaned up.

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning got his friendly reminder in February, specifically noting that the Sunshine State appears to be failing to remove from the eligible voter lists the names of people who have died or moved. This is crucial because election fraud was a significant concern during the 2008 and 2010 elections and voter registration fraud was rampant.

In comes the case of two South Carolina women—a mother and daughter—who continue receiving voter registration cards from the West Palm Beach, Florida Supervisor of Elections office long after leaving the state and registering to vote in another one. They moved to Greenville more than four years ago and have repeatedly notified Florida and West Palm Beach election officials. When they continued receiving voter cards and even absentee ballots they notified the Attorney General’s office and a special Florida voter fraud hotline.

JW has obtained copies of the Florida voter registration cards sent to the mother’s Greenville address as recently as this month. To protect the women’s privacy, we can’t provide them but the forms are legitimate and the story is truly inconceivable. “This is voter fraud to the max,” one of the frustrated citizens told JW. “After I finally got an email confirmation from the (Florida) state division of elections that my name had finally been removed from their list, I checked my mail box and there they were; two cards. One in my name and one in my daughter’s name. It’s truly bizarre and annoying.”

The alarming figures were published this week in a report issued by the non-partisan Pew Center on States. It reveals that approximately 24 million active voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or have significant inaccuracies. The problem, apparently, is an outdated registration system that can’t properly maintain records.

While this madness goes on, the Obama Administration is spending resources to legally challenging state voter identification laws—similar to one already upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court—that could help fix the crisis. More than a dozen states have passed measures requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls and the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a campaign to challenge them all, asserting that they’re discriminatory because many minorities are too poor or too ignorant to get a valid ID.

Last month Texas struck back, suing the DOJ in federal court for blocking the implementation of a state voter ID law passed by the legislature in 2011 to deter and detect election fraud. Under the Federal Voting Rights Act, the DOJ must approve changes to election laws in certain states and Texas is among them. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has been waiting for the DOJ preclearance since last July, but the feds continue stalling, essentially blocking the law’s implementation.

Preserving the integrity of the election process has been a huge issue for Judicial Watch over the years. Just last week JW launched the 2012 Election Integrity Project to pressure states and localities to clean up voter registration polls in order to comply with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). A lengthy JW investigation of public records indicates that voter rolls in numerous states have more registered voters than voting-age population.

Among the states that appear to contain names of individuals who are ineligible to vote are Florida, California, Texas, Colorado, Ohio, Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana and West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Missouri. This month JW sent warning letters to election officials in Indiana and Ohio as well as letters of inquiry to Florida and California officials as part of the probe into their problematic voting lists.