WASHINGTON, September 23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Millions of US citizens, including five million black voters, are to be blocked from voting in the November 2 presidential elections due to legal barriers and dirty tricks, civil rights and legal experts complain.

In total, 13 percent of all black men are barred from voting due to a felony conviction, the Commission on Civil Rights was quoted by Reuters as saying Wednesday, September 22.

Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, the news agency added.

The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President George W. Bush won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting.

Seven percent of the whole electorate, but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised, according to Reuters.

In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons.

“This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone,” said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost thanks to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have registered numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout.

“There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic,” Mary Frances Berry, head of the US Commission on Human Rights, was quoted by Reuters.

“In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle,” she said.

Other ways were also used to discourage voters.

There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods, according to Reuters.

In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves, it added.

Minority voters may be deterred from voting simply by election officials demanding to see drivers’ licenses before handing them a ballot, according to Spencer Overton, who teaches law at George Washington University.

“African Americans are four to five times less likely than whites to have a photo ID,” Overton said at a recent briefing on minority disenfranchisement.

Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.

Meanwhile, Bush and his democratic presidential rival John Kerry are vying for securing absentee votes.

As many as 19 percent of voters in the United States might vote by absentee ballot in the 2004 presidential election, according to a July survey by the Pew Center for People and the Press.

The number of potential absentee ballot voters has increased from 14 percent in 2000, as many states move toward more relaxed voter laws, said the survey, carried by the US State Department information office.

In 2004, 26 states are allowing voters to vote by mail, dropping the traditional requirement that absentee ballots only be allowed in cases in which voters are unable to travel to the polls on election day.

Voters in these states may decide -- for any reason -- to mail in their vote prior to November 2. In Oregon, elections will be conducted entirely by mail in 2004.

Both political parties, energized by the close results of the 2000 Presidential race, are said to be reaching out to these overseas voters in 2004, energized by the close results of the 2000 Presidential race.

Israel, for example, has the fifth largest US expatriate community with approximately 250,000 US citizens. As a result, both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have mobilized campaign volunteers there.

Groups such as Republicans Abroad and Democrats Abroad have more than 50 chapters overseas in all regions of the world.