Block the Vote: In yesterday's Times, Bob Herbert writes about continuing efforts to suppress the black vote in Florida:

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

Many facing police interrogation were members of the Orlando League of Voters, a group successful at getting out the black vote. A law enforcement official, perhaps not realizing the un-randomness of the actions, had this exchange with Herbert:

I asked if all the people interrogated were black.

"Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,'' he said.

He also said, "Most of them were elderly."

When I asked why, he said, "That's just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview."

And in piece sounding the alarm about paperless voting in Jeb Bush's state, Paul Krugman follows up the story:

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely African-American - while including almost no Hispanics.

He says the Republicans in Florida are on to something when they urged the faithful to use verifiable absentee ballots to make sure their votes get counted.