For months now we’ve been hearing stories of “soaring” voter rolls, especially in battleground states. These statistics give hope to Democrats and nightmares to Republicans. In particular, many Republicans worry that the bizarre increases in numbers (to the point that, in some parts of the country, there are now more registered voters than people) point to plan to perpetuate a massive act of fraud against the American people. Frankly, I’m not so sure.

Let’s begin by asking a simple question: how were all of these new “voters” registered? We know this answer to this: the majority of the registrations came about via the efforts of paid canvassers who, in virtually all cases, are paid for every voter they register. And, more than any other year, there’s enough money being poured into the race to, quite literally, flood battleground states with these paid workers.

So let me put forward a notion: the overwhelming majority of the new registrations (most of those over and above registrations of people who would have come to voting age and registered in any case) are of little or no practical value. A large percentage of the people who have been registered to vote in this drive either don’t exist, are already registered to vote, or won’t vote in any case. Consider, for a moment, the tactics being used to actually physically register new voters this year, especially by paid canvassers:

Harassment: I view this as the most likely cause of the surge in registration. Simply put, a certain percentage of the population will sign anything in order to get an aggressive individual to go away. This will inevitable lead both to people agreeing to register to vote who have no intention of voting and to people registering to vote multiple times not with the intent of committing fraud, but to get people to leave them alone.

Deception: We have multiple and credible reports of canvassers using deceptive techniques to get people to sign registration forms. These techniques have apparently most commonly included misrepresentation of the forms, including the making of false claims that voters have to re-register in order to vote in this election.

Fraud: The final, and fairly common, factor is out-and-out fraud. If an individual is being paid a few bucks to register a voter, then you can make a lot more money copying names out of telephone books than you can out on the streets. This has occurred many times in the past and I see little reason to believe that it will not occur again this year.

Enticement: In more than a few cases, people who register to vote are being offered a chance to win a prize. I think it goes without saying that offering a Plasma Screen Television might get a few hundred people to register to vote, but it’s not going to get them to vote. And, of course, such contests are likely to attract repeat registrants as well.

I don’t deny that we’re going to see voter turn-out tick upwards, but I suspect that it’ll be a very small one. We’ll get turn-out of 52% or 53% instead of 49%, but nothing like the 60% turn-out that some very optimistic Democrats are expecting.

The Democrats are chasing a mirage in this election. They’re going after voters who aren’t going to materialize in any meaningful way. Mark my words: they’re feeding off of their own enthusiasm and seclusion from the nation as a whole. This is a re-run of the later stages in Howard Dean’s primary campaign, when it was clear that the good Doctor’s poll numbers were not those that should be expected of a front-runner and we were repeatedly told that “invisible voters” were going to come out of the wood-work and sweep Howard Dean to victory.