Are we really living an increasingly corrupt and scary world?

...or are we becoming increasingly paranoid? For instance, is the issue reported below really a new problem or a recurring problem? Is this type of behavior being reported only because of the closeness of the race or is this behavior (or the prevalence of such behavior) truely novel to this election?

Mrasek, who is disabled with emphysema, said he and his son spotted a newspaper ad for the [GOP funded] Sproul group. The younger Mrasek, who also is disabled and lives with his father at the Daisy Motel, bowed out when he learned the emphasis was to register GOP voters.

His father took the Sproul job, which paid about $8 an hour and allowed workers to go home early with full pay on days they managed to register 18 Republicans.

Mrasek said he was given a written script to ask people whether they favored Bush or Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record). To those favoring the Massachusetts senator, Mrasek replied that he was just taking a poll and thanked them for stopping.

But for those who liked Bush, Mrasek offered to register them. 'George Bush (news - web sites) really needs your help this election,' he said he was told to say.

In predominantly Democratic Las Vegas, however, Mrasek had a hard time finding unregistered Republicans, he said. One day, he registered himself and his son as Republicans to meet his quota, though he opposes Bush's Iraq (news - web sites) policies and plans to vote for Kerry.

Eric Russell, another temporary employee for the project, also alleged that he saw Democratic Party registrations thrown in the trash. With legal assistance from the Democratic Party, he went to court and tried, unsuccessfully, to reopen registration.

Russell, a Republican who now plans to vote for Kerry, also gave authorities a copy of the written sales pitch, which said, in part, "Use your training to find likely Republicans."

Sproul denied the allegations. He said he fired Russell and then sued him, alleging he and the company had been slandered.

"Our goal was to register as many supporters of President Bush as we could. However, we gave very strict instructions to everybody associated with us that we had a zero tolerance policy if anybody was destroying, tampering or altering registration forms," he said, adding that his project turned in more than 500 Democratic registrations in Nevada.

Meanwhile, Republicans say the Democratic registrations submitted by liberal groups are tainted.

Link. If you want my opinion, and I am sure you do, we are increasingly paranoid and we have become this way, as Moore cogently argued a la Bowling for Columbine, because the media feeds on our fear. Fear sells! This article seems to support my hypothesis.