An ideal voting system would:
* Make it easy for voters to register.
* Positively ensure that voters were who they said they were.
* Make certain that no one could vote more than once.
* And guarantee that votes properly cast would be properly recorded, while making the recording of fraudulent votes impossible.
I’ve never read anything more racist than this in my life, have you, Jim?
Indeed, those are all obviously dog whistles for, “Let’s hang a negro!”
Add to that list:
* The Secret Ballot: Make sure a cast vote can’t be traced to a voter, protecting against voter coercion and vote selling.
This makes running a proper election without paper ballots at best tricky to work out.
* Make certain that no one could vote more than once.
This one is tough, with jet set crowds voting in one start and voting again in another. I’m ready for us to go Iraq purple fingers.
Ink stained fingers? You’ve got to be kidding! While the ink to create purple fingers is a cheap and effective solution to the multiple voter problem, it’s too cheap and effective for a government implementation. Where’s the millions of dollars in high tech contracts? Where’s the opportunities for graft and kick-backs? Where are the long term maintenance agreements?
You aren’t thinking like the government! Instead of providing each polling location with a couple bottles of purple ink (< $5), you need a network of facial recognition systems at each polling place. That would require cameras connected to computers running facial recognition software connected to a national database of people's faces. We could implement such a system for a few billion dollars (with likely overruns, $10+ billion) with annual maintainance costing several hundred million dollars.
That's a government solution. Purple fingers, indeed!
* Make certain that no one could vote more than once.
This one is tough
Nah, it’s simple. Just rig a high-voltage electric current to the voting lever.
What? You meant not more than once per election? Oh, never mind….
Before you all get too deep into your snark fest, we all bring our life experiences to the table of politics. My life experience was that my ballot, of my first time voting at age 19 under the new age-18 voting law, was thrown out. By the Democrats. Because it was publically known that I was a campaign worker for the Republican opponent of Abner Mikva. Who was appointed Judge Mikva by President Carter and later served as President Clinton’s counsel (i.e. lawyer) during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
And that Mr. Mikva won reelection to that seat by 10 votes. And that my father’s vote was also thrown out. And I am pretty sure he had cast vote for Sam Young (the Republican seeking reelection in what was a narrow-margin swing district owing to redistricting).
And why was I disenfranchised? Because I went on a “plant trip” on election day to interview for an engineering job with IBM in Lexington, Kentucky. I had to vote absentee by taking a 40 minute-long commuter train ride to Downtown Chicago to vote at the Cook County Registrar of Deeds.
And why did the local Democrats challenge my ballot? Because they were able to get away with it. I was living at home and using the bus/commuter train/carpool rides with Dad to attend Northwestern University McCormick Institute (the engineering college). I was registered in my home precinct. And yes, I had a driver’s license because driver’s training was mandatory for high school graduation, but with budget cuts, a lot of schools have cut that out, and I pretty much tool the train, bus, or depended on rides to get around in those days. So that my absentee ballot was ruled invalid really gave the lie to the Democrats calling themselves “Democratic” anything.
And why are the Republicans pushing this drivers-license-as-voter-ID thing? Because they can get away with it. With respect to stolen elections, I was born in Cook County, I grew up in Cook County, I voted in Cook County, and I know all of the black-humor jokes. To the extent that elections are stolen or rigged, all of that takes place at the “back end”, not the front end about individual persons risking a felony conviction by lying about their identity when they present themselves at the poling place.
And yes, you pretty much need a driver’s license to do almost anything — get a job, cash a check, and so on. But there are a lot of people out there without current driver’s licenses or substitute ID, and a lot are “at the margins of society” of the poor, elderly, and racial minority.
It really stinks that the Democrats prevented a graduating STEM student from Northwestern who was active in YAF, College Republicans, Northwestern Associated Student Government, the Sam Young for Congress Campaign, and the Congressman Phil Crane Conservative Leadership Seminars from voting. And someone should look me in the I that Voter ID would have helped my situation because it would have made zero difference. And it stinks just as bad if those voter ID thing helps “our side” by keeping someone “on the margins of society” from voting.
Egad Paul, want some cheese with that whine? You consider MFK’s initial post to be snark? With your direct experience in the issue, seems to me you should have some good ideas for building an honest voting system, instead of a 500 word pity party.
No, the call for an open, honest poling system is not snark. But the quote following “Indeed, those are all obviously dog whistles for, “Let’s hang a negro!”” is the deepest, and excuse the pun, darkest form of snark.
Yes, I want all the cheese I can get with my whine. Go ahead, read someone with my credentials and history out of the Conservative/Libertarian Movement. But if what the Conservative/Libertarian movement has become is that snarky race-baiting quote, I would be honored to be shown the exit door.
I am not interested in “credentialed”. I am interested in competent. I want to hear and discuss your ideas, you just seem to prefer complaining instead.
So Paul, you dispute Glenn Reynolds’ statement in the linked article that over a thousand felons voted in the Franken election? Voter ID, coupled with purges of felons from the rolls, would have prevented that.
Why the Voter ID requirement? One could just as well remove the names of felons and deceased persons from the voter rolls.
Because without voter ID, anyone can show up a the polling place, claim to be someone else and vote. I’ve talked to poll workers who’ve seen busloads of people show up at a polling place demanding to vote. Without any form of checks, what can stop them from voting fraudulently? Without means to identify those who have already voted, they can do it more than once. “Vote early, vote often.”
Personally, I’d like to see all voter registries purged at the start of next year and make everyone register again with proof of identity. This would be checked against government records to ensure no one can easily register in the name of a dead person. Next, correlate those databases across state lines to see if people are registering in more than one state. Do this months before any election to ensure time to clean up any discrepancies. I’d even include biometics like Mexico does (electronically scanned fingerprints).
For one thing, I have long considered myself more in the “Traditionalist” camp than the strictly “Libertarian” camp with regard to the Conservative Movement.
One of our traditions has been to give the States latitude in how they establish voter eligibility, conduct voter registration, and conduct the actual election. Yes, certain Southern States are still under “Double Secret Probation” with respect to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s.
And yes, reasonable restrictions on the franchise (voting rights) is a Conservative principle inasmuch as Democracy without any restriction doesn’t have a good historical track record and is not what the Founders intended in formulating a Republic.
With respect to Tradition, what we had going here in Wisconsin was going on for the 30 years I have resided and worked in this great state, and it probably dated many tens of years prior to my being here. A person registers to vote by presenting some proof of residency, and no, you didn’t need to present an original birth certificate as required for a TSA-qualified form of ID. A rent receipt or utility bill was OK. It is 20 years since I changed my registration by moving from an apartment to a house in a different part of the same city, but I imagine you had to sign something under penalty of whatever attesting to your eligibility to vote.
Once registered, you show up at the polling place and tell the poll volunteers, largely retired people who are your neighbors and who get to know who is in the precinct, your name. Milenkovic, how do you spell that? Oh, M-I-L, it is here, you live on something-street? Yes, I do. OK, here is your slip, and go “over there” to the next table to get your ballot.
I also regard Wisconsin as being the most “honor system” driven with respect to polling, and I have voted in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and California, all because I had resided and held employment in those places.
What a great State of Wisconsin and what a great place to work and live! People are honest and people trust each other, and I present myself at the polls and announce that I am Paul Milenkovic who lives on Something Street, and someone hands me a ballot. And by the way, I have never gotten to the polls and found that someone has already voted under my identity. Never. Ever. Never heard anyone complain to me it has ever happened to them. Ever.
And don’t get coy with me about how this has nothing to do with voter suppression. When this Voter ID thing went in, you needed a paid-for ID, either a driver’s license or a non-driver’s license ID that required a fee, and then someone caught wise that Ric Holder’s Federal Justice Department was going to come down on them like a load of bricks, and then there was this thing that you could get the ID for free, but you had to know about that rule and specifically ask for a free ID, but right now the whole thing is tied up in court, and those of you who think Voter ID is such a great deal get to tell-it-to-a-judge.
This is the same Justice Department that requires a photo ID to enter their buildings, right? So they must be trying to suppress poor people from entering Justice Department buildings. And the TSA is trying to suppress poor people from riding on airliners. And courthouses and other government buildings across the country are suppressing poor people’s ability to enter, right? And since you need a photo ID to apply for most government benefits, poor people are being suppressed there as well.
Is there no limit to the suppression of poor people in America? Or is there no limit to racial pandering in America?
Look me in the eye. This voter-ID really strikes a raw nerve by me.
The genuinely marginal don’t vote anyway, ID or no ID. As to the alleged legions of poor, disabled and/or minority would-be voters who “can’t” get an ID, they barely exist. There was a lawsuit about this issue in Kansas and the judge finally ruled that no evidence had been presented to established that even half a percent of the voting age population lacked a suitable ID. Several of the 17 states that now have voter ID laws also provide free IDs and even free rides to government offices to get them to anyone who asks. The number of askers has been a few dozen nationwide. This issue is a sham cooked up to defend the indefensible level of corruption and vote fudging the Democratic Party has come to depend upon in urban precincts.
The move to electronic at-home voting, and the debacles of absentee votes being lost/challenged/etc and provisional voting, basically make the whole process rife with the possibility of fraud at both the level of the individual voter and the (post-)counting level.
With the country so nearly equally divided, just a few votes per precinct could be enough to swing a close election. Every precinct becomes a potential Cook County. How we retain the confidence in our system necessary for an effective representative republic to exist is a real question.
If people start percieving the outscomes of elections as being illegitimate, it will open a Pandora’s Box that really we are way better off not opening.
Sometimes I really do feel like crashing a ballot and yelling “I don’t believe in democracy!” like Loki in Dogma… and then I remember they went on a killing spree right after.
Democracy – The God of Atheists.
Another problem with the “purple-finger” technique is that someone would probably come along twenty years later and claim that the ink caused them to get cancer of the finger. That, and people claiming allergies.
One component of the solution might be to treat any sort of electoral fraud as treason – which it is, because it strikes at the root of democracy.
Notably missing from Reynolds’ list, an ideal voting system should:
* Reflect the opinions of the electorate as faithfully as possible, by including the votes of as many voters as possible
Our government should be by and for the people. Not the rich people, or the literate people, or the people who drive cars, or the people who care about politics, but all the people. Sadly, however, the history of our country is one of non-stop attempts to limit voting to the right kind of people, and the current paranoia about voter impersonation fraud is just the latest example.
If every registered voter went to the polls in November, Obama would be re-elected in a landslide and the Democrats would control both houses of Congress. If every eligible voter voted, the landslides would be even greater. GOP hopes are entirely dependent on having enough voters stay home. Adding new voting requirements is one means to that end.
Like most arguments for Republican-favoring voting restrictions, Reynolds’ piece is full of nonsense:
in many places a person can simply claim to be one of those people and vote in their name with no one the wiser.
Yes, this is possible. But it is not risk-free — you could never be sure that none of the poll workers might know the dead voter, and if you’re unlucky you are facing a felony. What rational person would take that risk in order to cast one extra vote?
one voting-rights activist, a twentysomething white guy with a pony tail in Washington, DC, managed to get a ballot in Attorney General Eric Holder’s name
It’s very risky to vote under the name of a living registered voter. On top of the risk of a poll worker knowing the real voter, if the real voter has already voted your scheme will be obvious and you could go to jail. Even if you do cast a ballot, the fraud will be discovered when the real voter tries to vote, and there’s a chance someone will remember you. It’s an enormous risk for one vote.
the margin of victory was 312, but it turned out that 1,099 votes were cast by felons who were ineligible to vote
Reynolds has his facts wrong. While 1,099 allegations of illegal voting were made, only 243 ex-felons were either charged or convicted. The other voters were flagged in error, e.g. because they had the same name as an ineligible felon. And even in the cases where voters were ineligible, it was typically because they didn’t realize they had to go through an application process to get their voting eligibility back. About a third of the ex-felons who were caught had registered but hadn’t even voted.
Voter ID makes that kind of trickery harder
No, voter ID does nothing to keep ineligible voters who were mistakenly left on the rolls from voting. And Reynolds’ charge of “trickery” is wholly unsupported. The Republican lawyers working on the Minnesota election made no allegations of organized fraud. They looked high and low, and out of millions of votes all they could find was a handful of confused ex-felons.
Many of America’s largest and worst-governed cities suffer from entrenched and corrupt political machines that maintain their position in no small part via voter fraud.
This claim is made without any evidence, as if it’s something we all just know. And it has nothing to do with the case for voter ID. Corrupt political don’t steal elections by sending tens of thousands of people out to impersonate legitimate voters, they do it by corrupting the ballot counting. Does Reynolds actually think a corrupt political machine would be stopped by a law that required voters showing ID?
Underlying Reynolds’ argument is the assumption that voter impersonation fraud is rampant, and that it swings elections to the Democrats. Neither assumption is supported by any evidence. Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout, because if everyone turns out, Republicans are doomed.
Um Jim,
You admit Voter ID would do nothing to suppress felons from illegally voting. So is there any voter suppression you can point to when you make the assumption Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout? You keep making this claim and never supporting the argument.
And no, Republicans wouldn’t be doomed if everyone turned out. In that case, voters would see how the government is incapable of supporting the entirety of the population at one time. Everyone would realize what a failure it would be to continue the foolish notion that a singular federal government ever could support the entire population.
So is there any voter suppression you can point to when you make the assumption Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout?
Something like 10% of registered voters don’t have current photo ID that meets the requirements of new voter ID laws. Unless 100% of those people get ID between now and election day (very doubtful), voter ID laws will keep those people from voting. That’s legitimate turnout being suppressed.
Some of those people have ID that is valid in other contexts, but won’t be accepted at the polls. You’d have no trouble driving, or ordering a beer, or boarding a plane with a drivers license that has your maiden name (or your married name, when you’ve changed it back after a divorce), but if the name on your drivers license doesn’t match the name on the voting rolls, you can’t use it to vote. If your ID has a slightly different version of your name (W. Mitt vs. Willard M.) than the voting rolls, the election clerk can turn you away. In a country with over a hundred million eligible voters, the chances of voting rolls being in perfect sync with all the valid drivers licenses, passports, military IDs, etc. is basically zero. Some people will be out of luck.
Human nature being what it is, some fraction of the people who do have valid photo ID won’t have it with them when they go to the polls, and some of them won’t bother to make a second trip. Voter ID requirements will suppress their legitimate votes. [Are there people who don’t carry photo ID everywhere they go? Ask a waiter or waitress whether they ever have to refuse serving someone who forgot their ID.]
The opposite argument — that voter ID laws do not suppress legitimate voting — claims that every single legitimate voter who would have voted without an ID requirement will have valid photo ID with them when they show up at the polls. That’s a fantasy.
The sort of people who are least likely to be turned away — car owners, active-duty military, people who follow politics — are much more likely to vote Republican than the people who are most likely to be turned away — the young, poor, disabled, and very old. Because most of the suppressed legitimate votes would have gone to Democrats, voter ID laws are a cynical power play for the GOP.
Jim, 63% of statistics are made up on the spot. How about providing a link to something credible showing how a finding of around 10% for registered voters not having a picture ID
Republicans wouldn’t be doomed if everyone turned out.
If every eligible voter actually voted this November, Democrats would sweep into power. Just look at the polling.
The median voter theorem suggests that over time, political parties will try to appeal to the median voter, and expanding the electorate to include all eligible voters would shift the views of the median voter substantially to the left. So you’d expect the GOP to move left as well, to regain their electoral viability for this new, expanded electorate.
In that case, voters would see how the government is incapable of supporting the entirety of the population at one time.
Yes, it’s possible that the newly empowered Democrats would enact policies that fail, driving voters to the right. It’s also possible that Democrats would enact policies that become as popular as Social Security and Medicare, giving them control of Congress for decades, until the Republicans come around to at least claiming to support those policies, the way Romney and Ryan claim to be Medicare’s greatest defenders today. If you look at other developed countries you see generations of consistent popular support for welfare states that are much more generous than ours. Such a scenario is not impossible.
I’ve never read anything more racist than this in my life, have you, Jim?
Indeed, those are all obviously dog whistles for, “Let’s hang a negro!”
Add to that list:
* The Secret Ballot: Make sure a cast vote can’t be traced to a voter, protecting against voter coercion and vote selling.
This makes running a proper election without paper ballots at best tricky to work out.
* Make certain that no one could vote more than once.
This one is tough, with jet set crowds voting in one start and voting again in another. I’m ready for us to go Iraq purple fingers.
Ink stained fingers? You’ve got to be kidding! While the ink to create purple fingers is a cheap and effective solution to the multiple voter problem, it’s too cheap and effective for a government implementation. Where’s the millions of dollars in high tech contracts? Where’s the opportunities for graft and kick-backs? Where are the long term maintenance agreements?
You aren’t thinking like the government! Instead of providing each polling location with a couple bottles of purple ink (< $5), you need a network of facial recognition systems at each polling place. That would require cameras connected to computers running facial recognition software connected to a national database of people's faces. We could implement such a system for a few billion dollars (with likely overruns, $10+ billion) with annual maintainance costing several hundred million dollars.
That's a government solution. Purple fingers, indeed!
Which leads directly to this xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/463/
And just in time for Back to School!
* Make certain that no one could vote more than once.
This one is tough
Nah, it’s simple. Just rig a high-voltage electric current to the voting lever.
What? You meant not more than once per election? Oh, never mind….
Before you all get too deep into your snark fest, we all bring our life experiences to the table of politics. My life experience was that my ballot, of my first time voting at age 19 under the new age-18 voting law, was thrown out. By the Democrats. Because it was publically known that I was a campaign worker for the Republican opponent of Abner Mikva. Who was appointed Judge Mikva by President Carter and later served as President Clinton’s counsel (i.e. lawyer) during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
And that Mr. Mikva won reelection to that seat by 10 votes. And that my father’s vote was also thrown out. And I am pretty sure he had cast vote for Sam Young (the Republican seeking reelection in what was a narrow-margin swing district owing to redistricting).
And why was I disenfranchised? Because I went on a “plant trip” on election day to interview for an engineering job with IBM in Lexington, Kentucky. I had to vote absentee by taking a 40 minute-long commuter train ride to Downtown Chicago to vote at the Cook County Registrar of Deeds.
And why did the local Democrats challenge my ballot? Because they were able to get away with it. I was living at home and using the bus/commuter train/carpool rides with Dad to attend Northwestern University McCormick Institute (the engineering college). I was registered in my home precinct. And yes, I had a driver’s license because driver’s training was mandatory for high school graduation, but with budget cuts, a lot of schools have cut that out, and I pretty much tool the train, bus, or depended on rides to get around in those days. So that my absentee ballot was ruled invalid really gave the lie to the Democrats calling themselves “Democratic” anything.
And why are the Republicans pushing this drivers-license-as-voter-ID thing? Because they can get away with it. With respect to stolen elections, I was born in Cook County, I grew up in Cook County, I voted in Cook County, and I know all of the black-humor jokes. To the extent that elections are stolen or rigged, all of that takes place at the “back end”, not the front end about individual persons risking a felony conviction by lying about their identity when they present themselves at the poling place.
And yes, you pretty much need a driver’s license to do almost anything — get a job, cash a check, and so on. But there are a lot of people out there without current driver’s licenses or substitute ID, and a lot are “at the margins of society” of the poor, elderly, and racial minority.
It really stinks that the Democrats prevented a graduating STEM student from Northwestern who was active in YAF, College Republicans, Northwestern Associated Student Government, the Sam Young for Congress Campaign, and the Congressman Phil Crane Conservative Leadership Seminars from voting. And someone should look me in the I that Voter ID would have helped my situation because it would have made zero difference. And it stinks just as bad if those voter ID thing helps “our side” by keeping someone “on the margins of society” from voting.
Egad Paul, want some cheese with that whine? You consider MFK’s initial post to be snark? With your direct experience in the issue, seems to me you should have some good ideas for building an honest voting system, instead of a 500 word pity party.
No, the call for an open, honest poling system is not snark. But the quote following “Indeed, those are all obviously dog whistles for, “Let’s hang a negro!”” is the deepest, and excuse the pun, darkest form of snark.
Yes, I want all the cheese I can get with my whine. Go ahead, read someone with my credentials and history out of the Conservative/Libertarian Movement. But if what the Conservative/Libertarian movement has become is that snarky race-baiting quote, I would be honored to be shown the exit door.
I am not interested in “credentialed”. I am interested in competent. I want to hear and discuss your ideas, you just seem to prefer complaining instead.
So Paul, you dispute Glenn Reynolds’ statement in the linked article that over a thousand felons voted in the Franken election? Voter ID, coupled with purges of felons from the rolls, would have prevented that.
Why the Voter ID requirement? One could just as well remove the names of felons and deceased persons from the voter rolls.
Because without voter ID, anyone can show up a the polling place, claim to be someone else and vote. I’ve talked to poll workers who’ve seen busloads of people show up at a polling place demanding to vote. Without any form of checks, what can stop them from voting fraudulently? Without means to identify those who have already voted, they can do it more than once. “Vote early, vote often.”
Personally, I’d like to see all voter registries purged at the start of next year and make everyone register again with proof of identity. This would be checked against government records to ensure no one can easily register in the name of a dead person. Next, correlate those databases across state lines to see if people are registering in more than one state. Do this months before any election to ensure time to clean up any discrepancies. I’d even include biometics like Mexico does (electronically scanned fingerprints).
For one thing, I have long considered myself more in the “Traditionalist” camp than the strictly “Libertarian” camp with regard to the Conservative Movement.
One of our traditions has been to give the States latitude in how they establish voter eligibility, conduct voter registration, and conduct the actual election. Yes, certain Southern States are still under “Double Secret Probation” with respect to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960’s.
And yes, reasonable restrictions on the franchise (voting rights) is a Conservative principle inasmuch as Democracy without any restriction doesn’t have a good historical track record and is not what the Founders intended in formulating a Republic.
With respect to Tradition, what we had going here in Wisconsin was going on for the 30 years I have resided and worked in this great state, and it probably dated many tens of years prior to my being here. A person registers to vote by presenting some proof of residency, and no, you didn’t need to present an original birth certificate as required for a TSA-qualified form of ID. A rent receipt or utility bill was OK. It is 20 years since I changed my registration by moving from an apartment to a house in a different part of the same city, but I imagine you had to sign something under penalty of whatever attesting to your eligibility to vote.
Once registered, you show up at the polling place and tell the poll volunteers, largely retired people who are your neighbors and who get to know who is in the precinct, your name. Milenkovic, how do you spell that? Oh, M-I-L, it is here, you live on something-street? Yes, I do. OK, here is your slip, and go “over there” to the next table to get your ballot.
I also regard Wisconsin as being the most “honor system” driven with respect to polling, and I have voted in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and California, all because I had resided and held employment in those places.
What a great State of Wisconsin and what a great place to work and live! People are honest and people trust each other, and I present myself at the polls and announce that I am Paul Milenkovic who lives on Something Street, and someone hands me a ballot. And by the way, I have never gotten to the polls and found that someone has already voted under my identity. Never. Ever. Never heard anyone complain to me it has ever happened to them. Ever.
And don’t get coy with me about how this has nothing to do with voter suppression. When this Voter ID thing went in, you needed a paid-for ID, either a driver’s license or a non-driver’s license ID that required a fee, and then someone caught wise that Ric Holder’s Federal Justice Department was going to come down on them like a load of bricks, and then there was this thing that you could get the ID for free, but you had to know about that rule and specifically ask for a free ID, but right now the whole thing is tied up in court, and those of you who think Voter ID is such a great deal get to tell-it-to-a-judge.
This is the same Justice Department that requires a photo ID to enter their buildings, right? So they must be trying to suppress poor people from entering Justice Department buildings. And the TSA is trying to suppress poor people from riding on airliners. And courthouses and other government buildings across the country are suppressing poor people’s ability to enter, right? And since you need a photo ID to apply for most government benefits, poor people are being suppressed there as well.
Is there no limit to the suppression of poor people in America? Or is there no limit to racial pandering in America?
Look me in the eye. This voter-ID really strikes a raw nerve by me.
The genuinely marginal don’t vote anyway, ID or no ID. As to the alleged legions of poor, disabled and/or minority would-be voters who “can’t” get an ID, they barely exist. There was a lawsuit about this issue in Kansas and the judge finally ruled that no evidence had been presented to established that even half a percent of the voting age population lacked a suitable ID. Several of the 17 states that now have voter ID laws also provide free IDs and even free rides to government offices to get them to anyone who asks. The number of askers has been a few dozen nationwide. This issue is a sham cooked up to defend the indefensible level of corruption and vote fudging the Democratic Party has come to depend upon in urban precincts.
The move to electronic at-home voting, and the debacles of absentee votes being lost/challenged/etc and provisional voting, basically make the whole process rife with the possibility of fraud at both the level of the individual voter and the (post-)counting level.
With the country so nearly equally divided, just a few votes per precinct could be enough to swing a close election. Every precinct becomes a potential Cook County. How we retain the confidence in our system necessary for an effective representative republic to exist is a real question.
If people start percieving the outscomes of elections as being illegitimate, it will open a Pandora’s Box that really we are way better off not opening.
Sometimes I really do feel like crashing a ballot and yelling “I don’t believe in democracy!” like Loki in Dogma… and then I remember they went on a killing spree right after.
Democracy – The God of Atheists.
Another problem with the “purple-finger” technique is that someone would probably come along twenty years later and claim that the ink caused them to get cancer of the finger. That, and people claiming allergies.
One component of the solution might be to treat any sort of electoral fraud as treason – which it is, because it strikes at the root of democracy.
Notably missing from Reynolds’ list, an ideal voting system should:
* Reflect the opinions of the electorate as faithfully as possible, by including the votes of as many voters as possible
Our government should be by and for the people. Not the rich people, or the literate people, or the people who drive cars, or the people who care about politics, but all the people. Sadly, however, the history of our country is one of non-stop attempts to limit voting to the right kind of people, and the current paranoia about voter impersonation fraud is just the latest example.
If every registered voter went to the polls in November, Obama would be re-elected in a landslide and the Democrats would control both houses of Congress. If every eligible voter voted, the landslides would be even greater. GOP hopes are entirely dependent on having enough voters stay home. Adding new voting requirements is one means to that end.
Like most arguments for Republican-favoring voting restrictions, Reynolds’ piece is full of nonsense:
in many places a person can simply claim to be one of those people and vote in their name with no one the wiser.
Yes, this is possible. But it is not risk-free — you could never be sure that none of the poll workers might know the dead voter, and if you’re unlucky you are facing a felony. What rational person would take that risk in order to cast one extra vote?
one voting-rights activist, a twentysomething white guy with a pony tail in Washington, DC, managed to get a ballot in Attorney General Eric Holder’s name
It’s very risky to vote under the name of a living registered voter. On top of the risk of a poll worker knowing the real voter, if the real voter has already voted your scheme will be obvious and you could go to jail. Even if you do cast a ballot, the fraud will be discovered when the real voter tries to vote, and there’s a chance someone will remember you. It’s an enormous risk for one vote.
the margin of victory was 312, but it turned out that 1,099 votes were cast by felons who were ineligible to vote
Reynolds has his facts wrong. While 1,099 allegations of illegal voting were made, only 243 ex-felons were either charged or convicted. The other voters were flagged in error, e.g. because they had the same name as an ineligible felon. And even in the cases where voters were ineligible, it was typically because they didn’t realize they had to go through an application process to get their voting eligibility back. About a third of the ex-felons who were caught had registered but hadn’t even voted.
Voter ID makes that kind of trickery harder
No, voter ID does nothing to keep ineligible voters who were mistakenly left on the rolls from voting. And Reynolds’ charge of “trickery” is wholly unsupported. The Republican lawyers working on the Minnesota election made no allegations of organized fraud. They looked high and low, and out of millions of votes all they could find was a handful of confused ex-felons.
Many of America’s largest and worst-governed cities suffer from entrenched and corrupt political machines that maintain their position in no small part via voter fraud.
This claim is made without any evidence, as if it’s something we all just know. And it has nothing to do with the case for voter ID. Corrupt political don’t steal elections by sending tens of thousands of people out to impersonate legitimate voters, they do it by corrupting the ballot counting. Does Reynolds actually think a corrupt political machine would be stopped by a law that required voters showing ID?
Underlying Reynolds’ argument is the assumption that voter impersonation fraud is rampant, and that it swings elections to the Democrats. Neither assumption is supported by any evidence. Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout, because if everyone turns out, Republicans are doomed.
Um Jim,
You admit Voter ID would do nothing to suppress felons from illegally voting. So is there any voter suppression you can point to when you make the assumption Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout? You keep making this claim and never supporting the argument.
And no, Republicans wouldn’t be doomed if everyone turned out. In that case, voters would see how the government is incapable of supporting the entirety of the population at one time. Everyone would realize what a failure it would be to continue the foolish notion that a singular federal government ever could support the entire population.
So is there any voter suppression you can point to when you make the assumption Voter ID is just a way to suppress legitimate turnout?
Something like 10% of registered voters don’t have current photo ID that meets the requirements of new voter ID laws. Unless 100% of those people get ID between now and election day (very doubtful), voter ID laws will keep those people from voting. That’s legitimate turnout being suppressed.
Some of those people have ID that is valid in other contexts, but won’t be accepted at the polls. You’d have no trouble driving, or ordering a beer, or boarding a plane with a drivers license that has your maiden name (or your married name, when you’ve changed it back after a divorce), but if the name on your drivers license doesn’t match the name on the voting rolls, you can’t use it to vote. If your ID has a slightly different version of your name (W. Mitt vs. Willard M.) than the voting rolls, the election clerk can turn you away. In a country with over a hundred million eligible voters, the chances of voting rolls being in perfect sync with all the valid drivers licenses, passports, military IDs, etc. is basically zero. Some people will be out of luck.
Human nature being what it is, some fraction of the people who do have valid photo ID won’t have it with them when they go to the polls, and some of them won’t bother to make a second trip. Voter ID requirements will suppress their legitimate votes. [Are there people who don’t carry photo ID everywhere they go? Ask a waiter or waitress whether they ever have to refuse serving someone who forgot their ID.]
The opposite argument — that voter ID laws do not suppress legitimate voting — claims that every single legitimate voter who would have voted without an ID requirement will have valid photo ID with them when they show up at the polls. That’s a fantasy.
The sort of people who are least likely to be turned away — car owners, active-duty military, people who follow politics — are much more likely to vote Republican than the people who are most likely to be turned away — the young, poor, disabled, and very old. Because most of the suppressed legitimate votes would have gone to Democrats, voter ID laws are a cynical power play for the GOP.
Jim, 63% of statistics are made up on the spot. How about providing a link to something credible showing how a finding of around 10% for registered voters not having a picture ID
Republicans wouldn’t be doomed if everyone turned out.
If every eligible voter actually voted this November, Democrats would sweep into power. Just look at the polling.
The median voter theorem suggests that over time, political parties will try to appeal to the median voter, and expanding the electorate to include all eligible voters would shift the views of the median voter substantially to the left. So you’d expect the GOP to move left as well, to regain their electoral viability for this new, expanded electorate.
In that case, voters would see how the government is incapable of supporting the entirety of the population at one time.
Yes, it’s possible that the newly empowered Democrats would enact policies that fail, driving voters to the right. It’s also possible that Democrats would enact policies that become as popular as Social Security and Medicare, giving them control of Congress for decades, until the Republicans come around to at least claiming to support those policies, the way Romney and Ryan claim to be Medicare’s greatest defenders today. If you look at other developed countries you see generations of consistent popular support for welfare states that are much more generous than ours. Such a scenario is not impossible.