"Disenfranchisement"
Would somebody please tell me why I can't get on a Delta shuttle without showing my driver's license, but I'm allowed to vote by simply making my signature look like the one on record?
I'd feel better about it were the process for getting that signature on record a bit more stringent. Let's talk Ohio. Lots of different groups are registering people, naturally. Republicans have suspected that Democrats have been going overboard in registering non-existent, dead, or redundant voters. There may be little harm in this. Many outfits who are charged with voter registration compensate workers by the number of voters registered. A registration worker who registers Don Corleone has done something illegal, but it probably just for the $2 he's been promised, and the Don will not actually cast a vote.
Or will he? This is the fear of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. If I send in twenty different registration forms with different fake names and addresses in twenty different precincts, what's to stop me from voting twenty times on election day?
Republicans, trying to get ahead of the problem, challenged 17,000 registrations in heavily Democratic Cuyohoga County. They were challenged not because they were in a Democratic county, but because when Republicans tried to contact newly registered voters, these 17,000 came back as undeliverable. Obviously, some of those are probably legitimate, and Republicans advocated hearings for those cases. The short version of the story is that the GOP was denied the right to challenge these registrations.
What next? Republicans and Democrats have been assigned to challenge voters at the polls. Should a person's right to vote in that precinct be contested, the voter can cast a provisional ballot, and the voter's eligibility can be determined with certainty at a later date. This is also fraught with danger, as I could cast provisional ballots in twenty locations, and if this were a coordinated scheme, one side (I won't speculate as to which...) could accumulate a very lopsided number of provisional votes. Cries of "count ALL the votes" will taint the outcome.
But now it appears that no one from either party will be able to challenge voters at the polls either. Voters might feel intimidated, so only poll workers will be allowed to challenge voters. I take little comfort in this knowing that nearly every Democrat in my office is taking the day off Tuesday to work at the polls. No, I don't think they're trying to "fix" anything, but I don't envision them turning a single soul away. Just match your fake signature to the fake one you sent in last month, and toss around the word "disenfranchisement" if anyone asks you for a picture ID or a utility bill to prove who you are.
Voting is serious business, but given that I have to show less proof to vote for the leader of the free world than I do to buy a beer at Applebee's, it seems to me there are unserious people in charge of our election laws.
I'd feel better about it were the process for getting that signature on record a bit more stringent. Let's talk Ohio. Lots of different groups are registering people, naturally. Republicans have suspected that Democrats have been going overboard in registering non-existent, dead, or redundant voters. There may be little harm in this. Many outfits who are charged with voter registration compensate workers by the number of voters registered. A registration worker who registers Don Corleone has done something illegal, but it probably just for the $2 he's been promised, and the Don will not actually cast a vote.
Or will he? This is the fear of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. If I send in twenty different registration forms with different fake names and addresses in twenty different precincts, what's to stop me from voting twenty times on election day?
Republicans, trying to get ahead of the problem, challenged 17,000 registrations in heavily Democratic Cuyohoga County. They were challenged not because they were in a Democratic county, but because when Republicans tried to contact newly registered voters, these 17,000 came back as undeliverable. Obviously, some of those are probably legitimate, and Republicans advocated hearings for those cases. The short version of the story is that the GOP was denied the right to challenge these registrations.
What next? Republicans and Democrats have been assigned to challenge voters at the polls. Should a person's right to vote in that precinct be contested, the voter can cast a provisional ballot, and the voter's eligibility can be determined with certainty at a later date. This is also fraught with danger, as I could cast provisional ballots in twenty locations, and if this were a coordinated scheme, one side (I won't speculate as to which...) could accumulate a very lopsided number of provisional votes. Cries of "count ALL the votes" will taint the outcome.
But now it appears that no one from either party will be able to challenge voters at the polls either. Voters might feel intimidated, so only poll workers will be allowed to challenge voters. I take little comfort in this knowing that nearly every Democrat in my office is taking the day off Tuesday to work at the polls. No, I don't think they're trying to "fix" anything, but I don't envision them turning a single soul away. Just match your fake signature to the fake one you sent in last month, and toss around the word "disenfranchisement" if anyone asks you for a picture ID or a utility bill to prove who you are.
Voting is serious business, but given that I have to show less proof to vote for the leader of the free world than I do to buy a beer at Applebee's, it seems to me there are unserious people in charge of our election laws.
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