Does increasing turnout invite fraud?

Some issues, especially those that even tangentially involve race, become so one-sided there is no respectable opposition. But sometimes shifting political sands make it acceptable in polite company to oppose what was once a motherhood cause.

It happened with affirmative action, and we may be approaching that same point regarding the current truism that increasing voter turnout is good, regardless of whether doing so encourages, or at least tolerates, fraud.

Obviously, we will never return to the days when people could be prevented or pressured from voting based on their race.

But cases in Orlando and in Wisconsin and state legislative fights nationally indicate that efforts to increase turnout have become a two-sided issue.

Remember when no one respectable would criticize anything labeled affirmative action -- it was what politicians call a one-sided issue -- for fear of being labeled a racist?

In a shifting political environment, courts have narrowed the permissible scope of such efforts in the belief that, in some applications, such as college admission, they discriminate against whites. California and Washington voters banned racial-preference programs enacted in the name of affirmative action. Florida is among states to follow through legislation or executive order.

We may be seeing the initial signs of the same metamorphosis regarding voting. Since the disputed 2000 election, increased turnout, especially among minorities, has been deemed so desirable that suggestions that some tools to increase access might also make it easier to vote illegally have been dismissed as politically incorrect.

The 2000 Florida fiasco led to charges, never proved, that black voting was suppressed. There were also calls nationally for legal changes to increase turnout, especially among minorities.

Among the ideas proposed have been requiring nationally what exists in a limited number of states: allowing

I haven't been sitting around waiting for the public opinion winds to shift.

I've consistantly stated that increasing voter turnout as an end to itself was a bad thing.

I want voting to be hard. Not too hard, but hard. Not hard in a way that makes it harder for some than others, but "hard" the same for everybody.

I want to restrict actual votes to people who care enough about the outcome to at least make SOME degree of effort, over a period of time.

It is a terrible idea to allow people to register and vote within close proximity of the election. It is jsut as bad to allow them to register and vote at the same time way BEFORE the election (using absentee ballots). ALlowing either of these is an invitation to a quick-attack operation where people are incensed, registered, and vote before any cooler heads can prevail.

By making people take action to register, and then LATER making them come back out and vote, you get rid of those people who are so lazy they don't care, but instead will vote by looking at the ballot and thinking "Bush" is such a funny name, but "Gore" sounds like a horror movie; maybe I'll vote "Nadar" because it sounds like "Na Na Na".

I oppose internet voting because, beyond the whole problem of not ensuring people aren't forced to vote against their own wishes, I don't want to allow people who are too lazy to leave their house the ability to vote.

The current system in most states of absentee ballots FOR CAUSE is a good one -- if you are disabled you can get a ballot, but that takes work as well.

Nothing is gained in a democracy if a person can make his vote count 40 times by driving a bus down a street, picking up a bunch of people who have no idea what is happening, and telling them he'll give them each dinner if they will vote the way he tells them to vote (or worse if he says vote the way I tell you because the other people want to round up your children and kill them all).

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