One word.....democRATs!
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Posted on 10/27/2004 4:11:39 PM PDT by rhema
If anyone's expecting to go to bed early on Nov. 2, they should read "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," by John Fund. The intrepid Wall Street Journal columnist has done his homework in detailing how partisan politics is undermining our elections.
One problem is that we make voting too easy. Indeed, Mexico has a more secure voter-registration system than we do. Voters there must show a photo ID and be verified with an electronic thumbprint before they can vote.
How well does the Mexican system work? It resulted in the 2000 election of Vicente Fox, "the first opposition party candidate to be elected president in seventy years," Fund notes.
How does the U.S. system compare? Horribly.
The biggest obstacle to any sensible reform is the fundamentally different way in which Democrats and Republicans look at elections.
"Democrats gravitate to the view that the most important value is empowering people to exercise their democratic rights," Fund writes. "Republicans tend to pay more attention to the rule of law and the standards and procedures that govern elections."
While both goals are laudable, Democrats do significant damage by favoring turnout over legitimacy. For instance, a proposal in California argued that illegal aliens should be allowed to vote in school board elections because their children attend public schools. In the 2002 South Dakota Senate race, Democratic Party employee Maka Duta forged signatures on registration forms and absentee ballots.
"If I erred … I erred on the side of angels," she said.
"In other words, doing the devil's work of forging voter signatures is somehow understandable given her angelic goal of increasing voter turnout," Fund rightly notes.
Democrats have also done significant damage by continuing to perpetuate the twin myths that millions of blacks were disenfranchised in the 2000 election and that the election was illegally given to George Bush by the Supreme Court.
Charges of black disenfranchisement in Florida in 2000 "have proved baseless," Fund writes, and Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno agrees with him. But that hasn't stopped even John Kerry from demagoguing on the issue.
As for the Supreme Court "giving" the election to Bush, "Such assertions are simply not supported by the facts," Fund writes. Indeed, an examination of the Florida recount by USA Today, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the New York Times — even using counts most favorable to Gore — all found that George Bush won Florida.
But what's most disturbing is that the Motor Voter Law, which has been widely hailed a success, is widely used to commit voter fraud. Under the law, states must register anyone applying for a driver's license or welfare benefits, offer mail-in registration (with no ID requirement), and it forbids government workers from challenging new registrants.
Registration has soared under Motor Voter, but Fund thinks maybe a little too much. Rolls in many cities now exceed the Census population of those 18 and older. In Philadelphia, the population declined by 13 percent but voter rolls rose by 24 percent. In California, mail-in forms were used to register fictitious people — or pets! — who then voted by absentee ballot.
It's too bad the prospects for voting reform are so dim, because it wouldn't be that hard to do. Simply requiring that voters show ID would go a long way toward stemming voter fraud. Democrats argue that it would intimidate non-English speakers and effectively disenfranchise people — particularly minorities. But as Fund correctly notes, in 1997 the FDA mandated that retailers demand ID for cigarettes, but the same year the Justice Department said Louisiana couldn't ask the same from voters.
Fund isn't in favor of provisional balloting, which is this year's hot topic and basically allows anyone to walk up to the polls and vote, but holds those votes until they can be validated. What would work better is a central registration office in each state. That way, someone from St. Paul walking into a polling place in Bemidji could be quickly verified.
While these are sensible proposals, Fund believes it'll take a debacle bigger than Florida 2000 to push any meaningful reform.
"Should 'anything goes' continue to be ballot bywords, the nation may wake to another crisis even bigger than the 2000 Florida folly," Fund writes. "Perhaps then it will demand to know who subverted the safeguards in its election laws."
In other words, put on an extra pot of coffee next Tuesday. It could be a long night.
For the same reason our apathetic a$ses still have a straight two party system! :)
Democrats. period.
We used to be able to trust each other's honesty. That's gone up in smoke now though.
The answers above (1 1/2 party dictatorship and such), complacency of the citizenry and the common, irrational belief that we are the best and no one can tell us anything. Compare this with the thread a couple of days ago about Swiss election observers coming or wanting to come to the US. There was nothing but invective and insults there. The ugly face of mindless nationalism. But we have a lot of learn from the Swiss and, as it turns out, (Oh my!) from the Mexicans. What can ya do? Another Pollyannish vanity thread last night again extolled the virtues of American Paradise with the usual worn patriotic banalities and cliches. Who can argue?
I have no problem with a national ID CARD. It is the national ID CHIP that some are already advocating that has me feeling the chill of fascism!
One word.....democRATs!
.
"Democrats"
BTT!!!!!!!
And not to mention have the will to enforce our laws. How many people do you think would risk jail time just for the sake of getting in one extra vote out of 100,000,000? Not too many.
At the risk of being flamed, I'm in favor of using driver's licenses as Voter ID/registration. For those who don't drive, every state offers a photo ID.
At least there's some consequense of having a false driver's license, and there are databases that can be checked instantly to prevent duplicate voting. Also, the address used for a license can be checked against the post office database of valid residential addresses.
You can have both the rule of law and easy access to voting.
This is where that whole slippery-slope thing comes in. Drivers' licenses have been defended up to now with the claim that no one's "forced" to get an ID. It's just a voluntary thing you do if you want to drive. That may have made sense in the early days of motoring, when relatively few people drove, and most people were rather fearful of cars. Today nearly everyone drives, yet the "voluntary" justification persists. But now we have this little bait-and-switch that says that since ID's are a virtual requirement because it's so difficult to get by without one, there can't be any serious objection to making them mandatory, at least for those who want to exercise their right to vote.
Anyone who refers to the slippery slope "fallacy" (and this isn't directed at you, just at a bunch of Freepers who at various times have insisted that it's just a phantasm) truly is clueless about the way the world works.
I used driver's license as an example. Everyone who wants to vote should have a photo ID with a number that would eliminate duplicate voting. Second, all voter's addresses should be checked against the post office list of valid addresses.
There's only two reasons for all the problems relating to our voting procedures. Either it's gross incompetence or being done on purpose, in which case those responsible need to held accountable from Congress on down to the local level.
That horse left the barn some time ago. You can't use a pay toilet without a social security number.
So what is your rational argument against a national ID card? A modern society can not function without the possibility to reliably identify persons. All major financial transactions require this. Yet some locales allow people to vote without a picture ID. Unbeliavable.
What is needed is a national population registry with information on each resident's citizenship status. Based on this, each voter would be sent a notification a few weeks in advance indicating the polling location and time. Voter registration should also be scrapped; primaries should be paid for and organized by the parties.
Yeah, unbelievable, isn't it, that we managed to get by all this time without any such thing. Must've been blind luck.
In a nutshell:
Campaign finance reform:
Puts limits on the electorate, violates free speech, allows billionares to buy elections.
Election Reform:
Empowers the electorate and lessens the possibily of a lifetime career in Congress.
No brainer.
But I do believe John McCain fought the wrong dog with CFR. It is the corruption at the ballot box which sullies our election process.
John McCain seemed to be more concerned with forcing his version of "nice" than he was about an honest election. But hey, he is a politician.
Reform would not take much:
Proof of ID when registering.
Proof of ID when voting.
A disclaimer that the voter is responsible for knowing how to vote--if you have questions, then ask.
No election drives.
Scrap the motor voter program. If someone is not motivated enough to go to the Courthouse to resister, then they are not motivated enough to cast an informed ballot.
Period.
End of story.
I think the point here is that the system fails miserably exactly there where use of reliable identification is NOT mandatory (i.e., in voting) .
When it comes to election security, it's a shame, but yes, we should.
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