Posted on 03/16/2005 8:37:23 AM PST by John Jorsett
Fraudulent voting is a cancer eating away at Lady Liberty. The White House and Congress should cure it — now.
Last week’s Musings — done I must admit over a Manhattan instead of a martini, but at least the alliteration was preserved — described Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed redistricting reform as trumping all of his other proposals in importance because whether the other initiatives rise or fall, fair district lines make possible, and with time even likely, the election of a GOP majority or near majority that could then attend to any remaining issues. Without redistricting reform, an endless string of Legislatures dominated by the same old socialist Democrats would find ways to undo the benefits of passing other worthy matters on the ballot.
This week let us turn our attention to Congress, and the one proposal that Republican- dominated body could pass that would bring about future Republican majorities in California, and protect those the GOP has in other states. The matter is voter fraud and election security.
There’s no polite way to lay out the facts, so let’s just get on with it. Republicans almost never try and even more rarely succeed in stealing elections. Democrats seem to have standing committees dedicated to such chicanery
Republicans last stole an election in 1876 when Rutherford B. Hayes was installed as president instead of Samuel Tilden. Largely under the leadership of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley, Democrats began stealing elections regularly in the 1950s and ’60s, and have not let up since. Happily, they now succeed less and less, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying. (Daley’s piece d’resistance was John Kennedy’s bogus 1960 election. Kennedy running mate Lyndon Johnson, another master of vote fraud, became senator from Texas through thoroughly-documented thefts of his first U.S. House and later Senate elections.)
Big city Democrat machines around the country are Daley’s and LBJ’s spiritual heirs: Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other Democrat-dominated cities routinely report more registered voters then they have citizens over 18 years of age. Current U.S. Senator John Thune of South Dakota was beaten in his 2002 senatorial bid by votes from Indian reservations that subsequent evidence strongly suggests were bought.
Last year’s hotly disputed gubernatorial election in Washington (“decided” by 126 votes) saw Democrat strongholds across the state produce thousands of ballots from convicted felons. As Assembly GOP Caucus chief of staff in the 1980s, I regularly witnessed bogus Democrat “registrations,” followed by heavy absentee voting by the highly dubious “registrants,” in swing districts. The politically incorrect bottom line is pretty simple: in elections, the Democrats are the party of fraud.
It’s high time the GOP Congress and White House moved eliminating that fraud to the top of the “to do” list. It really wouldn’t be tough to accomplish either. Here’s how:
¥ Repeal the national “motor voter” law — it encourages mistaken, duplicative, and fraudulent registrations.
¥ Prohibit “early voting” at various locations.
¥ Go back to making citizens show up at the polls during polling hours on election day by reinstituting the system of absentee voting that worked fine in this country for 100 years or so. Specifically, abolish absentee voting except for a small set of clearly defined circumstances: absence from your home town on election day, documented illness, being in a hospital, etc.
¥ Require — not allow, require — the showing of a valid photo ID both to register to vote and to cast a ballot at the polls.
¥ Make conspiracy to commit registration or voter fraud a felony with a mandatory 10- year prison sentence.
¥ Remove jurisdiction to extend polling hours from local political hacks masquerading as judges, and vest that power solely in the member of the U.S. Supreme court who normally handles emergency reviews from a given state.
¥ Enforce these new rules by withholding all federal election funding from any state that fails to adopt all of them.
This Republican president should propose these common sense reforms, and this Republican congress should pass them.
No qualified voter should be denied the right to vote, but any unqualified voter who attempts to cast a fraudulent ballot should be prosecuted. Voting should not be made arduous, but requiring citizens to show up at the polls during a 12 or 14 hour voting “window” seems a minimal show of citizenship. Democracy is strengthened, not weakened, when citizens with little or no interest in elections refrain from voting.
Informed voters are the cornerstone of our democracy. Ignorant, uninvolved voters, along with fraudulent ones, are a cancer eating away at Lady Liberty. The White House and Congress can cure this cancer. They should do it. Now.
photo ID required.
ink finger (prevents multiple voting)
The author forgot to include a national voter registry to prevent people from voting in two states. This has been reported of "snowbirds" who winter in Florida (and vote in person there) and still claim residence in (and vote absentee in) New York or New Jersey.
All great recommendations. I'd like to add a little pie in the sky idea: some sort of time stamp on the paper ballot. Perhaps this could be some kind of ink that undergoes a time dependent, measurable, chemical change that begins at the time of printing. Use it for printing and marking the ballots.
It seems to me that this would prevent fraudsters from printing up their own ballots, or "discovering" boxes of marked ballots way after the counting begins.
Maybe they should issue duplicate reciept ballots to all provisional voters, that must be produced by the voter in a contested election.
They forgot one.
Require any electronic voting machine to print out a paper ballot/receipt showing the votes made. This machine simply ensures a correctly completely ballot. The voter then verifies the correctness of his/her personal choices.
Require a separate machine to read the receipt to count the votes.
In other words, the paper trail is what is counted and NOT electronic digits.
Amen. Where do I sign up?
You don't have to bribe states with Federal funds to require these reforms in federal elections. Once they have to do it in federal elections, they will probably do it for state elections, too. They are not going to check in a voter to vote for Senator, but not Governor.
Each ballot could have a serial number with a matching tear-off stub (think of the claim ticket from a dry cleaners). Then if there are ballots in dispute, the election officials could print a list in the paper: "Would the owners of ballot numbers: < list of ballot numbers > please bring their claim ticket to the election office by Friday at 5:00pm" No need to determine the voter's "intent" the voter could TELL them who they had voted for. And if nobody steps forward to own up to the ballot, it is discarded.
Great solution!
Start by clearing all voter rolls and starting fresh.
Hey, this'd make a great tagline.
Of course there is. Why there was this election for governor in WA state, not too long ago. The fraud was blatant in that case. What did the GOP do? What have they done? Is the pretender still in state house?
If nothing is done about it - EXPECT IT TO WORSEN IN THE NEXT ELECTION CYCLE! BANK ON IT!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.