Obamacare implementation could spell trouble for Democrats in 2014

Washington Examiner ^ | 11/15/2012 | Philip Klein

[rlmorel]

Ever since 2000, the options to vote have become far looser and varied, or so it seems to me.

I have been against it since day one. Don’t get me wrong, there has been and is a place for absentee ballots. I voted in my first election in 1976 when I was in the USN that way.

But to make it simply convenient for people was and is wrong. All it does is open wider doors to voter fraud, and that is it. The early voting ballots and absentee ballots have a longer journey through more hands, and the chain of custody is complete crap. We know how the government at all levels works when things get complicated. It doesn’t. And there are plenty of people who have been exploiting that.

When someone’s livelihood depends on quality, you usually get just that. When the result of a difference between quality work and a shrug of the shoulders is exactly ZERO, you will get a shrug of the shoulders. It is FOOLISH to depend on the good will, good intentions and ingrained work ethic to deliver results in the vast majority of people. Yet that is just what well-meaning liberals and utopians depend on, and it is why liberalism is doomed to fail. And it is why government and unions at all levels operate far less efficiently than capitalist alternatives.

That last paragraph is, in a nut, the heart of the difference between liberalism and conservatism.

[rlmorel]

Exactly. See my post at #6.

[Ezekiel]

Excellent post. It has appeared to me that convenience has become more important than the integrity of the voting process. Liberty is anything but convenient.

I should have been more clear on my last comment/question:

Wouldn't states such as OR and WA be able to create a database of every voter's voting record for the purpose of political persecution?

The secret ballot is going the way of the dinosaurs. But aside from the normal concerns about prying/threatening eyes or someone other than registered voter doing the voting (those are bad enough), what happens when the ballot reaches the folks opening the mail (assuming it gets there)? Somebody knows how the name on the envelope voted. It's much more specific than a generic party affiliation. From the private voting booth the ballot goes into the box with all the rest.

If absentee ballots had remained rare then the problems associated with them would have remained rare. But when all voting is by mail, it sure seems like a recipe for not only fraud, but a complete undermining of the secret ballot process and a high potential for data-mining abuse or outright persecution. Proponents point to the fact that there are hard copies, but at what price?

And of those not-so-good intentions, what is the matter with liberals? The evil profit motive weeds out a great deal of the do-gooder incompetents. Need a brain surgeon? Better the guy who wants to stay in top demand in order to afford a fifth Ferrari than a government paycheck collector who shrugs and says, "Oh well better luck next time. Is it lunch yet?"

Looks like America opted for the union surgeon. Brains are all over the floor. But he is such a nice man with good intentions, unlike that rich man with the giant carbon footprint.