This Opinion Just In…
NEW YORK — Election Day? Who needs it?
Americans already are casting ballots, five weeks before November 4. This is a boon for vote fraud and a bust for democracy.
In Ohio, most dramatically, an individual can register to vote between September 30 and October 6, then immediately receive an absentee ballot. Existing and brand-new electors also can cast ballots at early-voting centers.
This is a gourmet recipe for voter fraud.
What if some new registrants turn out to be non-citizens? Or felons? Or gung-ho 16-year-olds who only look 18? No problem. Why, we'll just fish out their ballots from the pile. Uh-oh. The secret ballots all look alike and no longer can be tied to any given voter.
Oops.
In a close election, Ohio’s 20 electoral votes could swing into McCain’s or Obama’s column based on the ballots of non-Ohioans, foreign citizens, felons, or even children. If, in a photo finish, the presidency hinges on such tainted Ohio votes, McCain or Obama could be inaugurated beneath a thundercloud. Fairly or not, cries of “Thief!” will haunt him wherever he goes. Not surprisingly, such grievances grind democracy down. So it goes when our leaders govern with the consent of those who never should have been asked.
“Independent groups seeking to increase poor and minority participation also transported voters from places like homeless shelters, halfway houses, and soup kitchens,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. One hopes this population consists entirely of adult American citizens free of felony convictions.
Potential vote fraud aside, early balloting assaults the notion of contemplative self-government. This is true in Ohio and the 30 other states that allow early voting at special polling sites and, more often, via no-questions-asked absentee ballots. Oregon, for its part, votes 100 percent by mail-in ballot.
At this writing, Ohioans already have voted for president even before Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin debated Democrat Joe Biden. Early voters decided before knowing whether Palin fell flat on her face or dazzled the nation with quick-wittedness. They voted without seeing whether Biden acted graciously or blew the whole thing sky-high by snapping, “Now wait one cotton-picking moment, little lady.” Those who already have voted also did so without knowing anything about either of the two remaining McCain/Obama debates, or any of the other ideas, controversies, or triumphs that will arise before November 4.
Some have said early voting is like several jurors announcing after two-thirds of a trial that they have heard enough evidence and are ready to convict — never mind the remaining witnesses, closing arguments, and hours of deliberation.
As John Fund explains in “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,” some Americans who already had cast ballots for George W. Bush were disturbed to learn five days before the 2000 election that Bush had been arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence. “There was no way they could change their vote,” Fund observed.
So, what is the massive hurry?
Unless Americans are certifiably ill, incapacitated, or (to coin a word) absent on Election Day, they should vote neither absentee nor early. Citizens of this republic should view the debates; follow the candidates’ speeches, watch commercials and interviews, and read news articles and opinion pieces. We should deliberate among our fellow citizens and meditate individually.
And on Tuesday, November 4, we should line up at local fire houses and elementary schools. Precinct by precinct, the American people will select the next President of the United States. This momentous occasion deserves sobriety and dignity, not civic slovenliness.
Choosing the leader of the free world should not be the political equivalent of sitting at home in sweat pants and picking either the sweet & sour shrimp or General Tso’s chicken. It is high time America took our ballots more seriously than Chinese takeout menus.
New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
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written by Aaron , October 11, 2008
I find this argument against early voting on the grounds of fraud and not in the interest of contemplative self government.
On voter fraud, where it exists in a significant way, the efforts are typically the actions of a party apparatus, not of individuals. However, voter fraud initiatives are most often targeted against deterring individuals, which really reveals them to be covert voter suppression activities. It is instructive that the majority of vote fraud legislation is pursued by republicans against individuals and it is really about gaming the system to republican advantage. It is one of the ways in which we republicans betray our principles.
I had to laugh however at your other contention, that we are undermining contemplative self government. How absurd. We are in the midst of a campaign that has been pursued for two years at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The candidates, as with most of the candidates for the last several elections are largely offering up the same party bromides they always have . In a country where the middle has been drowned out by the screaming of the political left and right, there is no thoughtful center, no political common ground and thus, little to contemplate. The simplistic political recipes served up by both sides are rarely worthy nor typically require the great contemplation you espouse. You proceed on a false premise as well: that those who wait until election day to vote have "contemplated" long and hard and that somehow the vote cast on election day is somehow qualitatively better than the early vote. Conducting some exit polling would I'm sure expose the myth inherent in that idea.
Lets be honest. Republicans pursue vote fraud legislation which places additional requirements no individuals in order to burden the exercise of the franchise by people presumed to vote democratic. They don't pursue organized party practiced vote fraud. Further, we often do this, as in Indiana, without being able to cite a single instance or occurrence of the voter fraud we say we are trying to prevent.
The argument against early voting and indeed against most efforts to make voting easy are fought by republicans for similar reasons. Republicans suspect that early voting or liberalizing the exercise of the franchise accrues benefits to their political opponents, not to them. Its a stunning example of how republicans utterly fail to live by their principles by engaging in this special form of evil (voter suppression) and is proof of the triumph of the pursuit of power over the virtue of the application of conservative principles to solving of human problems.
Speak honesty and truth. Republican railing about voter fraud and liberalizing of the exercise of the franchise in general have more to do with gaming the system to our advantage and the pursuit of political power than they do with election integrity or ensuring a more deliberative electorate.
written by Jay Golub , October 11, 2008
http://news.bostonherald.com/n...on=emailed
ACORN is and HAS BEEN for years illegally registering "voters." This Left wing group's agenda is supposed to be registering people in a non-partisan manner - something they have been found guilty of not doing in the past.
Now they are registering dead people and certain people dozens of times, over and over again.
"It is instructive that the majority of vote fraud legislation is pursued by republicans against individuals and it is really about gaming the system to republican advantage. It is one of the ways in which we republicans betray our principles."
Sounds like your argument above is a load of populist garbage. People like yourself proclaim to be for "democracy" just because you have a personal agenda that proclaims to help the "needy" against the evil Republicans.
Democracy is about following the rule of law, not pushing socialism and radical political thought using illegal voter registration tactics.
Your pontification on this subject is laughable...
written by Jay Golub , October 11, 2008
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06...117189.htm
Obama's best friends, I see. Is this how Obama plans on winning the November election?
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