It is in the news; apparently it is rampant… tainting our elections, changing outcomes and destroying the electoral process. Hordes of people roaming the country: voting multiple times, pretending they are someone else, just to change the results of an election. This would make for a great movie plot, but it’s false.
Reality is that, depending on where you get your numbers, the amount of voter fraud is basically nonexistent. In 2008, there were 169,000,000 voters registered in the U.S. (according to Wiki-Answers, 2008). That number is arguable, but it is relevant enough to say: “a whole lot of people are registered to vote.”
There has not been a case of any serious voter fraud recorded in the US, yet, we now have state after state enacting new and stringent voter ID laws to insure that there is no voter fraud. In other terms, there are laws are being created to fix a problem that does not exist.
What this writer finds troubling most of all is where these voter laws are coming from, and why. Predominantly, these laws are coming from Republican controlled state legislatures and assemblies. These laws affect predominantly the poor, minorities, and the elderly, who generally have a hard enough time getting to the polls, much less the added expense and the trouble of now of having to get a government provided ID to cast a ballot. More troubling still, in the case of Ohio early voting rules were changed, in order to shorten the time for early voting. Fair enough, until one discovers that it was only in the districts leaning in the Democrat Party’s favor that the early voting rules were to be changed. In Republican held districts, life will go on as usual.
These cases are being adjudicated in court. So far many have been proven unconstitutional; that isn’t really the point. The point is, that some want to disenfranchise voters.
Voting is one of the reasons this country is even here. We have a constitution that was ratified/voted upon. The Declaration of Independence was ratified/voted upon. Our very system of government depends on voting, yet we have groups who want to make this basic right more difficult.
This writer has a solution for all this. It’s simple, easy, and painless. If there is indeed voter fraud issues, then let us all resort to dipping our finger in a jar of ink, as we have seen so many other countries do. If you have an inky finger, you voted, go home. If not, you may vote. Yes, the ink could be scrubbed off by some unscrupulous people who want to vote twice, and I imagine the number of people who would do that would be similar to the number of people who fraudulently vote now.
It is a non-partisan solution, relatively economical, and will free our court systems up for more important things, like prosecuting criminals.
The ills our country faces are many, as are rest of the worlds. So, why then, do we need to create more? Let the people vote, let our voices be heard. That is the American way.
joelmerritz 