First Principles

It’s begun:

Likely among them are the 12 people who have registered to vote since August using the address of the 1,175-square-foot Brownlee Avenue house.

Some of them already have voted. Others requested absentee ballots but have yet to return them to the Franklin County Board of Elections.

None of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio — no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election.

Read the whole thing.  I found it chilling.

What’s disturbing about this isn’t just that 12 people might be voting twice.  It’s that it’s become so easy to do and so hard to spot.  Some of ACORN’s defenders, for example, sneer that there’s no way Micky Mouse or Tony Romo will show up to vote, so the fake applications aren’t cause for worry.  But for every “Micky Mouse” or “Jive Turkey,” how many “John Smiths” or “Steve Johnsons” are there that don’t arouse any special attention – especially when voting officials are bogged down with tens of thousands of questionable voter registration forms and don’t have time to scrutinize them all?

For some reason, it’s become an article of faith that making voting as easy and convenient as possible is a good thing.  It’s true that it shouldn’t be an undue burden, but there is a lot to be said for having to prepare a little bit before you cast a vote, and for making it harder to cast more than one.

Early voting should be banned immediately.  Same day voter registration should likewise be banned, as should “provision ballots” which allow someone who showed up to the wrong polling place to cast a ballot anyway.    Absentee ballots should once again be more difficult to obtain – one should have to prove they actually need one before they’re simply handed out.  Out of state college students in particular should be strictly scrutinized.

Early voting allows someone to travel the country and vote in multiple states.  It allows foreign influence, if you will, into one state’s affairs, and dilutes that state’s sovereignty in favor of another.  (I’m talking to you, California – butt out!)  And what’s the gain?  A little bit of extra convenience?  Is that worth the risk of what we’re already seeing?

I used to like same-day voter registration, which is allowed in Minnesota where I went to undergrad.  Without it, it’s unlikely that Jesse Ventura, who wound up being quite a successful governor (before he went crazy), would have won.  But while I appreciated the effect, since his support came heavily from college students and other new voters, I had to wonder how many people had already voted in other places.  I was registered to vote in South Dakota at the time and was set up to receive an absentee ballot.  But I don’t have any doubt that I could have voted for Jesse had I shown up, registered, and voted on the day of the election.  Sure I might have been prosecuted later had I been discovered, but how often does that realistically happen?  And it’s not like there would have been time to cross check that I hadn’t also voted in SD.

When I lived in Washington, I signed up to vote absentee full time.  It was incredibly convenient, and I never forgot a minor election for school board officials or whatnot.  I loved being able to sit with my laptop and fill out my ballot while looking up all the issues and candidates while sipping coffee.  But since no IDs were ever required (that would have been racist, you know), I could easily have gotten half a dozen ballots in different names and dump them all in the mail.  With such a system in place, it’s hardly shocking that after the ’04 election there, 725 King County (Seattle) precincts had hundreds more ballots than voters.  That mattered that year, when the governor was decided by less than 200 votes.

Even if none of these things actually lead to voter fraud (a dangerously naive assumption), the mere perception of impropriety is hugely damaging to the nation.  Democracy relies on the losing side in an election accepting the results, and moving forward.  But if those results are legitimately in question, and thus the legitimacy of the government that is supposed to be of the people and by the people, there is little impetus to follow the edicts that come from that government.  And there is substantial motivation in the next election to attempt to “even the scales” with fraud of their own. 

Once the people lose faith in the electoral process, there is little motive to remain loyal to an elected government.  And that’s a frightening thought indeed.

If Barack Obama wins this election, I desperately want to believe that his election was legitimate, and that he is truly my President.  But his casual dismissal of and outright defense of ACORN during the last debate sent chills down my spine, because it makes me think he couldn’t care less if a little fraud puts him over the top.  It doesn’t inspire my confidence further that he’s invested nearly $1 million in that organization’s efforts.

If Obama really wants to bring the country together, he’ll remember the division the incredibly close election in 2000 fomented, with the lingering doubt coming from many that both sides were trying to cheat the system.  He could have started by cracking down on his own organization.  The fact that he has not yet made that choice unfortunately foreshadows 4 more years of partisan rancor, no matter what the outcome of the election actually is.