Voter fraud's a piece of cake

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Here's a conversation Don Danz had at his polling place last Tuesday:

Me: Hi. (smiling)

Poll Worker 1: Last name? (smiling)

Me: Danz...Don Danz. (now with dead serious expression and tone) But, I'm not really him. And, you can't do anything about it because you can't ask for my ID. (I sign my name…or at least my alias for that precinct)

Poll Worker 2: We don’t care. (hands me my ballots)

Poll Worker 3: The state of Oklahoma doesn't care. (everyone exchanges knowing smiles and small chuckles as it's obvious I'm making a point with which the workers agree)

Me: (after having voted) We'll I'm off to go vote in a few more precincts.

Poll Worker 2: Good luck.

Oklahoma has no way to prevent voter fraud and no practical way to detect it if it occurs. Requiring photo ID to vote would not be foolproof, but it would prevent someone walking in and voting under someone else's name. Republican legislators have tried to pass such a requirement, but the Democrats have always blocked it, claiming it would intimidate minority and elderly voters. Don says that's hogwash:

This is not only untrue but, also, incredibly insulting to blacks and the elderly. I guess blacks and old people don’t use checks or credit cards either because they are too scared someone will want to see some ID. What a load of crap.

The only real reason to oppose checking identification is that in some places Democrats rely on widespread voter fraud in order to be elected. There simply is no other reason to oppose mandatory photo identification before voting.

Oklahoma election officials are justly proud of our optical ballot readers, which gives us the ability to obtain quick and accurate results while still having a paper record of each vote, preserving the option of a manual count. But a ballot reader is like any other computer -- Garbage In, Garbage Out -- and it can't detect a ballot cast fraudulently. We've had too many close elections that could have been swayed by even a tiny amount of fraud: House District 78 in 2004 was decided by less than 30 votes; the 2002 Governor's race was decided by less than three votes per precinct.

In a voting system that is truly one person, one vote, only an eligible voter would cast a ballot, each voter would vote only once and would vote only in the district in which he currently lives. Oklahoma has no requirement to ensure that any of those conditions are met. For the sake of democracy, it's time we fixed that.

2 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Voter fraud's a piece of cake.

TrackBack URL for this entry: https://www.batesline.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1442

» Electile dysfunction from dustbury.com

Don Danz isn't much concerned about low voter turnout: I'm perfectly alright with half the nation or more not regularly voting. This is because I don't believe one should vote... Read More

» Voter Identification from Don Singleton

Marcus Aurelius at RedState shows examples where voter fraud did not involve the lack of a photo id. Those examples certainly should be addressed, but there is absolutely no reason why a photo id should not be a minimum requirement in order to vote. Read More

2 Comments

The brave individuals who voted in Iraq, despite fear of death, may find it amusing that the act of showing ID is considered voter intimidation in the US…

doverspa said:

Erick of RedState.org helped with the newly Republican Georgian legislature to pass an ID law. Here is the thread where Erick explains the process and the how our blog was mentioned in the Georgia legislature. Hopefully, Oklahoma can follow our fellow Georgian's example.

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This page contains a single entry by Michael Bates published on April 9, 2005 11:03 PM.

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