New Voting Laws: My Preference

I have listed out what I would like to see done in the realm of voter reform, for Washington State inparticular, natioanlly in general.

I am pulling no punches here on anyone other than our service men and women due to their sacrifices. Please follow the ‘MORE’ link.

Prepare to be insulted or prepare to applaud.

The Governors race here in Washington State has been a microcosm of what we�ll call �Election Difficulties�. We�ve got felon voters, dead voters, people with multiple registrations and probably illegal aliens voting too. We also have missing ballots, �found� ballots, late ballots and odd-ball provisional ballots.

I originally got the gumption up to write up my ideas for �voter reform� from a link to the comments section of Blogs For Bush that was linked to by The Valiant Elephant at Four Right Wing Wackos.

The commenter, Almiranta, had some good ideas that I would like to see, but I don�t think she is going quite far enough.

One idea of hers I would really like to see is this,

I�d really like to see a serious effort in the next two years to clean up the voter registration mess, as a start. Maybe one way to do this would be to send a letter to every registered voter, informing him/her that this registration must be renewed within a certain period of time, by filling out and returning a form, to be kept on the books. As the notices would be sent to the supposedly legal residences of the registered voters, this would be a first step in weeding out the fake addresses.

Further, each renewal of voter registration would contain information that providing false information to register someone who does not meet the criteria of a registered voter is a felony, punishable by jail time and/or substantial fines. This would eliminate the claim that �I didn�t know it was wrong� to register, or vote, if the person is not a citizen, or is a felon, etc.

As she states shortly thereafter, even in doing this, there would still be some room for serious fraudsters to have their way. Which is where I come in with my point that I don�t think is mentioned enough.

Voting is a right, but that right also brings with it RESPONSIBILITY.

You do have an actual responsibility to vote. Some people shirk off this responsibility with either disregard for the process or just plain laziness. And that is fine. If there is one thing that being a Republic that functions via capitalism shows us is that you can eschew your responsibilities, but not without consequences. Basically meaning that if you don�t vote, you don�t get to complain about what you get, governance wise.

If you want to exercise your right to vote, these are your responsibilities: be willing to be open about it and do your research and follow up.

On the subject of being open about it, I mean that you need to bring your ID to your registration office and to your polling place and don�t get offended if someone asks you for it to verify your identity.

Registration:

No one would want the bank to give their money away to an imposter, why would anyone mind being asked for ID to do something even more important such as voting? This will keep all but the very seriously criminal people from registering and/or voting under someone else�s name.

As for ID, the only thing that will be accepted is a driver�s license from their state of residence (and therefore the state they�re voting in), a state issued identification card or a military ID card.

No passports, no consular metricula cards, no student ID�s and no security badges.

Again, this is about responsibility. If you want to vote, you have to be willing to prove to the state that you are. Yes, it is possible to counterfeit any of the listed forms of ID, but again, it is another deterrent. We will never get perfection when we cross people and politics, but we can make it as difficult and dangerous to offenders as possible.

So we now have the vast majority of the illegal, dead, pets and multiple voters cleared off the registration rolls. Now we�ll move to your voting place.

Your Polling Place:

Again, you will need to show your ID and your voter ID card in order to prove that you are who you say you are before you get your ballot. No ID and voter card? No ballot. Not even a provisional one. You then have to sign off next to your name in the registration book as usual.

But your ballot now looks different.

Your new ballot has a serial number and barcodes on it. After you make your choices, you take it back to where you signed the book and that person checks it over to make sure you have filled in your ovals correctly or all your chads have fallen out. Once that it has been established that you have completed your ballot correctly, that person signs it and puts their designated poll worker number on the line at the bottom of the ballot.

The poll worker also folds the ballot along a serration and then tears off the serrated tab and gives it to you. On this tab is a serial number that matches your ballot and a bar code that corresponds to that number. The bar code is also on the ballot.

Absentee Ballots:

While I deplore the idea of absentee ballots as a rule, I do see their necessity. And that is why I do not think anyone but those who actually need them should get them. You should have to apply to get your absentee ballot every election. Placement on a �permanent absentee ballot list� is right out. No more of that. If you cannot take your responsibility to vote seriously enough to drag your ass down to your polling place, then don�t vote.

If you know you are too infirm to make it to the polling place you or your relatives can apply to have an election volunteer come to you up to 10 days before the election to have you fill out your ballot. The person too unfirm to go to the polls must be conscious enough to mark the ballot themselves. A family member present is not able to handle the ballot.

If you know you will be gone during the election, on a business or vacation, you may go to your county elections office and cast your ballot up to 10 days before the election. The poll book with your name in it will be found and you will have to show your two pieces of ID will have to be shown and you will have to sign the book.

This basically leaves deployed military that are eligible for an absentee ballot. Everyone else has to make the long and hard trek to your polling place.

Remember, voting is a responsibility.

Absentee ballots are the same as the new polling ballots, with the removable tab that you can keep, except that you need to sign both the ballot and the removable tab for the purpose of matching the two.

Are you done voting now? No.

Checking and, if necessary, disputing your ballot:

As the machine counts your vote, it scans the bar code and records the selections made as it counts the votes for each candidate. It then sends the selections that correspond to the bar code to a hard drive and within one week of the election your county elections board has to make the information on those hard drives available via the internet or phone-computer interface. You then have two weeks to call in or log in and check to make sure your vote was recorded correctly.

You do not have to do a check back, but again, it is your responsibility to do so. Also, the number on the tab is not recorded anywhere by the state so as to make it impossible for the state to track you and your vote selections.

If the recorded vote is not correct, you now have to go to your elections office with your photo ID, your voter registration card AND the tab with the bar code and ballot number on it and apply to have the correction made.

The application is simple and gives the county time to find the box with the ballots from your precinct and then your polling station and then your ballot number. They are also allowed to call in the poll worker who signed and numbered your ballot. To be able to correct your ballot, you have to prove that there was an error on the ballot, such as an oval being marked incorrectly, a hanging chad or a vote selection being changed. If a seeable error was made, the poll worker gets it put on their record. After a certain number of errors, say 15, the poll worker is let go and can no longer work in elections.

Recounts:

Machine recounts are automatically conducted with the result between two candidates is with 1% of the votes cast. A request for a machine recount to be done with a spread further than 1% can be done, but must be paid for, in total, by the requestor before hand and afterwards if there are any overages. A hand count may be done after a machine recount, but only the spread is less than � of 1% and if paid for in total by the requestor. That will be it with the recounts.

Other Special Circumstances:

One of the reasons that King County is giving for the discrepancy between the number of ballots and the number of people who are known to have voted on November 2nd is that there are a number of people on a protected list due to their being victims of domestic violence. That discrepancy currently stands at 1800 more ballots than voters.

Do I believe that there are 1800 people in King County who are victims of domestic violence? Sadly, there are probably more than that. Do I believe they are all on the protected list. Nope.

All of the above listed provisions will also apply to protected domestic violence victims, but their names have to show up on the list of people who voted somewhere. Their status of being on a special protected list can have a code which makes their address appear as 123 A St Anytown, WA 98999 for all I care, but they have to be able to match a name on that list to a person who is known to have voted.

There will be no registrations allowed with the address of the county voting office. To be able to vote locally, you need to be able to prove that you have lived locally for at least 30 days. 90 days is a better idea. Registrations need to be made prior to 30 days before the election. If you are a military voter, you may sign up to vote on the day of the election, and do not have to follow the residency rules, provided that you have a letter from your commanding officer stating that you have been recently posted in the county and have your military ID.

Primary Elections:

With Washington�s new �Top Two� or �Bayou Primary� system, we are now looking at having election count squabbles take place over primary races in the very near future.

A �Top Two� Primary is when you have a field of candidates for a position, but they are not separated by party. The top two candidates are voted into the general election even if they are from the same party.

While you may come up with a clear winner for the top spot on the general election ticket, the new thinking is that there may be a close race between the number two and number three candidates, leading to an incredible mess with the number three candidate fighting the count in order to get into the number two spot.

With Washington�s Primaries being held in September, this could become very messy and lead to not being able to have a general election on that position due to an ongoing recount or court fight.

Which is why we need to hold primaries in the summer or earlier.

There is a reason why politicians in office like having primaries held as late as possible. It is the same reason why McCain-Feingold was passed, because it protects incumbents. With only two to three months for the challenger to fight the incumbent on the issues, the challenger is at a severe disadvantage.

For both of these reasons, all primary elections should be held in July at the latest. March would be better. Give the candidate�s time to argue, dig dirt or do whatever they want to do. Politics is dirty business but is incredibly entertaining. I demand my entertainment on the political scale for at least six months before I cast my final vote.

In fact, I take voting so seriously that I believe that the first Tuesday in November should be declared a sort of National Holiday. We already have laws on the books requiring employers to give their employees available time, albeit unpaid, to go and cast their vote.

Why not just make a day of it. You will not get paid for this day if your employer deems it so and you do not go to work, but you are not required to stay home before or after you vote.

The special requirements of the governmental bodies:

The government is required to keep their voter registration databases in proper order. Any and all voters can request a copy of the list at any given time. The local coroners are required to notify the proper county after the issuance of a death certificate so as to get a person removed from the list. Any failure to notify the elections board will be met with a $10,000 fine for the coroner�s office.

Any failure to properly maintain the list to an accuracy of within 10 days of the current day, if it is 60 days before an election, or within 20 days of the current day if there is no election pending, results in a $25,000 fine against the elections office. Ten fines and the Elections Commissioner is to be replaced.

In conclusion:

Do I seriously believe that any of these suggestions will be taken seriously, let alone put into effect? No.

People are lazy and easily sated and politicians are even moreso.

Christine Gregoire has commissioned some backasswards committee to study election reform, but it is not just the �election� that needs reforming. The voters are at fault as well.

If there is anything you think I have missed or anything you think I am wrong about, please feel free to comment or e-mail.