'Tis Only My Opinion!

May 2012 - Volume 32, Number 5

Voting needs to be Fixed!

In the movie, "A Few Good Men", there is one memorable line that resonates to me about the current economic situation and the understanding by our citizens of it ... "You can't handle the truth!"

The fundamental fact is that the people ultimately responsible are the voters. Probably less than 1/4 of 1% of the citizens eligible to vote have ever read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Federalist papers which define the basic rights of the citizens. Ignorance has been used to subvert the political process.

Voting has been compromised.

Citizens have allowed the voting process to be compromised. Since the founding of the country, the electorate has expanded for many reasons.

In 1776, in most states, only white men with property were permitted to vote (freed slaves could vote in four states). White working men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise. At the time of the American Civil War, most white men were allowed to vote, whether or not they owned property, but literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests were used in various places, and most white women, people of color, and Native Americans still could not vote. Today, citizens who are eighteen years of age or older can not be denied the right to vote .

To deny that fraud does not exist is foolish!

There are documented cases where elections have been changed by vote fraud. The election of Lyndon Baines Johnson to the U.S. Senate is one example.

"A scant 87 votes changed the course of world history in 1948. Out of one million votes cast, an 87-vote margin caused a young Texas congressman named Lyndon Baines Johnson to become a United States senator. What the history books neglect to tell us is that, but for widespread vote buying and shameless ballot box stuffing in the corrupt barrios of South Texas, LBJ would not have become a senator, then vice president and ultimately president. The rest is history."

"Another example is the election of John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election. During John F. Kennedy's pivotal victory in the 1960 presidential primary in West Virginia. No less an authority than former House Speaker Tip O' Neill, D-Mass., recalls that one of Daddy Joe Kennedy's bagmen went through West Virginia with pockets stuffed with cash. He would visit sheriffs doling out thousands of dollars with the promise of more money should the county end up in Kennedy's column.

Then, of course, there are the mafia-union payoffs that led to the unprecedented ballot box stuffing in Mayor Daley's Chicago giving JFK his razor thin, winning margin over Nixon in 1960's general election. The scandal is so infamous that there is now a standard joke on the rubber chicken circuit for candidates that goes, "I want to be buried in Chicago so that I can stay politically active after I die."

While motor voter programs, early voting schedules, and Internet voting plans offer convenience for today's busy, on-the-go voter, the increased opportunity for fraud is undeniable. Currently, 47 states do not require any form of identification to vote. It practically takes an act of Congress and a blood sample to write a check these days, but voting on Election Day requires only the utterance or mere presentation of a name and address, any name and address will do, to cast a ballot.

To be sure, modern day election rigging takes all forms from the absurd to the sublime."

While the above were examples of Democratic party malfeasance, there are many other examples involving the Republican party.

The solution is simple.

Political parties do not demand honest voting practices by people who are citizens of the U.S. as they perceive they might gain some advantage under the current system. Some of the methods that destroy the credibility of the voting booth are:

	The lack of a paper trail that can be independently audited.
	The failure to match voter registration lists with the social security death index to eliminate dead voters. Requiring election boards to compare these lists through a computer matching process 90 days before any election as well as comparing addresses with utility databases would eliminate much of the fraud that currently exists. Election boards could send certified letters to the last known address for clarification and if not cleared up, the voter could be purged from the list. Florida election officials have just announced that over 53,000 dead voters were just found still on the voter rolls and are now being purged. Wonder how many of them voted in the last Presidential election which was decided by just a few votes?
	When someone votes at a polling location, an indelible ink should be affixed to a finger to prevent that same individual from voting at another location.
	Mail-in votes can easily be subject to fraudulent handling and should be disallowed except under very controlled conditions. Montana where the Senate election is expected to be extremely close according to recent polling data is reporting that massive mail-inn ballot irregularities have been uncovered by a non-partisan group, Media Matters Montana. It is expected that a majority of votes in the November election will be mail-in ballots.
	In the last few elections, there have been instances where more votes have been cast than the census reported that people lived in the voting district. The current Senator from Minnesota was the beneficiary of just one instance of this problem.

Requiring a government-issued ID also with the above would eliminate a significant portion of the fraud.

Qualifications for office are lax.

The constitutional requirements for office have been basically ignored by the political parties. The major media has also abdicated its responsiblity to vet candidates thoroughly. The liberal bias of the major media is very apparent. Just compare the delving into the background of George W. Bush versus that of Barrack H. Obama. The difference is obvious and telling.

It would appear that the Courts also do not want to address the problem. As a result, the rule of law is subverted and with out the rule of law, the republic is doomed.

Conclusion

The quest to obtain or remain in power by various political parties leaves unsolved the suspicion that the current President does not hold office legitimately. It would seem to me that a political party that does not demand that the issue be resolved is just as guilty as a political party that allows a person to run under its banner without proper vetting.

But then - 'Tis Only My Opinion!

Fred Richards
May 1, 2012

Corruptisima republica plurimae leges. [The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.] -- Tacitus, Annals III 27

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