Wednesday - October 08, 2008

And around we go again

Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote.

A Nevada secretary of state’s office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.

Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.

The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.

ACORN investigation spreads to 10 states!

Why does this group even still exist? They should have been shut down ages ago. And every single one of their registration forms thrown out. And they shouldn’t get a dime of public money. And anyone involved with the group, especially those who worked as Community Organizers and Staff Trainers, should be branded a criminal. Because I don’t buy that they aren’t aware of the dirty deeds of their underlings. Hell no. I believe they are fully aware of them, and instructed these people specifically to break the law and falsify voter registrations.

I remember how hard it was for me to register to vote. My goodness, what a task it was. Nobody sent me a form in the mail. Nobody showed up at my house with a van to give me a ride down to registration headquarters. Nobody even told me where the place was. It was awful. Really, it was. I had to dig around in the kitchen to find the phone book. Then I had to look up the number for the local Republican Party. Then I had to make a phone call and ask where I should go to register, and what hours the place was open. Since the location was on the other side of town, I had to decide whether to drive there, walk there, or take my bicycle. Pretty sure I had to take my birth certificate and my SocSec card. When I got there I actually had to speak to one or two people, and I think I even had to fill out some form and sign my name. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I don’t think one cent of public money should be spent on voter registration. I don’t buy into this “historically disenfranchised” nonsense either. Not one bit. If you want to take part in voting, if you want to exercise your civil rights, then you have to make the effort. And every time you move from one home to another you should remember to move your registration as well. It’s the tiniest of social responsibilities. The tiniest. Ok, sure, there might be some folks lying in hospitals, or those fully disabled at home, who have finally decided to become voters. For those folks, there is a form you can fill out and mail in. All it costs you is the price of an envelope and a stamp. Less than a dollar.

These voter registration drives are a crock. All of them. Rife with fraud. All of them. There ought to be a registration cut off date 6 months before Election Day. Get your paperwork in the pipeline by then, or too bad ... no vote for you! ... this time. No exceptions. Six months should allow even the most inept government employees plenty of time to validate your data and issue you a voter ID with your picture on it. Sure, fine, State’s Rights. Ok. Let the states and the counties and the towns do whatever the hell they want for voter registration. But for Federal elections put a rigorous universal law into place, with coordinated cross checking between Social Security, the IRS, your employer, EquiFax, and all the state databases of who was born, who died, and who is a felon.

Would a Federal Voter ID be akin to a National ID card? Yes. That’s exactly what it is. But that’s creeping socialism!! No, sorry, it’s not. We are already way, way past that point. Do you really think that, if you aren’t in hiding somewhere off the grid, a la Ted Kaczynski, that the government can’t find you in under 24 hours? If you have a job they know where you live. If you get welfare they know where you live. The telephone companies cooperate with the government, so if you own a cell phone that has a calling plan they can locate you to within a meter or two in a matter of seconds. The government knows your name, your age, your sex, your race. They know where you live, where you work, what kind of a car you drive. I guarantee you they can access your credit card data, so they know what all your spending habits are. They even now how much money you put in what bank, and how often you hit the cash machine. Use one of those Shopper’s Club cards at your local grocer and the government can easily find out what you eat. They know who provides you with internet service, and it wouldn’t be too much effort for the government to find out all the sites you surf too. All they have to do is look at the logs on the server end of your ISP. The information is already there, and it never goes away. Same goes for your telephone usage. Every call, every number. Stored forever. You barely even have the illusion of privacy anymore. Let’s not kid ourselves. Ten years ago the ACLU did their pizza sketch to scare folks, but the capability was already in place then. It was only a matter of policy that the proper switches weren’t already thrown. No, let me rephrase that. It was only a matter of public policy that the government was willing to admit that the proper switches weren’t already thrown. And more public policy that they would act on the data once that had it.  What was true then is only more true now, especially since we’ve had that Patriot Act thing. So let’s admit reality, not bemoan a level of freedom that hasn’t existed for at least 25 years already anyway, and use the existing system for good for once.

The technology exists so that you, the voter, should be able to walk into any polling place in America on or before Election Day, show your ID, and vote. It doesn’t matter if you are in Pasadena California, the ballot for Oshkosh Wisconsin should come up. You cast your vote, and not only does Oshkosh immediately know it, no other polling place in America will let you vote for that election. Conceptually this is hardly any different from using your Visa card. Just two or three lines of code get added so that you can only use it once per election. That’s it.

Oh, but the system can be hacked! Perhaps it can. And hacking the election system can be made a capital offense too. And we could use some of that whiz-bang encryption that already exists to protect your online credit card shopping. Oh, I lost my card!! Tough shit. Not losing your card is part of being a responsible citizen. However, if you tell us that you lost it, say 30 days before the election, then you can get a new one issued. You’d have to supply all the ID and stuff again though. Come to think of it, you really don’t even need the card do you? Just tell the election worker your SSN. Up comes your picture and they verify that it’s you. Sure, a retinal scan or a thumbprint would be absolute proof, but let’s try to keep that info out of the government’s hands a little longer if we can. But some kind of ID would almost eliminate voter fraud, and would utterly eliminate the “raisin da-tree” for ACORN to exist. And that’s a big step forward.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/08/2008 at 10:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Politics •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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