Is there any debate that if a country’s main objective with elections is to ensure one person one vote would be to have in person voting with an approved photo ID at the polling location in which they are registered? Assuming the poll workers are honest, attentive and competent the potential for fraud would be generally minimal. Is there general agreement on that?
Could we also agree that with any form of mail in voting there is no way to guarantee that the person who the ballot is intended for is the one who sends it in? Unless you believe #1 it’s simply impossible to forge a signature or #2 it’s impossible for forged signatures to make it past poll workers. There are also other possible area’s for fraud as well if you consider phony ballots, signatures not being verified, human error, etc.
NOTE: THIS IS NOT A THREAD ABOUT HOW MUCH FRAUD THERE WAS OR WAS NOT IN THIS PAST ELECTION. KEEP THE DISCUSSION ON THE OP.
The other part I wish to discuss is a general view on voting along the lines of Constitutional intent. This is not something I have studied intensely so I did some cursory research and I found this helpful:
“When the Founders wrote the Constitution, the lack of voting as a right was not an oversight. The Founders were elitists, but they also believed only those who had a stake in society should be given the vote. In their minds, stakeholders were the only ones who had enough on the line to take voting seriously. If applying what the Founders believed to today, then only those who put in the effort of learning the issues and weighing out the options should vote, not those who simply vote for popularity or for who gives the best speech or makes the best promises. The mail system worked fine in 1789, but they chose to have voters show up to the polls. You had to put in some effort to vote.”
So my initial view Constitutionally speaking is that voting should not be restricted by ones race, gender, etc., but that it is not a right that either can or even should be enforced. It seems to me that the question is largely around how much effort should be required?
Um…can anyone spot the contradiction in this excerpt from the OPers source material?
Future court cases did spell out these rights and voting was not one of them. The 15th Amendment states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
It should be pretty easy to spot.
Hint: the right…yes…RIGHT…to vote is mentioned more often in the Constitution and its amendments than any other right.
And the article makes a fundamentally flawed assumption…the Constitution is not a rights DECLARER…it is a rights DEFENDER.
Amendment 9 of the BOR should do away with this silliness in thinking voting is not a right.
Utah has offered mail-in voting since 2013. Local Pubbies don’t seem to have a problem with it.
That said, in regards to the OP, of COURSE in-person with valid photo ID would be ideal. However, there are obstacles, purposeful or not, that make it less than ideal. For example, in this day and age, there is zero justifiable excuse for folks to have to wait in 10 hour lines to vote. How is that acceptable?
Personally, let’s do away with IDs which can be lost, misplaced, expire and just go to thumbprints and/or retinal scans for proof of identity for voting. It seems more secure than IDs.
As to the founders, didn’t voting start with only landowners? Not sure why we need follow their lead on this.
I have no pity for people who stood in those lines for hours. What thought process arrived at a decision to remain in line on the first day of early voting? (That’s what your article was about.) The next day, there was a short line. Day 3 had no line. Ditto days 4 through the end of early voting.
As far as I am concerned, it is abject idiocy to do what they did.
All is telling when a party wants a covid passport mandated but shouldn’t need and ID to vote. I don’t enjoy going to the dmv anymore than the next person but realize you need one if you want to function in this society.
If you don’t have the desire to get and ID regardless of color or gender to me you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. You need and ID here to do almost everything it’s ridiculous to have this conversation. If you don’t have and ID you are either not trying or living completely off taxpayers draining the social net for the rest of the people putting in their whole life.
Must be racist and discriminatory to show an ID at the will call window at the Atlanta Braves stadium to pick up your baseball tickets. Those bastards.
