2004 In the Can, On to 2006

Posted by Craig

The 2004 election has come and gone. And in a word to describe last year’s run-up to election night, awesome. If you are a political junkie on either side of the spectrum, you almost could have become sick with the coverage, I know normal folks did. The election was as close as everyone predicted, and half of America guessed the outcome right. With the threat of terrorism still lingering, the big topic leading up to the election, and that has seemed to stay in the focus afterwards, is voting fraud.

Indiana is currently in the process in passing a bill to help curb voting irregularities. The Indiana House passed the bill, requiring the show of a state ID with picture at polling places, almost strictly down party lines. The Democrats in Indiana claim that by taking this action, you strip many Americans the right to vote. But as the last election showed, especially if as hotly contested, some people would do anything to win. There was the case of the young man in Ohio that was signing people up to vote, that didn’t even exist, to the time honored tradition of using deceased people to “stuff” ballots. This is simply a way to stop this behavior.

Five other states, South Carolina, Florida, South Dakota, Arizona and Louisiana, all have laws that closely resemble that of the Indiana law, only not as strict. All the before mentioned states have clauses to allow other forms of identification or conditional ballot to be used in voting. But the Republicans in Indiana are not the only ones worried about counting votes. Hillary Clinton and several others started a push in January to allow felons and other disenfranchised voters the right to vote under their Count Every Vote Act of 2005.

In the Indiana Democrats view, the voters that do not have proper identification are only those who vote Democrat, and this law would prevent voters from casting ballots for Democratic runners. So it must be safe to assume that Clinton believes those that have had their right to vote taken must also only vote Democrat. The Republicans in Indiana just want to make sure that the right and privilege to vote is not wasted on individuals who seek to undermine the process. And allowing people who have had their rights stripped due to their actions the right and privilege to vote only takes away another punishment for committing crimes.

This past election saw the country start to embrace new technology in taking and counting votes. Electronic voting machines were both heralded and jeered, but from my own experience worked just fine. There may be the need to tweak and fix any problems that do exist, but nothing is 100%. However, if we can find ways to stamp out fraud, while not disenfranchising voters, I think we should. Voter fraud may not be a rampant as some believe, but that doesn’t mean we simply deny its existence.
It seems to me that the Republicans have picked up the mantra, let's fix it before it breaks, while the Democrats want only to wait and watch all suffer.