For all those Democrats protesting that requiring voters to prove their identity is intended to restrict poor and/or minority voters, they might want to look at what one of their own is saying.
The Manhattan Democratic representative on the city’s Board of Elections was caught on a secret video slamming Mayor Bill de Blasio’s municipal ID program as contributing to “all kinds of fraud” — including at the polls.
“He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything,” Commissioner Alan Schulkin said in the undercover video recorded by a muckraker for conservative nonprofit Project Veritas.
“But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card,’ ” he said in the bombshell tape.
“It’s absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud . . . This is why I get more conservative as I get older.”
There's more at the link. Here's the video.
I daresay Mr. Schulkin has done his future political career no good at all by being so candid . . . but he's at least rendered a service to the voting public as a whole.
We know voter fraud is a problem. Incidents have popped up in several states over the past few months - Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, Minnesota, and other states. Looks like we can add New York - the city at least, but since it contains so many voters, it affects the entire state's results - to the list as well.
We need electoral reform to mandate effective, secure voter identification before being allowed to vote. There's no other alternative to prevent this sort of thing. I suggest that everyone arguing against such a reform is automatically suggesting that they are, in fact, in favor of ballot-rigging and electoral fraud. What other explanation could there possibly be?
Peter
Long lasting, bright, purple finger dye might be an answer to "vote often".
ReplyDeleteI'll agree with FrankC's suggestion of purple finger dye, in lieu of forehead markings performed with a branding iron, but the largest problem isn't how many times someone votes as much as who is it that's casting votes.
ReplyDeleteOne very important advantage of the finger dye technique is that it completely eliminates early voting, a serious source of fraud; dealing with absentee ballots is almost as serious an issue and needs to be reined in severely, perhaps by eliminating absentee altogether for all except deployed military personnel and replacing it with closely monitored in-person voting up to 90 days before the election date.
Of course, no improvement will be possible as long as there is a Democrat Party, or, for that matter, Democrats.