The Precious Right To Vote

In Ohio, a 19 year old was paid with cash and cigarettes to register more than 70 times to vote. In Nevada, the Dallas Cowboys, an NFL football team in Texas, have been registered to vote.

This discovered fraud has been expanded to more than 15 states with the biggest culprit seeming to be a community organization called A.C.O.R.N. Their offices have been raided in various parts of the country. People are coming out saying they’ve been paid to register.

Over 4,000 dead people have been discovered to be registered voters in Houston, Texas. Now, again in Ohio, it’s been discovered that the secretary of state has been holding over 200,000 registration cards that are questionable.

Also in Ohio, they decided that people could register to vote and turn around and vote on the same day. This is being challenged in the courts and seems to be going down.

There are laws against this. One is Voter Registration Fraud. If you’ve registered illegally to vote, you’re guilty of Voter Registration Fraud. If you vote with that fraudulent registration, you’re then guilty of Voter Fraud, which is a felony, as I understand it.

The election of 2000 was a small contributor to this, in my opinion. The big problem as I see it, is allowing anyone to sign up others to vote. Specifically, community organizers.

There are solutions. First, voting is not a requirement. It’s your choice. If you want to vote, you should have to register in one of several places. Your county offices, the secretary of state or DMV.

Second, you should have to do this no later than 30 days prior to any election. If you haven’t, you may still register, but you may not participate until you’ve been on the voter rolls for 30 days. When you do register, it must be in person and with a valid photo ID from either a passport or a drivers license. If you can’t prove that you’re a citizen and that you are who you say you are, you should not be allowed to register.

When you arrive to cast your vote, you should be required to produce a photo id of yourself. You must be 18 years of age or older on the day of the election to vote.

If you are not a citizen of this country, you should not be permitted to vote. If you’re not and you want to participate in electing representatives in this country, become a citizen.

Counting the ballots. There seems to be all sorts of people that are complaining that their votes aren’t being counted, or that machines aren’t working, or that the machines are tearing up cards, or chads are hanging or pregnant or dimpled. It is obvious that we cannot trust the machines, nor can we trust the elected officials reviewing the ballots when there is a question.

So here is a very simple solution to that problem. Each county should have ballots printed up. The ballots should be 8x10 sheets of paper, and be numbered.

A black ink pen will be provided to each voter. Each person, and proposal on the ballot will have a square in it. The voter will come in, step into one of those plastic booths on legs with three walls surrounding it and a little table in front of it. That voter, after proving he/she is who he/she says she is, will then put a check mark next to the candidate of their choice.

They will then step up to the copy machine. Run a copy of their ballot. Deposit the original in a locked container and take their copy as their receipt. Any ballots with incorrect check marks makes the entire ballot void.

When the polls close that night, the election workers will then open the boxes. There will be two people counting each ballot. One person from one party, one from the other. Any worker that gets stumped when they run out of fingers and toes to count on, should be fired immediately.

Once they are tallied up, that count is then recorded and the ballots placed in another sealed container where they will be saved for a period of six years.

It’s a simple process. Prove who you are so you can vote. Get a receipt for your vote. Count the votes one at a time and stop trusting the machines that everyone complains about and declare a winner within 48 hours following the election.

Oh yeah, and arrest, convict and incarcerate those that perpetrate voter fraud and remove their right to vote from them for the rest of their lives.

One of our most precious rights is now protected, provable in case of a contest of the vote and no voter can say that he/she didn’t get to vote because they have their receipt. Most importantly, we only have to make sure that our election officers have a third grade education where they have learned to count by ones properly. This ought to shut the liberals up and stop them from registering Mickey Mouse to vote.

I see just one problem with this plan. Finding a politician that has enough common sense to do what's right for the people and actually simplify the rules for registering to vote and putting it to paper. If we did actually have a politician that is capable of this, then the problem is getting 534 other politicians to understand it, sign on to it and avoid the urge to add billions of dollars of pork to it.

I'm going to add one more thing. People should show up to vote wearing blue windbreakers with gold lettering on the back of those jackets that says INS. That should solve the problem of illegal aliens even coming outside on election day, let alone going to the polls.

I welcome your comments.

Brett