View From a Height

Election Rules Confab

The Secretary of State has announced a Blue Ribbon panel to examine the state's election rules, and what can be done to assure greater confidence at the polls. The first meeting is December 9.

I can't say I place a lot of faith in these sorts of panels. While I doubt that anyone is going to willfully sabotage the proceedings, I also wonder at the inclusion of politicians in the place of citizens. Ron Tupa, for instance, was one of the main movers-and-shakers behind an initiative that contemplated throwing the whole election into court, had it passed.

As I've said before, ID is easy to obtain. The ID should have an address and a picture. You show up at the polls, you vote. If you can't show up, you request an absentee, but you need a reason. There should be no same-day change of address, no same-day registration-because-I-entrusted-my-registration-to-the-homeless-guy-with-the-clipboard, no large-scale "helping" of those Alzheimer's patients at the nursing home vote what's in their interest.

Once we get a statewide voting list, things should be easier, especially in a state with few large cities close to the state borders. (It's hard, therefore, for someone to organize a bus caravan from Cheyenne to Denver, while filtering hundreds or thousands of people across the bridge from Camden to Philadelphia is relatively easy.)

I'll be in contact with the Secretary of State's office, but if there's a way to submit concerns ahead of time, I'll pass it along.