Democrats – vote early and often!

A veto override that was buried under the furor of the Wal-Mart tax bill a couple weeks ago got new legs this week as another voting bill was prepared for introduction into the Maryland General Assembly. This bill would give a blanket restoration of voting rights to felons, most likely just in time for this fall’s election.

Under current Maryland law, passed in 2002, felons already can have their voting rights restored after a three-year waiting period from their prison release date, as long as all parole and probation requirements are fulfilled and any fines or restitution due paid up. But since that election-year measure didn’t kick enough votes into Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s column to make her governor (she lost to Gov. Ehrlich), in 2006 the Democrats (sponsor of the bill is black Democrat Delegate Salima Siler Marriott) want to toss away all the restrictions and make sure all those felons, mostly black, and mostly potential Democrat voters, get their chance to vote the survivor of the O’Malley-Duncan and Mfume-Cardin (among others) Democrat primaries into office.

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you may recognize the name of the bill’s sponsor. Salima Siler Marriott has been quoted before in my predecessor blog, ttown’s right wing conspiracy. This came from a Washington Times story I cited on ttrwc in November:

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

“Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community,” she said. “His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people.”

Of course, a group called Justice Maryland, which states itself as a “statewide organization comprised of individuals and organizations united to identify and reform those parts of Maryland’s justice systems that perpetuate the cycle of poverty and racial injustice” is pressing for passage of the bill. JM Executive Director Tara Andrews noted that Governor Ehrlich could attract the felon vote by not vetoing the bill. Yeah, right.

One thing I noticed on the Justice Maryland site is that it’s a project of another group called “Health Care for the Homeless.” Sounds innocent enough, but here’s a list of items they advocate for. Most of that fits right in with the Democrat socialist agenda. And that’s fine, but not everyone who hears of the bill and gets the lecture on the unfairness of denying those who have paid their debt to society the right to vote (even though they already have it) will get to see the agenda of all the groups pressing for it.

Speaking of the right to vote, there’s a lot of comment lately on the veto overrides of election law “reforms” that were pushed by the Democrats in 2005’s General Assembly session. Supporters of these measures said that it would make voting easier and increase turnout. Somehow I think all the extra turnout will vote Democrat this fall, just a hunch I have.

The reforms include early voting for the five days preceding Election Day, eliminating the requirements for a written request citing a specific reason that one cannot make it to the polls (in other words, absentee ballots become freely available to anyone for the asking), and voting via provisional ballot.

Two good commentaries I’ve found on this open invitation to electoral fraud are from Blair Lee in the Gazette (hat tip: Duvafiles) and on Soccer Dad’s blog.

In my opinion (and that’s why I have a blog, to express it!) I think if we’re going to have all these so-called reforms, it’s only fair to require a photo ID at the polling place. And it doesn’t have to be a Maryland driver’s license, we can take a few thousand dollars from our state’s surplus and post ads in the newspapers and send a letter to anyone with a suspended license that Maryland ID cards are available from the local DMV offices free of charge with the same valid identification as required for getting a driver’s license. (As I recall about changing my license over from Ohio, it was two forms of identification and some sort of proof of address like a utility bill.) So that takes care of the phony “poll tax” argument that’s sure to be raised.

When I first became registered to vote in Maryland, Wicomico County sent to me a wallet-size Voter Identification card, which has my relevant districts on it (everything from City Council to U.S. Congress), party affiliation, registration date, and date of issue, plus my address and a bar code/ID number that I assume is unique (and I had to sign it.)

The back of my driver’s license has some sort of hieroglyphics on it that I assume is a bar code of some sort as well, plus a unique number. Maryland ID cards could be set up the same way.

Here’s how I think we can take care of most of these problems.

The first thing that has to be done is that somehow the database for driver’s licenses has to be tied to the voter registration database, so that anyone who has an address on one that doesn’t match the other can be notified prior to the election, sending a notice to both addresses. It shouldn’t be THAT hard, after all, you can register to vote at any DMV office. Plus it may be possible for future voter ID cards to have the same photo as the driver’s license/photo ID does.

If you go to vote at the polling place, you would take your driver’s license/ID card and your voter ID, the official would check the photo ID’s, scan in the barcodes, and direct you to a waiting computer voting station that would also receive the information on who’s supposed to vote there, generating a unique ID number that has the voting station terminal number, the ID numbers on the cards, and the time/date of voting. If the person attempts to vote at more than one place, the two ID numbers should pop up in a check as being entered twice, and all attempted votes by the person could be invalidated.

If you vote by absentee ballot, there would be a section to enter your driver’s license and voter ID numbers, similar to that of a standardized test. Again, if a number came up more than once, it invalidates all attempted votes.

Provisional ballots could be handled in a similar way to absentee ballots, but printed on an as-needed basis. Also, I would have the computers shut down at the end of voting time, with two poll workers going out and ascertaining the last people in line at the closing time. These stragglers would get specially colored provisional ballots, basically to show that they were in line when the computer polls closed.

I know it’s not foolproof, as anyone could get a stack of phony ID’s or figure out a way to get past the requirements. One devious route I could see Democrats using would be for a planted BOE worker to get the voter ID numbers for registered Republicans and flood the system with phony absentee ballots with those ID numbers, tainting the likely GOP votes.

Oh, by the way, I know that Republicans are always the ones accused of electoral fraud (as in Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections) so I’m sure that Democrats would NEVER stoop to those tactics to hold on to power and get back the governor’s chair in Maryland, would they? I know I’m just talking in the abstract with my example, right?

Sure.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.