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February 17, 2005
Hillary's Voting Bill
I saw on Fox News today that Hillary Clinton will be introducing a bill called "The Count Every Vote Act of 2005." The bill is co-sponsored by Barbara Boxer. The bill will
-[Create] a federal holiday for voting.— Require paper receipts for votes.
— Authorize $500 million to help states make the changes in voting systems and equipment.
— Allow ex-felons to vote. Currently an estimated 4.7 million Americans are barred from voting because of their criminal records.
— Require adoption of the changes in time for the 2006 election.
I really don't understand why making election day a federal holiday is something that we need to work towards. I guess it isn't a bad idea in theory, but I don't know that it would necessarily make it more possible for people to vote. Will this include closing of schools? Won't that mean that parents, especially mothers, will have a harder time voting?
In regards to the second point, I don't really understand what this means. Is it talking about printing a paper ballot for electronic voting? I think this should happen, but I don't know that this is what is meant. Is it meant to say that every voter should get a voting receipt that they can take home to say they voted? If so, will this receipt have their votes? If so, doesn't that make it more possible to find out who someone voted for, and isn't that supposed to be a bad thing? And how on earth does giving someone a voting receipt help with, well, anything? I suppose my first guess would be that it gives, for instance, someone in Florida who voted for Buchanan, but meant to vote for Gore some proof that they made a mistake and a way to try and fix that mistake. This, however, sounds like a terrible idea to me. If someone votes for a third party candidate because they were convinced that their "first party" candidate of choice would win, what's to prevent them from claiming that they made a mistake if they turned out to be wrong? Won't something like this INCREASE voter fraud?
In regards to the third point, this sort of thing was done already after the 2000 election.
And finally, the last point. Why on earth would we want to allow felons to vote? If someone could offer me some good reason beyond "well, it's not fair to take away their rights," then I would consider it. However, I don't really have a problem with not allowing felons to vote, along with illegal immigrants for that matter.
And I can only imagine what is hidden in the depths of the bill. For pete's sake, why would anyone send out a press release a week before actually releasing the text of the bill.
I really don't understand why Democrats are so concerned with making it easier to vote. I mean, I don't want voting to be harder than registering in the correct place, going to the correct polling place on voting day, standing in line for 20-30 minutes, casting your vote, double checking it, and turning it in to the correct place. Any problems with that scenario, such as overly long lines for instance, should be fixed. But if someone doesn't care enough to follow that procedure, then they probably don't care enough to find out whom they are voting for.
I also don't understand why they are so resistant to dealing with voter fraud. I really liked a lot of the techniques they used in the Iraq vote. Why can't we require a picture ID and stain people's fingers so that they can't vote twice?
I note that at Hillary's website you can sign up as a citizen co-sponsor WITHOUT EVEN READING THE BILL.
(Check out the Hillary Watch catagory for more stuff Hillary Clinton has been up to.)
Update: I see on Hillary's website, she says the bill will "Provide a verified paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines." I don't see where the AP got "require paper receipts for votes" from that. That's a rather irresponsible summary if you ask me, assuming that they both refer to the same thing.
I will note that in 2001 as my senior project, I helped to design an electronic voting system with paper backups. All electronic and paper ballots were associated with a random number to enable double checking. I think that's a great idea. I don't understand why there are electronic voting systems without paper backups.
By the way, here is a website where you can compare types of legislation relating to voting. For instance The Voting Integrity and Verification Act of 2005 requires paper backups for electronic voting that can be verified by the voter before their electronic vote is submitted and required them to be preserved like paper ballots, and it doesn't throw in anything about felon voting. How about some support for this one?
GOP Bloggers also doesn't seem to like the idea of felons voting.
Posted by illuminaria at February 17, 2005 04:25 PM