BBC NEWS | New Florida vote scandal feared

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | New Florida vote scandal feared

This is pretty nauseating. There was an interesting point on Instapundit saying that stopping people from voting who deserve to vote is no better or worse than allowing people to vote who do not have the right. However, given the amount of people in this country who would vote illegally (meaning vote when they do not have the right or vote twice) versus the number of people who would be stopped from voting who actually have the right, I think it comes down pretty clearly on the "let people vote" side.

Honestly, just do the math and see what the outcome is. 1.5 million people had their votes spoiled last time. Do we really think that 1.5 million people are going to go out and mis-vote? Even if you say that there are 10 million people who do not have the right to vote (which is a totally theoretical number), what percentage of them would actually vote and/or would actually be stopped by these measures? If the number of bad people stopped < to the number of good people prevented, it's bad. Otherwise it's good. My opinion is that while I agree with Instapundit in theory, I think that with these tactics more legitimate voters will be prevented from voting than illegitimate voters will be prevented from voting. This is unacceptable.
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I think the point of the article is that the Republicans intend to challenge voters who they believe DON'T have the right to vote, based on the fact that the mail was returned.

The no-no here is only the fact that race is the factor. If you could prove that you're only targeting districts that typically went to the Democrats (regardless of race), then it seems to be a legal tactic.

Really, I think both Republicans and Democrats should be doing this hand-in-hand to ensure the fairness of the election, as long as the intent is not to disrupt fair voters. The fact that the mail got returned SHOULD preempt someone from voting.

I think the only way any of this crap is going to be settled is by admitting that we live in a union of states, and that voting processes should be standardized across states. Step 1) Say where your primary residence is. Step 2) Cast your vote anywhere. Step 3) Election officials route your vote into the right district "basket."
— Rob S
This is a great point Rob. The problem is that it's impossible to have a single way of verifying voters without biasing it against one side or the other unless you did it everywhere simultaneously. The problem with the story above is that they chose to do the checking only in areas that were primarily democratic which has the effect of slowing those (and only those) elections down. That's terrible.

As to your point about voting, I totally agree. In fact, I would LOVE to see an open voting system, done via cell phone calls, or Internet or paper or anything. And nothing says that it should be one voting day only, why not voting month? I saw a very interesting discussion about Internet and other voting technology recently here with a technology that is open, totally transparent and totally auditable. With something like this in place, you could obviate the need for registration altogether. You simply have everyone vote and verify everyone on the backend before the results are reported.
— Iron Yuppie
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