Vote by phone

The following piece was sent to me on e-mail: read through it and meet me on the other side.

Oregon, the state that brought you full time vote by mail, is now moving the state toward vote by phone. In fact the Secretary of State (a partisan democrat who was John Kerry's Oregon campaign chair) has expanded vote by phone to all 36 counties. He's done this through administrative rule.Ostensibly he's done this to comply with the Help America Vote act (HAVA) which requires there be some way to help folks with disabilities vote. Sounds reasonable enough. However before this vote by phone change, sight impaired people were physically helped by county officials and volunteers.Now what could possibly be the problem with this?The SOS, Bill Bradbury, WILL introduce vote by phone to the wider populace. Currently, the SOS doesn't even know who's voting. Oh sure, eventually they catch up with the dead people who vote etc., but they don't cull through to determine for instance whether you're actually a citizen of this country before you vote. The SOS has stated several times in speeches to the AFL-CIO that he will do everything in his power to make it as easy as possible to vote. The problem in Oregon is any Tom, Dick or Jose can pack in a van, come to Oregon and get a driver's license--AND THEY HAVE (in two recent cases in Oregon, prosecutors established that 80,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS came to Oregon to get driver's licenses). Under the motor voter act they also get voter registration materials. The SOS does not check the voter database to determine if those registered to vote are citizens--even though we've begged him AND he has millions of dollars to do it from HAVA.Bill Bradbury, whom John Fund has determined is the 'most partisan Secretary of State in the country', also is under fire by a commission made up of some of Oregon's big shots. They've determined that perhaps elections should not be in the SOS's portfolio because the appearance of partisanship undermines the credibility of the electoral process. Yeah, you can look that up at noduh.com. Still, it's gratifying that others---including democrats---see this Bradbury for what he is: a political hack. We know what Bradbury will do. Even if he leaves office early so that the governor can name his replacement and they can run as an incumbent (the Oregon way...alas...), the democrat will continue Bradbury's policies. Administrative rules, are written by staff, not the hack in the chair.


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Made it all the way through? Good. There is a lot to talk about in here. For example, the vote by mail.
One thing I believe is key to elections is the integrity of the results. When people believe the results are flawed, altered, etc. they lose faith in the system. Note key votes throughout history with flawed, questionable (at best) results...such as the defeat of Andrew Jackson's first bid (which led to the rise of the party system, by the way), the post-Civil War shenanigans that resulted in the election loser entering office based on his promise to end Reconstruction the Lincoln way, Kennedy, particularly in Illinois where in some districts the number of votes he alone received actually exceeded the total population in some counties, and of course the recent Bush election(s).
Each time the integrity of the system has been questioned. Each time it has affected subsequent elections. As mentioned above, the defeat of Jackson is given much credit for the rise to dominance of the two party system as political machines as opposed to more loose configurations. The backroom agreements that ended Lincoln's version of Reconstruction led to increased racial issues that are still not resolved. The Kennedy shenanigans had a hand in depowering the Chicago mobs. The Bush maneuverings have people on both sides questioning a system that allows illegal immigrants to vote but not members of the armed forces overseas.
When people don't believe their vote counts or matters they tend to stop voting. The Vote by Mail system is unbelievably susceptible to fraud. Sure, grievous penalties are threatened for anyone tampering with the mail. Doesn't stop identify theft, why would we think it would stop voting fraud? And now we are going to add phone voting?
On the one hand, the convenience is great. On the other hand...do you trust elections held by show of hands? Me either. But we are suddenly going to trust call-in votes? There had best be some safeguards put in place...and a lot of them.
Of course, as pointed out, those safeguards have not stopped foreign criminals from voting...(and whether they SHOULD be criminals is not germane to the conversation. They ARE criminals because they violated, deliberately I might add, existing laws) although we do not allow domestic criminals to vote.
There is a long, confusing and very grey-area discussion to be had over whether illegal immigrants SHOULD be not just allowed, but encouraged to vote. They are, after all, members of the community and are affected by the outcomes of the elections. Still, their extra-legal participation in the voting process engenders further erosion in the wall of credibility and strains the resources of the system.
There are a lot of good and bad things in the letter above. It demonstrates that there is not a clearly right or wrong way to approach things. Many people will think the vote by phone is good, many will think it is bad. I think one thing shown by the above is how sad it is to consider an outcome good or bad because of the party that suggests it instead of the merits of the situation. Then again, I write posts about circuses, so what do I know?