By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, March 20 at 5:58 AM
As we reported earlier, a bill being considered by the state legislature would change the way Missourians are allowed to vote.
Republicans say Senate Bill 1014 is designed to target "widespread voter fraud," a phrase often followed by a mention of the strongly Democrat-voting City of St. Louis. But several rural counties are also being targeted by lawmakers who say they are fearful of fraudulent votes.
Sen. Delbert Scott (R-28), the bill's sponsor, said the voter registration of 29 rural counties exceeds the number of people over age 18 in those counties.
“The bill has been very positively received from the general public who realizes that there is cheating going on,” Scott recently told the Columbia Missourian. “Most county clerks do an excellent job of having a fair election. This is certainly not a reflection of the clerks, but the Democratic Party particularly has opposed this. The folks on the street are very supportive. The general public has high expectations that this is going to solve a lot of voter problems.”
Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren told the Missourian that the bill might be well intentioned, but good intentions sometimes “get made into bad laws.”
“I think it’s very well intentioned,” Noren said. “They really believe there are roaming bands of people out there doing this, but those of us who have spent our lives studying this know it’s not true.”
“If there are fraudulent ballots cast, it might cancel out my vote,” she told the paper. “But there isn’t much difference between people committing fraud and people being disenfranchised.”
2 Comments:
We need to stop and think what is best for the democratic process, instead of what is best for the Democratic Party (or any other party). It's bad for the country to select voting procedures that let people who vote like us vote more often than entitled and/or prevent people who vote the other way from voting at all. Our goal should be that everyone who is eligible to vote and wants to vote gets to do so, and just once per election.
It must also be realized many people vote their frustrations by consciously not voting, and their exercise of free expression should not be hijacked by others voting "for them," presuming that those individuals wanted to vote and (what a coincidence!) wanted to vote exactly the way the person stealing the vote voted.
As long as access to identification can be easy and thorough without being prone to counterfeiting, voter ID is actually a good thing. Our representatives would serve democracy better by seeking modifications to the legislation that accomplish those goals, instead of opposing the reform.
12:58 PM, March 20, 2006
But before seeking to require a photo ID to vote, legislators made it more difficult to even get an ID. Obtaining or renewing a driver's license (or state ID for non-drivers) now requires a birth certificate. Granted, driving is a privilege, but voting is a right.
2:36 PM, March 20, 2006
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