Some Thoughts on Voter Registration (Fraud)

First, why are organizations allowed to solicit people to get them to register to vote? It seems logical to me that the best way to have a vote represent the will of the people is to have the people who vote be the ones who CARE enough about the issues, to go down and register themselves, or seek out an organization to help them. I am sure you can ask a local librarian and they can give you some idea of where to start. Otherwise, you have individuals who are voting who registered because someone stopped them on campus or on the street to sign them up. If a person cannot be bothered, or doesn’t care enough, to initiate registering to vote on their own when they turn 18 (or when an election that is important to them arises), then they probably aren’t going to bother to make an educated decision when casting their vote and they will be shirking their responsibility as a voter. You have a responsibility to cast a vote that is representative of your thoughts and beliefs – because your vote carries with it, part of the weight of what happens to the lives of all Americans and future generations. Your vote may be one vote – but all of the “one votes” cast in ignorance are responsible for a government that does not truly represent the electorate. So first – if someone wants to vote – they should have to take it upon themselves to register themselves to do it. If we are going to not count all absentee ballots, and not all states count ballots from soldiers oversees, and courts are not forcing states to do so in recounts – we should not be creating a situation ripe for voter fraud by allowing solicitors to register voters either. All votes are equal – but all voters should be equal as well – they should all have the same degree of commitment to the process – in that they each vote cast WOULD be more equally representative of the one who cast it.

Secondly, and though I loathe to say this – perhaps there should be some degree of federally standardized voting machines etc. I am against big government – but for national elections – uniformity is in the interest of ALL Americans, and every vote should be counted by the same standards. If this was the case, perhaps some of the Bush/Gore election mess could have been avoided – and Gore supporters could not still claim it was “stolen” by Bush.