Recently there has been considerable discussion and some concern over voting system in the United States.
President Trump has said there is evidence of Chinese interference but not Russian interference and has promised to release documentation. Clearly if there was Russian interference, I would wonder why he was not elected in 2016.
I have wondered why my party has been so concerned with mail-in voting, especially since rural voters tend to be older and heavily Republican. It seems that eliminating mail-in voting would make it more difficult for rural voters.
There is a possible solution. President Trump has already said some exceptions could be made such as for disability, military service and others. I would suggest that we allow mail-in ballots if a polling place is more than 20 miles from your home. We could also save money by placing polling places 19 miles apart in some cities. This would reduce the number of ICE agents needed at polling places to detect and arrest anyone who looks like they could be illegally in the United States.
The concerns about problems with disability could be solved by establishing standards approved by a voting commission appointed by the president. It is again another obvious fact that someone with bone spurs should not be made to walk far or stand in line. In addition, it would be easier to find boxes with missing votes.
Why, you say, would we need to do that when none of the many court cases claiming fraud have been won and no election has been proven to be influenced by illegal voting or defective voting machines?
Just check with Fox News and their voting machine lawsuits. The answer is that it is possible for those things to happen and have happened in the past. One of our candidates for county auditor illustrated this when he described how his family had received a ballot for his grandmother after she passed away.
Of course, they didn’t mail it in. He didn’t say whether the ballot would have been accepted. Preventing that now would require someone or AI checking to see if someone’s date of death was before the date on the ballot. Even at that, probably not a problem unless a lot of people die between receiving a ballot and election day.
Nevertheless, we would have zero votes from dead people if we require them to come in person.
The fundamental obligations of a democratic election system are:
1. To ensure that every vote is counted and legal.
2. To provide equal opportunity to vote for everyone who wants to vote.
Eliminating mail-in voting could help to minimize election interference. What could go wrong?
Michael Leclair
Chehalis
