SAVE Voting
Republicans have proposed a bill to preserve some public confidence in elections.
America has reached a point where those who vote for the losing candidate no longer believe the election was fair. Democrats and the media think their doubts are appropriate, and doubts on the other side are not. Republicans disagree. It is not that they have less reason to doubt. They just don’t have the overwhelming bull horns to match the left.
The 2000 election was the Bush – Gore race with loads of controversy. The Florida Supreme Court hated Florida Governor Jeb Bush and kept prolonging the count. “Hanging chads” was the phrase of the day. The U.S. Supreme Court ended the whole exercise, and Bush became President. To this day, many Democrats refuse to acknowledge Bush’s win as honest.
After that election, a Commission on Election Reform was established. Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and prominent Republican James Baker were co-chairs. In 2005, they issued a report entitled “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.”
Ironically, the report works two ways. Those who want to build confidence in elections can follow its recommendations. Those who want to win at any cost have a guide to make elections easier to bend in their favor.
There are excellent discussions on many issues. Sometimes they leave a balanced partial answer when that is appropriate. One case is the restoration of voting rights for felons who have served all their time, including parole and any restitution. On page 49, the report favors this except in cases of capital crimes or sex offenses. They also suggest that the state tell a felon who is again eligible how to register.
On one side, they deal with administration and vote tabulation. They recommend:
Voting machines that tabulate voter preferences accurately and transparently, minimize under- and over-votes, and allow for verifiability and full recounts; and
Fair, impartial and effective election administration
Some states are banning paper trails of ballots. That will make it harder to verify counts.
The report spends a lot of time on voter registration and voter identification. They want a “complete, accurate, and valid list of citizens who are eligible to vote.” Note, they specify “citizens,” not “voters.” It is assumed that only citizens can vote.
A major issue is voter ID. There is a bill in the Senate, the SAVE Act, dealing with that. The Democrats oppose it. The Commission on Election Reform strongly supported Voter ID to help build public trust in elections. This is what they said:
[W]e propose that all states require a valid photo ID card, which would be a slightly modified REAL ID or a photo ID that is based on an EAC [Election Assistance Commission] template (which is equivalent to the REAL ID without the driver’s license). However, instead of allowing the ID to be a new barrier to voting, we propose using it to enfranchise new and more voters than ever before. The states would play a much more affirmative role of reaching out to the underserved communities by providing them more offices, including mobile ones, to register them and provide photo ID’s free of charge. In addition, we offer procedural and institutional safeguards to make sure that the card is not abused and that voters will not be disenfranchised because of the need for an ID.
[W]e propose measures that will increase voting participation by connecting registration and the ID process, making voting more convenient, diminishing irregularities, and offering more information on voting.
This is what the modern Voter ID bills aim for.
Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media claim that Voter ID is simply a new form of “Jim Crow” laws designed to limit minority voting. That is both absurd and insulting. The word we should never use about Blacks has the meaning of ignorance and incompetence. The argument that minorities can’t manage to get an ID is an argument that they are ignorant and incompetent. Polls show that minorities favor Voter ID.
I live in North Carolina, which, for now, has a Voter ID law. In early March, there was a primary election. I showed my driver’s license to vote. I will be eighty on my next birthday, have a large bald spot on the top of my head, and the remaining hair is white. Even so, some stores insist I show my driver’s license as an Alcohol ID when I buy wine or beer at a grocery store.
The list of places that require an ID is endless, and everyone, of every color, must comply. If voting is the exception, it might relate to a cynical story we often hear:
My uncle always voted Republican, but he’ll be voting for the Democrats from now on because he died last week.
The Carter-Baker Commission aimed to restore confidence in elections. They sought to set things up so that every citizen could vote and know their vote wouldn’t be cancelled by an improper ballot.
The Democrats and their allies, such as the ACLU, claim they are ensuring everyone can vote. They appear to want to be able to stuff any ballot box they need so they can win “by any means necessary.”
Appearance here is important. It is the issue of “Caesar’s wife.” If it looks like you are working to leave yourself a way to cheat, people naturally assume you intend to cheat. The Commission on Election Reform understood this. They were trying to set procedures in place to assure the public that cheating would be difficult.
There are many elections in history in which the losing side never accepted the results. Sometimes their claims were false, but in many cases, they were right. I am not going to get bogged down in various cases because the views on each case are held with a religious fervor. If we do all we can to lock down the process, we can increase trust in the system.