After all is said and done, after all the dust settles, and after emotions get packed away (hopefully for a while), the drama around the election (dating back to Summer) has really boiled down to one thing: Confidence that the election was fairly conducted in every state, county, parish, borough, and community. That’s it. So how do we fix it for next time?
I have two suggestions. Just two.
- Mail-in and absentee voting must only be allowed when, within 180 days of the election, a voter requests a mail ballot and can prove their identity, voter eligibility, and residential address. This should be scrubbed against county records as well, to clean as you go. No more 50 people registered to a warehouse in Clark County. No more voter rolls mailing off to dead people that are then returned and counted. No more votes appearing in excess of what was sent out. Pure and simple – request it, produce ID to prove who you are, and live at a valid residential address. And those ballots must be sent by the clerks at a legally required and mandated time (not the day before they are due, as happened in a primary in NY in 2020), and then returned, in the hands of the clerk, by the legal time required. No exceptions. Period.
- Citizens should never again talk to a political pollster. Why? Because we should not want a candidate to know where they are doing well or not doing well – they should assume they are doing poorly everywhere, and therefore focus attention on as many of us as possible. No more thinking “this region is a foregone conclusion – they’ll vote for me because the polls say I’m winning.” That also serves to detract fraud from creating, harvesting, or otherwise manipulating votes in areas with close races. Make them campaign blind.
That’s it. Two suggestions. Nationally adopted, by all state legislatures – and not ever altered by a judge at the last minute. Every state constitution requires that, incidentally. And people need to take responsibility to vote on time, and return ballots on time. If you don’t trust the Post Office, get yourself or a trusted individual to a drop box. Those moves will put a great deal of election angst to bed. And we certainly have the tech to support this, as well.
For you elected Clerks and Secretary of States out there – if this is too much to handle, to ensure the validity of your voting residents every two years, don’t run for re-election. This isn’t the right job for you.
