Voting Stories

Sample ballot from Palm Beach County, FL
from the 2000 presidential election

With the first Obama-Romney debate scheduled for tomorrow evening, I thought about some of my experiences involving voting.

When I was a young boy, I lived in a small central New York town. Small town elections are goofy affairs, in that voters actually know the candidates and understand how short a shadow their reputation casts. That reality didn't stop my parents from exercising their franchise. Mom and Dad voted in a wooden building within walking distance of our house. What made my parents' voting memorable is that they claimed the election officials openly wore partisan Republican political badges. I have every reason now to believe my folks. At the time, I thought voter fraud was something that took place far away, in corrupt Chicago or the Kingfish's Louisiana.

I don't remember the first time I voted. It just wasn't as memorable as, say, taking my road test for a driver's license. However, I have cast my ballot in nearly every November election. The exception was the time I lived in Italy. The Italians have a novel way of conducting elections: everyone returns to where they were born and votes there. It's no joke. The trains are filled with people going to their birthplace, like so many salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Italian elections are about as honest as those held in rural Texas or The Wire's Baltimore.

The only time I felt genuinely apprehensive about voting was in 2004. George W. Bush, who had gained the presidency without winning a plurality of the national vote, was running for re-election. The feeling in '04 was that the fix was in for W. My wife and I cast absentee ballots, went to Canada for Election Day, and watched the Bush v. Kerry results from across the border. It was a creepy, depressing experience, soon magnified by the revelations about Abu Ghraib, the extent of domestic spying, and the pervasive sense of trickle-down corruption.

I don't know how this year's presidential election will turn out. I just hope my vote doesn't get counted for Pat Buchanan.

Number of Registered Voters in Chicago Lowest Since WW II

Barack Obama Voting In Chicago,
November 2008

According to today's online edition of the Chicago Tribune, the number of that city's registered voters has bottomed out at 1.28 million. That figure represents the lowest number of registered voters in the Windy City since the months after America's entry into World War II.

The story did not note the number of "dead" voters for which Chicago is famous. My guess is that number has increased.

Of course, Chicago election behavior has been characterized, not always tongue-in-cheek, as "vote early and often." While Chicago hardly has the monopoly on "questionable" voting patterns (the Florida GOP's "dangling chad" vote in the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election offers competition), the city still has the feel of politics of a century ago, when "vote early and often" was a national pastime.

The Fiction of the GOP's Voter Fraud Claims

Today's Miami Herald includes a report on US Senator Bill Nelson's request for a Federal inquiry into new voting laws recently enacted in various states. The purpose of the new laws, Nelson suspects, is to muzzle likely Democratic Party voters. In most cases, Republican governors or GOP-controlled legislatures have put new statutes on the books which mandate heightened identification requirements for voter registration.

The GOP stance on this issue is that they're simply trying to prevent "massive" voter fraud and to thwart illegal immigrants from casting ballots in American elections. I wondered where these enormous numbers of fake voters could be found. I've voted, with the exception of one year, annually for more than three decades. I've voted in squalid inner cities and prosperous suburbs. I grew up in a small, very Republican town. I was too young to vote at that time, but my parents did vote and took the privilege seriously. They got accustomed to the election officials wearing GOP badges inside the polling area. No one ever complained or called the ACLU.

In all of these venues, the concept of waves of people appearing en masse at a polling station was simply a ridiculous notion. Those experiences led me to conclude that Republican efforts to inhibit the right to vote to as many people as possible is simply shameful. The action casts doubt on the validity of the Republican claim (especially the Tea Party faction's assertion) that they represent the majority of Americans. If that claim were true, the Republicans would want to register as many people as possible, so as to add the weight of numbers to their argument.

The Miami Herald article notes that investigations of voter fraud conducted over the years have conclusively shown the GOP assertions to be without merit. Among the probes was a federal investigation during the George W. Bush regime. (That investigation was especially ironic, given GOP's high-stakes voter fraud in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.) Yet, the Republican Party's baseless allegations continue, with plenty of people buying into them.

Voting is fundamentally connected to the rights of free speech and assembly. In the iterations of Occupy (fill in the blank), municipalities have squirmed over enabling these constitutionally guaranteed rights. What the Occupy phenomenon has brought to light is that those rights need to be reasserted, regardless of political perspective.