September 16, 2004
Voting cats (and dogs)
Here's an eye opener:
"A RECENT story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can 1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes."
Writes Jeff Jacoby in today's Boston Globe, who goes on to say:
" ... I registered my wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County, Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't to cast illegal multiple votes but to demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's election system has become.
It was a simple scam to pull off. "Under the National Voter Registration Act -- the `Motor Voter Law' -- states are required to accept voter registrations by mail," ...
... The drift toward Third World-caliber elections in the most advanced democracy in the world is scandalous. Then again, if Americans can't be bothered to scrub the voting rolls or to make sure that voters are properly ID'd, maybe they've got the election system they deserve."
Posted by Sughra Raza at 10:05 AM | Permalink
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Comments
"...maybe they've got the election system they deserve." It's always seemed to me something of a logical fallacy to call the American electoral system a democracy: in the traditional sense of the word, democracy entails active involvement in decision-making by *all* eligible voters, not only by a minority of people who voluntarily register to vote.
Posted by: flipsockgrrl | Sep 19, 2004 11:09:21 PM
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