Fixing the Votes

According to the Obama administration (with its laundry list of hopeful achievements) now is the time for voting reform, as evidenced by this New York Times story about the decision to create a panel aiming to streamline the voting process. The panel, in a display of bipartisanship, features Robert Bauer and Ben Ginsberg, who are notable for acting as the legal representation respectively to the Obama and Romney camps during the 2012 election cycle. Five others have yet to be named to the commission, which will not be proposing legislation but rather offer broad suggestions to improving the system as is. According to aides in the Obama camp, this lack of legislative creation is due to the belief that any proposals put forth would be shot down by Republicans, who support state level election laws. This also has some benefits to those seeking more early voting days in states like Florida and South Carolina surprisingly enough.

The recent battles between voting restrictions and streamlining the process has been fun to watch, mutating from strain to strain of ID laws and early ballot casting issues. But this also walks a fine line between constitutionality and states rights. Impeding a federal election in any major fashion should not be something the states strive for, but at the same time the introduction of ID laws may be seen as obstruction, which would have some interesting ties to poll taxes and literacy requirements of the past and inspiring a new legal battle. What I believe would be the best option would be is some sort of national ID everyone is issues. I understand that this may be a subject of some worry, as the government would have essentially issued a human being a number, locking him/her into a national databank for all eternity.* But by streamlining elections, we make them the most accurate representation of the desires of the American people and ensure fairness by equal opportunity.

If you ever wish to vote with relative ease, I recommend using www.rockthevote.com for all your easy voter registration needs. True patriotism is having the will to participate in government on the most basic level after all.



*And while I hate to belittle an issue like personal privacy, we already are numbers in a databank; it's known as Social Security, and if it keeps solvent it'll be another benefit of living in the system.