Joined by Senator John Kerry, the Democratic junior Senators of the two largest “blue” states, California’s Barbara Boxer and New York’s Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed “The County Every Vote Act” a bill for electoral reform, which would, among other things, allow felons to vote.
My friend Rick Sincere has just posted an excellent piece on his blog showing why, as he puts it, this bill is so bad in so many ways. Rick is particularly suited to write on this topic. Having run for office on the Libertarian ticket, he has learned the hard way about the problems “third-party” candidates face in our electoral system. And he currently serves as chairman of the Charlottesville, Virginia Electoral Board.
Rick notes that many of the provisions of the Clinton-Boxer bill are “recipes for voter fraud.” Read the whole thing and follow his links. He provides a thorough analysis of this bill. I also recommend his earlier piece, Preserving Election Integrity Through Federalism
where he holds:
The integrity of elections in the United States is protected primarily by the most fundamental aspect of our republic: its federal character, defined by a dispersal of authority and choices made in a diffuse system of state and local governments.
It’s not just Rick’s insighful analysis which convince me that Boxer-Clinton is a bad bill. To know it’s a bad bill, one only need look at its sponsors. Ohio Democratic Representative Stephanie Tubb Jones joined Kerry, Clinton and Boxer in pushing for this legislation. Last month, Ms. Tubb-Jones joined Senator Boxer in challenging the certification of Ohio’s twenty electoral votes.
Both, however, remained silent after Cleveland’s “PLAIN DEALER” reported that delays in voting at polls in the Buckeye State “weren’t a scheme” as “Voting machines were distributed evenly” throughout the state. And despite Boxer’s commitment to “to focus the light of truth on these terrible problems in the electoral system,” she has said nothing about electoral shenaningans in Wisconsin and Washington State. But, in those states, Democrats won. Thus, for Mrs. Boxer, it seems “terrible” electoral problems only refer to Republican victories in close elections.
Rick has made clear through careful argument that this bill is a bad one. By including Senator Boxer as one of its sponsors, its proponents further convince us that the title, “Count Every Vote Act,” is window-dressing for an extremely partisan piece of legislation.
-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com