Amused Cynic

Deroy Murdock has a piece out in NRO that struck a chord with me.  It seems that the retail clothing store The Gap had these buttons for sale, along with assorted others that did not encourage voter fraud.  To their credit, after Murdock drew it to their attention, the store removed the buttons. The Gap’s merchandise is targeted to young people.

So, why does this piece particularly annoy me?  Well, because my community is blessed with many fine colleges and universities, and as a long-time local politico, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overheard students snickering at a polling place about having “two votes.”  You see, they voted in their home state by absentee ballot, and again here in Pennsylvania, as residents of the college they attend.  And there is little that can be done about it, unless election officials undertake to cross-check registrations among the states. (This has been done to address the apparently wide-spread practice of “Snowbirds” from New York (retirees who maintain two residences, including one in Florida) to vote in both states, but is harder to do with a college’s diverse state representation among the student body.

As I’ve written here, it doesn’t have to be this way.

In an age where we can go practically anywhere in the world, and, using a card with a magnetic stripe and a PIN number, access our personal bank accounts, or charge a meal at a restaurant in Paris and have the bill show up, on time, at home a month later—there is no rational reason for not having a similarly secure system in place for, at least, federal elections. I don’t want to hear the “national ID” scare from the tin-foil hat crowd, or that it will intimidate minorities. We are, or should be, past those now tired canards. No one really objects to needing a passport to legally leave and enter the country, right? Didn’t they mock Sarah Palin for only getting her first passport last year? Fine! Let’s make passports mandatory for all citizens, or for at least those who want to vote.

It is insane to require a photo ID to drive, cash a check, get on an airplane, and then say that requiring a photo ID to vote would be intimidating. But it should be an ID with a magnetic stripe that allows a guarantee of the one-person/one-vote principle. Heck, you could probably even use them to vote absentee, eventually.

One person, one vote…what a novel concept!

Heh: This Hot Air vid, via the Anchoress: