Vote Early, Vote Often

Voter fraud is something that is, clearly, on the mind of a lot of people right now, and the ability of people in our country to get to vote is something that has been on my mind for a while, so it seems like a good time to write about both and show how they are connected.

The phrase "Vote Early, Vote Often" was coined, most people agree, by Al Capone and has been attributed to mayors of Chicago in the early 1900's when there was a lot of corruption in Chicago politics. It has come to be used by liberals largely as a joke (Obama actually said it in a rally I went to, stating that as everyone knows in Chicago they like to vote early and often) and by conservatives largely to refer to any problems with voter fraud. It is especially being used right now when people talk about ACORN.

ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (this is their wiki page www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN and this is their home page www.acorn.org), and it is basically an association for grass roots organizations, non-profits, lobbyists, etc who are fighting for better access rights for low and middle income people in regards to housing, public services, and voter registration among others. They have been around since the 1970's, I think, and over the years have sponsored enormous voter registration drives for low income individuals. They have also been found to have registered people incorrectly, people too young, illegal people, people who don't exist, etc. You can read more about their controversy at this section of their website http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=17855.

Now, I don't want to say a whole lot more about that except to say that I think there clearly were people who were hired for these drives who did things they shouldn't have. However, I also think that a lot of what is called "voter fraud", especially as it is being investigated right now in Ohio, is not so much about outright fraud as it is about how difficult it can actually be in this country to get to register to vote. And here is what I mean.

To be able to register to vote you generally need to have a state issued or government issued photo id, and the address on that id must match up with your voter registration and your district. If it does not you can usually bring some proof of permanent address, too, like a recent bill. Sounds simple, right?

For those of us in the middle class and up, it is pretty simple. But for a lot of people its not so simple. For one thing, state and federal ids cost money, and sometimes quite a bit of money. When you live on a fixed income $25 is a lot of money and if its between getting a state id to vote or putting that money towards a bill or food or medicine, well obviously, the state id is not going to win out. Also a lot of low income people move around a lot, or live with family members, or just otherwise do not actually have a permanent address. We refer to these people as "doubled up", meaning that they are homeless but not living on the street (homeless means you have no income and you do not pay to live somewhere, and you are not legally bound to someone like a spouse or parent who has income and pays to live somewhere). I've had quite a few clients who might have some kind of ID, but its not their address or current address and they do not have mail with their name on it because they don't really pay any bills because they live with someone. Those people simply cannot vote except for provisionally. And clearly, homeless people on the street are just out of luck.

The problem with all of this is that voting is a guaranteed right for all American citizens over the age of 18 who have not committed a felony (which, don't get me started on that), and yet some people just cannot vote. Now a lot of this "voter fraud" launguage comes up when someone decides to do a cross check of a list of voter registration cards and lets say, the DMV. Right now, if someone cross checked my voter registration with the DMV I would be disqualified because I moved two times within two years and never updated my driver's license. But I am an eligible citizen. But I have my bill with my address and name for my district, so its fine. But what if I didn't? And that is not actually fraud- I am not trying to say I'm eligible when I am not.

Ok so I know we have to have a system to make sure that only citizens are voting, we have to have a system to make sure people are not voting more than once. I understand all of that. But we also have to have a system where all people who are citizens can vote without having to spend any money, because that's a poll tax, and we do not have that. Its a tricky thing. I haven't done enough research to see what other countries are doing, but I will and probably follow up with this.

An important point I'd like to make right now is that readers realize that most people whose votes do not get to count as a result of these "voter fraud" investigations are low income people. Most low income people vote Democrat. Most people who are doing this "voter fraud" challenging are Republicans. Instead of putting efforts into helping these people get to vote or making the system better, they are spending effort and time to just get them disqualified. Remember that our government is not of some of the people, by some of the people, and for some of the people. Or at least it should not be.