Once More, Why Voting-By-Mail is Wrong

To me the issue is the difference between theory and practice, and the nature of mortal man.

In theory, voting-by-mail should be just fine. Only registered voters get ballots. One person, one vote. Everyone gets it in on time and the votes are counted properly. Fine. For honest, enlightened beings and an efficient system that works. (By the way, communism on its face also sounds lovely in theory.)

But in practice, amongst we corrupt human beings, that just doesn’t happen that way. Human beings are such that, if they can find a way to cheat and not get caught, many will. Taxes, speed limits, voting, etc. We humans cheat. That is undeniable. And in this case, many indeed do. Especially when it is perceived so much is at stake.

There is easily a case a day (actually there have been thousands) where some type of voter fraud has been uncovered. And, by their own admission, authorities sadly claim that at least twice that many go undetected. Not only do people cheat of their own volition, but they are commonly coerced by outside money, etc., to do the bidding of those who can bribe them into illegal and fraudulent acts. Again, this is undeniable.

Aside from the nasty, explicit practices some of the cheats employ, there are some dreadfully laughable inefficiencies present in the vote-by-mail system. Thousands of dead people have received ballots. Dogs and cats and even turtles have received ballots. (I have two ballots right here for people who haven’t lived in California for eleven years.) The voter rolls have glaring deficiencies across the nation. Again, this is undeniable. There is a recent article published that claims there are more than 3.5 million voters registered nationwide than there are adults in the United States. Read that again.

What some people flippantly say is that, “Well, the percentage of fraudulent ballots is statistically small.” That may or may not be.

First of all, they have no real conception what the numbers are, as so many cases go undetected, and second, they do not realize that a thousand here or a thousand there may sway a county’s vote result, which may sway a state’s vote, which may in turn cause a change in the national outcome. There is a woman boasting, on camera, that she has acquired 7,000 votes illegally and got paid for every single one of them. I’ve seen her say so — look it up.

Third, to condone or whitewash such fraud by denying its reality or pertinence merely becomes acquiescence to larger crimes in the future. Again, we’re talking about corrupt human beings here, not angels. To me, either we all play by the same rules or we need a new game.

Fourth, arbitrarily laying partisan blame is not only childish and inflammatory, but it is unfounded. The fact remains that voter fraud occurs rampantly throughout the country, be it for red or for blue, and needs to be exorcized for a real election to have any meaning.

And lastly, no one answered the most fundamental question: What is wrong with going to your polling place, with your ID in hand, and voting your conscience in person?

I am not naive to the cheating that has been exhibited in such a system, hanging chads and all, but I would certainly argue that the in-person system is far superior to any kind of mail-in system. And I would also argue that the great majority of Americans agree. There is yet a better way but we have yet to employ it, that by one person = one vote identification, tabulated outside of human interference. But that is for another day’s discussion.

Thank you for discussing this issue here. It is important to have respectful discourse. This is free speech America, at least in the short run it is.

Be well, all.