Voter suppression

http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2010/09/01/electronic-voting-and-direct-democracy/

Democrats are up in arms over what looks to them like a nationwide Republican campaign to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters. They say it's not just anti-Democrats, it's also racist (and employing mechanisms the Old South used to disenfranchise Blacks) and must be stopped.

But saying it must be stopped sounds like the solution the mice came up with when they met to figure out what to do about the cat. They decided to put a bell on the cat's neck. 

Yes, we should stop conservatives from carrying out their vote suppression pogrom. And the cat should have a bell around its neck. 

How about proposing things that take the other side into account? A little political judo, using their own ideas to let them hang themselves?

Like a national biometric ID database--which India is adopting now. Unless you think India is wealthier than us and more high tech, surely if India can do it we can. 

And it hoists the right wingers on their own ideology. A universal biometric database using retina scans is the only way we can find out who and how many illegal immigrants are here. You could tell them that anyone who opposes a biometric ID is supporting illegal immigration.

Watch the smoke coming out of their ears on that one. 


It also prevents voter fraud. Sure, there isn't any. But they insist there is. Instead of telling them they're wrong, tell them OK--universal biometric ID will stop all that (nonexistent) voter fraud. Meanwhile it will enable everyone to vote. No ID cards. No worry about name changes. Just your retinas. 

In India poor people are lining up for the ID because it will stop local Indian buraucrats from diverting Federal aid funds for the poor to nonexistent "ghost workers." 

Here in America, a universal biometric ID database solves the Republicans' phony problem while fixing our real voting problem: them.


And then we can address the real voter fraud issue: how those ballots are counted, today, by partisans of one party or the other. Now there's an incentive to cheat.