The Importance of Voting

Voting was important to my father. In November of 2000 he was very ill and living in a nursing home in Manhattan. A worker at the home had helped him fill out an application for an absentee ballot. As of Election Day, he hadn’t received it, but he wanted to vote. I called my state senator asking what I could do. I ended up driving to the Bronx County Board of Elections, obtaining an absentee ballot and application, and driving to the nursing home, before helping my dad fill out the application and ballot. Then I drove back to the Bronx County Board of Elections to drop off them off.

By the way, my dad voted for George Bush, though I would have helped him just the same if he wanted to vote for Gore. It might seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to. After all, we lived in NEW YORK and it wasn’t like Bush had much of a prayer of winning the Empire State. But my dad felt, and I agree that it is both a civic responsibility and a privilege to vote. So my dad voted. Gore won New York, but Bush won Florida (after some controversy) and the presidency. I watched Bush being inaugurated as I dressed for my father’s wake.

The following November, I was once again exercising my right to vote. I bent over to sign the voter roll and saw my dad’s name above mine. Then I saw someone had signed his name. That’s my dad for you, not even being dead would keep him from voting. He didn’t even live in Chicago.

I think about someone using my Dad’s name to vote whenever I hear a Democrat complain about the idea of requiring a photo ID to prove your identity before you vote. The Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring photo ID in April. I previously wrote about it here.

Democrats complain there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. I say why does there need to be evidence fraud is widespread to make it difficult. We require a government issued photo ID to fly, to enter many government buildings, or to simply buy alcohol or tobacco. I really have no idea how many registered voters do not have a photo ID, but I imagine it is a small number, probably a smaller number than the number of dead people voting.

As Fox News has reported: Dead Voters Still Showing Up on Election Records, Puzzling Officials. The story talks about a woman that discovered here deceased mother was recorded as having voted in Connecticut The story continues:

Journalism professor Marcel Dufresne, at the University of Connecticut, led a class investigation into dead voters and said his group of 11 students discovered 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They discovered more than 300 of them appeared somehow to have cast ballots after they died.

“We have one person who appeared to have voted 17 times since he died,” Dufresne said. Dufresne said there is no evidence of any election fraud, but the number of dead voters “shows the system is vulnerable and it shows that people who are clever and have a little cooperation in the town level, you could use this and get people to vote for people who died.”

Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is adamant that “actually no dead people voted.”

“I want to be very clear about that,” she said, explaining that while votes were cast and counted in the names of the dead, “there was no voter fraud at all in the state of Connecticut.”

How could she possibly be sure? Well I agree the dead people didn’t actually vote themselves, at least not without help. The story continues:

In Washington State, Republican Dino Rossi ran for governor in 2004, and lost by only 133 votes. Officials confirmed that the names of 19 dead people somehow cast ballots. Rossi is running this year for governor and reflected on his experience in 2004.

“It was the closest governor’s race in U.S. history. After the fact we found a number of dead people voted. I don’t know how they voted — you have to talk to Shirley MacLaine about that,” Rossi said.

Much as my dad might have liked to continue voting from beyond the grave, I am not sure he would have approved of who he was voting for. Perhaps it would it would be best if we restricted voting to the living and required poll workers to check ID. Voting is too important not to do that.