My Proposal: An Elections Integrity Act.

[Silverhair]

We have an opportunity now. Believe it or not, the RW rank & file are extremely concerned about election fraud too. They are convinced that Democrats committed massive voter fraud and the Bush really won by a greater margin. They think that we had a bunch of phony registrations. They also believe that Move-on people committed voter intimidation. Never mind what we think about that claim, THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT THEY BELIEVE IT!!!! And they want measures that would stop that kind of fraud.

And of course, many of us believe that this election was stolen. We want honest vote counting, simple registration, and no voter intimidation.

So here is my proposal. Your driver's license, or if you don't have one - a DMV issued ID card, would have a bar code on it and your fingerprint. It would also be your voter registration card. On election season, (A two week period) you could go to any voting machine and vote. You would have to enter your card and put you finger on a reader, and also an attendant would have to look at your picture on the card. That would satisfy the everybody that only genuine live citizens were voting. The machine, even if you were in a different state, would bring up your correct ballot on touch screen. After you voted, but before you hit "Enter" it would print out a paper ballot that you could see under a clear shield. If it conformed to how you had actually voted, you would "Enter" it. Then the ballots would be automatically folded and sealed, then mailed to the proper precinct. The paper ballots would be counted to verify them against the instant machine totals.

A police presence at each polling place would be required, to stop intimidation.

That should give us honest elections. I don't think it is too much to ask of someone that to vote they need to go get a voter ID card in advance.

I think the RW rank & file would get on board something like this too.

Edit: Type

[jayctravis]

1. I certainly believe...

that voting should be either a weeklong process or a national holiday.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Silverhair]

10. I like the no campaigning or exit polls idea.

Add to it, no announcing of partial results. How the Eastern states are coming in can influence how the Western states vote. We can all wait until the next day.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. Have to be very careful, or it will be some B.S. that skews things their

way even more, like this B.S. voting act that mandates the Diebold Electronic Republican Voting.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. It would be a national ID card and most Americans would oppose it, IMO.

I already dislike having to be fingerprinted for my drivers' license.

[Silverhair]

8. Understand, but the voting needs to be secured.

There were several instances that I have read of in this last election of people coming to vote and being told that they had already voted. Some of that could be clerical error, but some of that may have been fraud. We do need to verify that Jane Voter is actually Jane Voter. That is NOT asking too much. It stops someone from stealing her vote.

[shall_not_tell]

5. We definitely need some better voting procedures.

The way things are now, people can't feel safe when they're voting. We should get more police officers and maybe even the national guard to watch over the elections so that no one will feel uncomfortable when they cast their ballot!

[newyawker99]

11. Hi shall_not_tell!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[m berst]

6. before we do this

Before we talk about election reform, it might be a good idea to have a full investigation of the recent election.

How can you fix something when you don't know what went wrong this time? The system may be fine. It may have been "operator error" so to speak, or something criminal.

Thye first reform is to investigate and prosecute any wrong doers. Then you have the information you need to prevent future wrong doing.

[grasswire]

7. no thanks

Your intentions are good, but the idea of feds having a national databank of any biometric measurement is anathema to many millions of citizens who fear the day when dissent is criminalized and the stored information is used to track and arrest dissenters.

No thanks to that part of the plan.

[Silverhair]

9. The fingerprint doesn't have to be in a national database.

If it is on the card, and you put your finger on the reader, it compares it to the card, not to a database.

Besides that, many millions of us have our fingerprints in the FBI files with no harm done. I was fingerprinted when I joined the Army at age 17, and it hasn't effected me in any way.

[grasswire]

12. oboy

I was fingerprinted when I joined the Army at age 17, and it hasn't effected me in any way.

That's because up to now the government has been relatively benevolent and dissent has not been criminalized.

You can no longer live under the assumption that the government will use or not use information as it has in the past. The government is in the hands of despots who have demonstrated that they WILL deprive Americans of civil liberties at the first opportunity.

When dissent is criminalized, every tool that identifies dissenters will be used against them/us.