Abolish The Secret Ballot

Republicans are wasting their breath if they believe that they can shame Democrats into yielding a stolen election. Democrats expended an awful lot of public trust to take the governor’s office, and confessing their sins will not restore the public’s faith in them. If they’re going to pay the price anyway, why return stolen property?

And it would be better if the courts did not step into these affairs, except in the most egregious circumstances. Irregularities abound, all in Gregoire’s favor, but they cannot be quantified to prove Dino Rossi the true winner.

But perhaps Republicans can shame, or otherwise embarrass Democrats into supporting electoral reforms that will prevent similar shenanigans.

Dead and imaginary voters turned out in record numbers in 2004. The number changes almost daily, but Democrat leaning counties, King County in particular, counted more ballots than there were voters who could have cast them. King County originally reported over 3500 more votes than voters. Efforts to make the numbers match have driven the disparity down to 1800 or so.

King County also counted at least 348 unverified provisional ballots. Those ballots could be fraudulent in any number of ways.

Additionally, Washington withheld ballots from the United States military personnel so that many were unable to return their ballots in time to have them counted.

Washington was the very last state in the union to mail out absentee ballots to military voters, and then only did so after the United States Department of Justice threatened the state with a lawsuit. King County finally mailed 3055 overseas military ballots on October 10, two days later than the deadline it agreed to with the DOJ to avoid the lawsuit. In any event, the ballots arrived too late to be returned in time to be counted, and a reliably Republican demographic was disenfranchised.

It’s hardly surprising that Washington would snub those who put their lives on the line for us. In 1991, Seattle did its best to deny returning Gulf War veterans a welcome home parade.

A number of so-called reforms in recent years have greatly facilitated electoral fraud. A few well-meaning stoneheads got it into their minds that our democracy is threatened by low voter turnout and instituted changes meant to facilitate participation by the lazy, the indifferent and the uninformed. Each and every one of these so-called reforms has enabled fraud. Electoral slight of hand is a far greater threat to democracy than low voter turnout.

Most cases of electoral fraud could be prevented with one simple reform. Get rid of the secret ballot. There were literally thousands of tainted votes cast in the last election. And, with no way to trace anonymous ballots, the effects of these irregularities cannot be quantified. Votes cast by the no longer breathing are indistinguishable from those cast by the living. If we could trace those ballots, we could deduct them from the count. If we could specifically identify King County’s 1800 imaginary votes, we could chuck them into the recycle bin too.

King County also counted at least 348 unverified “provisional” ballots. Those could have been cast by unregistered voters, or illegal aliens. Because we insist upon casting secret ballots, we’ll never know.

Fully 70% of King County precinct 1823 registered voters listed 500 Fourth Avenue as their home address. Nearly all of those voters were registered within the last year. Fraud? There’s a simple way to find out. Match the ballots to the voter.

Scores of convicted felons got to vote. Who did they vote for? Democrats generally own the convict vote. But with secret ballots, we can’t be sure.

Republican could achieve this by doing what the Democrats could not after the 2000 presidential election. Hold Democrats accountable for stealing the election. Paint them as the party of electoral fraud. The Democrats failed to tar Republicans after the 2000 Florida fiasco because it was clear that it was the Democrats who were fiddling with a close, flawed, but honest election. That’s not the case here. Most voters agree that Gregoire’s election was illegitimate. Make Democrats prove their commitment to democracy, by forcing them to surrender their tools of deceit. Even if they don’t feel genuine shame, they’ll yield to pragmatism.

And it would be a nice gesture to those who are fighting for democracy if Washington would permit them to participate.