I must say that my self-imposed restriction of avoiding commenting on the politics and elections of states in which I do not reside and avoiding commenting on the politics of other countries is beginning to chafe. All I will say is something I have said before.
The ethnic states of Europe and that includes the United Kingdom, France, and Germany as well as San Marino and Albania have challenges before them different from anything that we face in the United States. By “ethnic states” I mean states identified with a particular historic people, language, and culture, however they choose to define citizenship. I don’t know how they can adapt and won’t offer my unwanted advice on what they should or should not do.
Similarly, I avoid talking about political primaries in California, New York, or Tennessee. I don’t live there and I less about their political problems those who do other than what I believe based on first principles. There are some administrative rules that appear universal. For example, they should prune their voting rolls. Based on my more than 20 years as an election judge in Chicago, they undoubtedly include people who been dead or otherwise departed for years, even decades.
Speaking of pruning rolls and election judging….
In CA, in a 5% increase in the vote tally, Bass magically increased her vote tally by about 15,000. All others increased theirs. Except Pratt, who batted zero. Not one more vote.
But as I was informed on this blog, meh, statistically anything can happen. Snicker squared.
It’s good admin practice to clear the voter rolls. That said, the issue has been investigated many times (as in dozens to hundreds of times) and dead people’s names used to vote is exceedingly rare. When they tried to pass voter ID in PA they could not find any instances except for a few of the well known case that actually does still happen and will happen forever. An old person dies and their spouse who still lives mails in the vote for them, sometimes filling it out with the vote they think the spouse would have made.
Steve
The problem, steve, is that the margin of victory in elections has been exceedingly small. Under the circumstances it is vital for officials to prove that the amount of illegal voting is insufficient to make the difference and they have not risen to that challenge. Quite to the contrary, they have relied on the standard for criminal convictions which is the wrong standard.
For the record, I think that Donald Trump is wrong to obsess over the 2020 election and that Biden did win it. That doesn’t tell us that we shouldn’t be worried about the honesty of elections. It tells us that we should.
I served 10 years on the election commission in my home county in Tennessee with four as the chairman. Here are several things I think that are needed to conduct clean elections that people trust:
1) Clean up the voter rolls to remove the dead and those who have moved. We had a pre-election mailout to identify those who had moved.
2) Require a social security number that is checked against the federal database to confirm citizenship. Also confirm the person is only registered in one jurisdiction. While I was chairman, we had a case of illegal voting by a legal immigrant. He was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as being a non-citizen when our voter rolls were compared to citizenship (He plead no contest in court).
3) Require government issued voter ID. We allowed expired ID so you could still vote if your ID expired. We also allowed failsafe ballots for someone who forgot their ID. Their ballot could be cured by coming back within 48 hours with their ID. Some local election commissions would also issue a government issued voter ID card free of charge.
4) Minimize mail-in ballots. Only allow mail in ballots for cause (i.e. military service, student, health issues, and traveling). Mail-in ballots are the weakest link in ballot security by far. Signature verification is poor. A reporter in Nevada had 10 of his friends donate their ballots to him to sign and mail (he left the ballots blank to avoid voter fraud). 8 of 10 ballots with bogus signatures were accepted.
Tennessee does all four of these. I think California does zero.