The views stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors of this newspaper. We welcome supporting or opposing views on any published item. Received April 30, 2024.
Early voting, increasing the days to vote and mail in voting, only increases the opportunity of fraud and manipulation of voting information to influence the voting results. This is only common sense and arguments to the contrary are either naive or purposely intended to allow abuse.
The exception is mail-in voting by the military, people who will not be in their voting district during voting time and people who are truly homebound. Mail-in voting should not be allowed otherwise. Mass mailing of paper ballot voting should be allowed only with identification of the voter with an ink fingerprint and possibly a photo ID on the ballot. Mass mailings as they are now are totally insane because there is little control.
The problem with early voting, especially if there are mail-in ballots involved, is that this will increase the time and possibility of ballot tampering. It also allows more time and opportunities for exit polling that has been known to influence voting from the east coast to the west coast. Early voting will increase this situation within town to town, state to state.
If the intent is to make voting easier, it should not be done if it increases fraud opportunities. There are other ways to make voting easy such as having the voting centers open for one, possibly two consecutive 16-hour days. Isn’t it interesting that someone can make a doctor’s appointment and be there on the day and hour, but can’t take the time to be at the polls on a particular day? Do these people want more opportunity for fraud? Seems that way.
To keep our voting system secure we should require photo identification that has citizenship verification. As in third world countries, the voter should be required to put their finger in ink to identify that they already voted and can’t vote again. An ink print along with a photo should be taken at the voting site and put on the ballot. The photo taken could also be connected to a national facial recognition system to prevent the person from voting again. Would also be a great way to catch criminals.
Ed Crocco, Higganum
