I've always been the quintessential outsider; the unconnected; the clueless innocent. There are certain people you can put down anyplace on Earth and inside of 20 minutes they'll find whiskey, soft drugs, hard drugs, illegal gambling and bullwhip prostitution. Put me down in the next town and I can't find spearmint chewing gum.
I look with grudging awe upon any ineligible voter who succeeds in voting. How do they do it? I vote in New York City, hardly the spiritual center of honest politics, but I wouldn't know how to cast an illegal vote if the FBI called me and told me such an act were essential to American's survival. I've been voting in New York since 1960. Same drill. You line up in the school gym on Election Day and wait. Before you're allowed into the voting booth you've got to get past the lady at the table with the big book.
The big book is the voter records going back several years. I give the lady my name and she turns to my page. There before me is an accumulation of my signatures going back to the election between Carter and Ford. I marvel at how little my signature has changed over the decades, and I sign yet another. The lady scrutinizes my signature on that voters' roll much more carefully than any waiter at a restaurant scrutinizes the signature on my credit card.
When the lady is satisfied that I am, indeed, I, she hands me a card, which I give to a second lady, who admits me into the booth. Then and only then do I get to vote. And then only once!
The notion of voters who've already voted, felons, illegal aliens and other ineligible voters voting bewilders me. Is it possible my New York has lessons to teach the rest of the country in applied democracy? Ludicrous, but likely true.
In 1996 Rep. Bob Dornan lost his long-held House seat and charged he was swept from office by the vote of illegal aliens. An investigation concluded – and this is remarkable – that, yes, there were a lot of illegal aliens voting, but NOT ENOUGH TO AFFECT THE OUTCOME!
Excuse me. Would you expect calm at police headquarters if they concluded, yes, there were bombs planted inside the World Trade Center, but not enough to topple the building?
One single illegal vote is a direct insult to all of us who vote legally.
The notion of "not enough illegals voting to affect the outcome" brings to mind the two Southern boys who meet at the Swamp Cabbage Festival. Clem says to Guerney, "Guerney, you got to git y'self over to the last pavillion over yonder on Row D. They got 'em a dog in there that can play chess."
"Oh," yawned Guerney, "That dog ain't nothing. I beat him two out of three games."
Dogs that can play chess TO ANY DEGREE merit attention, and so do illegal voters who TO ANY DEGREE succeed in voting.
Like a rare vintage wine, Bob Dole's forlorn outcry in the 1996 election keeps on improving with age. Remember it? "Where's the outrage?"
The means, procedural and mechanical, to prevent unauthorized voting are at hand. Where's the will? Where were the California state helicopters that should have descended upon the polling places in Dornan's district and fired – nay, ARRESTED – all those in charge who encouraged, allowed, aided or abetted even one illegal alien to vote?
I asked writer-commentator Charles Wiley, a California resident, about this. I told him about New York and the ladies at the table inside the polling place. I asked him how illegal aliens managed to vote in California. I liked his answer. Wiley said, "In California, the ladies at the table are illegals, too."
The trouble is, we don't despise vote fraud. We admire it. Legends of Mayor Daley, Boss Tweed, Boss Hague, and New York's Tammany Hall are recounted like sagas of Bonnie and Clyde and Jesse James.
A well-known Tammany boss in the mid-1950s accidentally left a brown paper bag with $65,000 in cash in the back seat of a New York taxicab. (How much would that represent today?) The cab driver recognized his passenger from the newspapers and returned the money. Whereupon our Tammany boss had no choice but to pretend the money wasn't his; it must have been left there by a previous passenger, and he simply failed to notice the bundle there in the back seat with him during his ride through Manhattan.
Nobody got excited. He was treated rather like "Wrong-Way Riegel" who got confused and ran the wrong way all the way in a Rose Bowl game.
How dare you in the election industry blame us, the voters, for being cynical and apathetic!
"Food for all who are hungry. Housing for all who are homeless. Medical care for all who need it" are nice goals, but hardly immediately attainable.
"No eligible voter shall be denied the vote and no ineligible voter shall be allowed the vote" could be ours tomorrow.
It could, that is, if those in charge were as concerned with FAIR elections as they are with RE-election.
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