Thursday, I wrote about Karen Handel’s problems with the US Department of Justice, specifically the face that DOJ ruled some of the procedures her office as Secretary of State put in place for voter verification purposes. In fact, the DOJ had found that sixty percent of those people the Secretary of State’s office had listed as ‘non-citizens’ were, in fact, citizens.
I’ve been asked by some, including Peach Pundit’s Icarus and others connected to Ms. Handel’s Governor campaign, about what specifically I would do differently.
My plan is two fold:
1) Data Integrity
2) Voter Appeal Process
For Data Integrity, the overall idea is to completely automate the data flow such that the ONLY person actually entering data is the voter themselves when they register to vote. With this, rather than a DMV employee entering data, a web application would be developed whereby the voter themselves enter all data. When the ID number is generated, it is added to that person’s file with no human input. The data is verified automatically for simple things such as ‘Road’ vs ‘Rd’ with human employees to verify more complex issues such as name changes. Once verified by DMV, the data is transmitted to other state agencies as needed, such as the Secretary of State’s office for voter registrations. Obviously, security measures would have to be extremely tight to prevent unauthorized access to this sensitive data, but it CAN be done – and those who violate these measures should face severe punishment, including termination of employment and civil and criminal repercussions as appropriate. How do I know such a system can be developed? I once helped build a similar one, in fact I was still working on it at this point last year. It is National Reimbursement Group’s Medic Resource Center, which is basically a way for EMTs to enter data from a run and ensure they get paid. The process we were working on for the last 10 months or so of my employment there was this data verification system almost exactly, although we dealt with health care law and not elections law. Note that this would NOT completely eliminate citizens being labeled as non-citizens, but it WOULD drop the number far below 60%, which is how many of those labeled as non-citizens under the current approach were, in fact, citizens.
For those citizens labeled as non-citizens under my approach (or even under the current approach, if an idea similar to my above is not adopted), I offer the second phase of my plan:
2) Voter Appeal Process. Currently, a voter can have as little as three days to come to the local elections office during normal business hours to provide verification that they are, in fact, a citizen. This to me was the major sticking point from the DOJ letter, outside of the 60% figure. My solution to this is to pass a new law that would modify this to make it a minimum of 30 days, rather than 3. We have at least 30 days to do most other things in regards to government, I do not see what the problem would be in granting this to citizens to verify their citizenship for voting. I will also note here that after doing some cursory research of my own over the past couple of days, I do not see where the US DOJ got their ’3 day’ statement from in the Official Code of Georgia. That said, I do tend to believe that there is some provision in there that allowed them to calculate the minimum as three days, and my statements here apply to wherever that provision may be.
Yes, even I know that the truth is more than likely neither exactly what US DOJ says NOR exactly what Secretary of State Karen Handel says, but more than likely somewhere in the middle.
Still, wouldn’t it be great if we could find a Governor candidate willing to stand by ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’?
I support full verification of a voters ability to vote.
Anything else leads to voter fraud. I for one do not want my vote diluted by another who votes illegally.
There is something called a provisional ballot, allowing a person to vote, and prove latter.
There are always deadlines, and they are posted, in writing, and are known long before the time of voting. if you can’t meet them then you can only blame yourself.
Remeber Voting is a privlege not a right
Actually, determining for one’s self his own government is every person’s right.
And that means that in a constitutional republic – which is what the US is, not a democratic republic – voting is a RIGHT that every adult has the ability to exercise – or not.
I also support full verification. But when 60% of the people a process is identifying as ‘non-citizens’ are, in fact, citizens, the process is FLAWED and needs to be rebuilt.
As Secretary of State, it is Karen Handel’s job to make sure voting is fair – which she has NOT done, since she has effectively disenfranchised so many people.
BTW: How is your vote diluted when another votes? ‘One man, one vote’, remember?
‘Dilution’ means that you think your vote is worth more than another man’s…
Jeff’s right, voting is most definitely a right and one of the most fundamental we have in this nation.
That said, Mike is right that illegal voting does dilute the legal voting. 100 people vote legally. 5 vote illegally. All five vote for candidate A, who wins by 4 votes. Yes, there is dilution of the votes, so verification is essential for fair an honest elections to take place. So long as that can be done in a fair way, I have no issues.
[...] to show exactly where MS. Handel erred in this situation, and those posts can be found here, here, here, and here for more details on the particulars of the [...]