OK, I'm in a rural area, and maybe they do things different in the Big Cities. But, still, I wonder whether this is all that unusual? For example, our voter rolls consist of a couple of boxes full of little yellow cards. When people die or move away without notifying the voter registration people, their cards persist. Maybe they take them out after the person whose name is on them hasn't voted in some number of elections, but I don't know. And, with the University in town (and the student body being actually a bit larger than the permanent population of the town), there is a lot of turnover as students come, register to vote, and then go again. It would not surprise me in the least if the number of cards in those little boxes was as much as twice as many as the total number of potential voters in our district. Is this fraud? Or just the degree of laxness that you would expect when practically everything is being done by unpaid volunteers?
On the plus side, the folks running the polling stations know most of the people coming in to vote on sight, so the cards are kind of a formality.
This is really unusual. Voter registration never approaches 100%, much less surpasses it. As for people running the polling booths, that's an easy deck to stack.
OK, I'm in a rural area, and maybe they do things different in the Big Cities. But, still, I wonder whether this is all that unusual? For example, our voter rolls consist of a couple of boxes full of little yellow cards. When people die or move away without notifying the voter registration people, their cards persist. Maybe they take them out after the person whose name is on them hasn't voted in some number of elections, but I don't know. And, with the University in town (and the student body being actually a bit larger than the permanent population of the town), there is a lot of turnover as students come, register to vote, and then go again. It would not surprise me in the least if the number of cards in those little boxes was as much as twice as many as the total number of potential voters in our district. Is this fraud? Or just the degree of laxness that you would expect when practically everything is being done by unpaid volunteers?
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, the folks running the polling stations know most of the people coming in to vote on sight, so the cards are kind of a formality.
This is really unusual. Voter registration never approaches 100%, much less surpasses it. As for people running the polling booths, that's an easy deck to stack.
ReplyDeleteNow that is what I call vigorous participation in the democratic process.
ReplyDelete