Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 10:06:50 -0400
From: Joe Kingley
Subject: Early Voting
The esteemed Chairman of the CCDP advises “We all benefit when our elections involve the greatest numbers of citizens. Unfortunately, the North Carolina State Senate has a bill before it that will restrict as opposed to expand democracy in North Carolina. The bill will eliminate Same-Day Registration, youth pre-registration, slice a week off of Early Voting, end Sunday voting, and require other changes that will make it much harder for millions of NC citizens to vote”.
I question the accuracy of the words “We all benefit”. Perhaps Randy could advise us who, and how we all benefit from uniformed or easily influenced persons voting party lines without knowing anything about the candidate’s positions on individual items. Perhaps he could also let us know who benefits, and how, when voters are intimidated at the polls, when voting lists are not kept up to date by government, when persons can, and do assume identities of those who are deceased, or no longer reside in the precinct, when “homeless” people are shipped across state lines to vote multiple times, when the Democrat Party opposes viable photo identification to stop some of these processes, all designed to increase the number of votes cast for a position or party, that many legitimate voters oppose?
Perhaps Randy can tell us why it is so important to vote on a Saturday or Sunday when even with early voting, the polls are open before and after normal working hours, and during the day for those that work from evening to early morning jobs? Same day registration is fraught with opportunity for fraud, and the only persons subject to that problem are those that actually move house on election day. Okay, but that does not disenfranchise them. What it means is that, without same day voting, they are able to vote in their precinct, but not in the new one that they have not lived in even for one day. What it does mean is that they can no longer get up early on moving day, vote in their old precinct, travel to their new precinct and vote again before the polls close. I must admit I did not realize “that will make it much harder for millions (my emphasis) of NC citizens to vote”.
Randy writes “In order to enhance our community, the basic building blocks of democracy in Chatham County need to be accessible and free from duress.. To argue otherwise is to admit that we want less participation instead of more participation and that we fear democracy instead of embracing it”. Sorry, Randy, but you are putting words into the mouths of other people because of politics and not “regardless of ideology”. I would argue that there is little democracy in promoting and enabling a voting system that allows for abuse, fraud and unchecked intimidation and “duress”, and that these problems should be addressed before the retention of a system that creates those opportunities. If the CCDP is truly democratic it would also embrace those concepts, much in the same way it needs to embrace the concept that you turn off the water (control the border) before you try to mop up the flood (deal with the illegal immigrants in the country).