One Citizen One Vote

With the upcoming Republican convention in Tampa, I thought it a good time to suggest one of my pet slogans – One Citizen One Vote. Maybe someone will pick up on it. From my previous blog on the Dead Vote I commented on the sloppiness in our current system with keeping voter rolls up to date. That issue extends beyond dead voters. We are wasting more and more time dealing with recounts and legal challenges. It undermines voter confidence in the system.

Why does it have to be so difficult to let each person cast their vote accurately and efficiently? I think part of the issue comes from the independence of states and counties to implement voting. If you look at all the different types of voting systems used – you find differences down to the county level. If you look at the legal rulings, decisions are made at federal, state and county level. So with all these independent entities collecting votes using different systems and different rules – is it any wonder that the results are sloppy?

This doesn’t even touch the issue of voter fraud. Frankly, I’m stunned that people feel someone doesn’t need to show a legal form of identification to vote in this country. Legal ID is necessary to book a hotel room, fly on an airplane, register a car, and cash checks at the bank. In today’s highly technological society, we are all identified before we can do anything. Unless you want to live in the woods, grow your own food and never talk to another person, you’ll need legal identification. End of debate.

My concern is that this is an uncoordinated set of laws and systems that are only really seen at election time. Everyone complains, they struggle to get through the process, and then say “Whew!” done with that … and wait to complain again during the next election. Perhaps this is one of the areas where we can stimulate some job growth. Cleaning up our election system.

Impact of the 2008 Market Crash

U.S. household wealth fell by a record $5.1 trillion from October to December of 2008, almost twice the decrease in the previous quarter, as home values and stock prices plunged, Federal Reserve figures showed.

Net worth for households and non-profit groups decreased to $51.5 trillion, the lowest level in four years, from $56.6 trillion in the third quarter, according to the Fed’s quarterly Flow of Funds report yesterday. Wealth dropped $11.2 trillion in 2008 from the year before, the biggest annual decline since the government began keeping quarterly records in 1952.

What was the impact of the Stock Market crash of 2008?

This was the time when the baby boomers should have finally been moving out of the the job market and freeing up positions for younger workers.   With the market crash, the huge glut of boomers that dominated the job market for decades couldn’t leave.

So we have twenty-somethings with Master’s degrees working as baristas at Starbucks.   Many of the jobs available are part time because employers can’t afford to pay the medical benefits for full time workers – if they hire at all. Many are self-employed or contractors without much in the way of benefits.

The new media spin is that the 50 year experiment with the nuclear family has failed.   And we should all happily accept households that support 3 generations.   Boomers support their parents and their adult children because – with that many people – hopefully someone is drawing a paycheck.

The major question I have with all of this is what will our children inherit?

The Dead Vote – 1.8 Million still listed as voters in the US

A February 2012 Press Release from the PEW Center on the States  released statistics that showed one in eight voter registrations in the US are invalid.  Almost 2 million of those voters were dead.

• At least 51 million eligible citizens remain unregistered—more than 24 percent of the eligible population.
• More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.
• Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.
• About 12 million records have incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved, or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them.

My current state of Florida recently found 53,000 dead people still on the polls as registered voters.  To their credit, they’re trying to clean the records up.

My former state of Maryland has always had rumors flying about the dead vote.  The issue has been a major concern in the larger Maryland counties of Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George’s as well as Baltimore City.  In one well publicized case, Ellen Saurbrey, the Repubican candidate in the 1994 Maryland gubernatorial elections, claimed the dead vote influenced the results in favor of her opponent.

Neither party wants to admit that inaccurate records can help them win elections.  I wonder if this is part of the reason that the problem has been allowed to go unresolved for so long…

In today’s world of electronic tracking – where your credit card company knows within hours whether you’re in a different part of the country – we should be able to track people and clean up the voting records.  All of this inaccuracy is embarrassing and undermines our country’s credibility.  We make a big deal about having democratic elections in other countries and yet the US, with all our technology and skill, can’t make sure that a living, breathing person is voting at the polls.

Amazing…