What republican came up with this Mickey Mouse voting crap?

[Catherine Vincent]

I saw a pic of some kid with the sign with something like "If Mickey Mouse can vote, why can't I?" These people know damn well if a person shows up saying they are Mickey Mouse and they want to vote, they would get locked up. Idiots!

[fascisthunter]

1. soon it will be over

[SoCalDem]

4. Nope.. until it's FIXED, we just go through it in 2 years

There IS a simple solution though....

Time to think outside the box... the ballot box, that is.


Tue Oct 28th 2008, 01:04 PM


Either US citizens have the right to vote, or they don't.

Other than the FEW exceptions (being a felon, for example), ANYONE who is a citizen and can prove it, should ALWAYS be able to vote for senator and president.

Those two political offices have NO bearing on which city or district you live in.

If a person can prove (with a piece of addressed mail), that they live in a particular congressional district, they too, should be able to vote for congressperson too.

The whole issue of "registration" is a red herring, designed to keep people FROM voting.

We don't FORCE people to vote in this country, but certainly every citizen should be able to IF they choose to.

Voting for the leaders of our country...the ones who make the laws and enforce them... should be EASY...and it should be available to ALL citizens.

Think about this.

When you have a gift card, you can go online to see what the remaining balance is, you can look for and find detailed maps where you can use those cards, and an easy "slide the card" motion, allows you to USE the card. The people issuing the card, know what you buy with the card, where you live, etc. They may know more about you than YOU do.

Plastic cards are CHEAP, and easy to produce. The US mail is cheap and easy to use. Government has every one of us in a database of one sort or another. They KNOW where we all are, who we all are, and which of us are citizens.

The republican zealots are using the media to portray an image of hordes of undocumented people swarming over the borders every election season..eager to hoodwink their way into polling places, so they can distort our elections..

NOTHING could be further from the truth.. Undocumented people are "ghosts". They try anything and everything to AVOID being identified. The LAST thing most of them want to do is to risk being "outed" , by showing up to vote, on a day when there is ultimate scrutiny.

I know that the framers left the actual election process to the individual states, but this was when there were THIRTEEN low-population states, and only male land-owners could even vote...so things have definitely changed.

The fact that national elections draw the most attention is the reason why ballots and elections have become so complicated. Many states have used initiatives and propositions to replace their legislative agendas, and that's why so many states have such idiotic laws in place.

It's time to take a serious look at how we vote, and how we can make it EASY, AVAILABLE, and FAIR.

Political parties were not even around when the framers set this whole "voting thing" in place, so parties should not even be a PART of elections, other than to foster interest in their candidates. Parties exist now... there's no going back from that fact, but they have grabbed a position of preeminence they should never have had. The parties should offer members to be available as poll-watchers & vote counters (equal numbers from each party), but the actual running of the elections should NOT be in their hands.. Each party has too much of an interest in the outcome, to be free from suspicion.

Instead of "black-boxes" and machinery, we need for each citizen to be issued a card with 2 votes "loaded" on it.. One for primary & one for general election.. Every public library could have a "reader" avaliable so that people could check the status of their card (to make sure they have the requisite 2-votes) .

Anyone without a photo ID should be able to get one FREE of charge at any DMV..(surely a country that can "afford" $800B for bailouts to banks could afford that ID).

Printers could certainly use the business every few years when they got contracts to print up ballots for NATIONALLY held offices elections.. Medium weight cardstock 5x7 ballots with no more than THREE races on it, would do the trick. In some elections, there would only be ONE ...for congress.

People do not get exorcised over county commissioner offices or school board members, but they DO care about congress, senate & president.

If states want to piggy-back their local/gubernatorial elections onto the same dates, their ballots could be any way they want, and voted on & counted by any machinery they chose to buy, BUT for the national offices that really count to us ALL, we need recountability, ease of use, and SIMPLICITY.

Voting day should be:

1) slide that card... (one "vote" gets deducted)
2) show your ID
3) receive your "national office " ballot card
4) mark it with a sharpie
5) vote your "local" ballot however your area does it
6) drop your card-ballot into the locked ballot box
7) turn in the "other" one

There's a commercial running right now that touts the "ease of return" cards, for when you come back into the US..It's a card version of a passport..If money can be spent advertising and offering these for travelers, they could also be offered to VOTERS...ALL CITIZENS.. We CAN "afford" it.

If people WANT to identify with a party, that should be their choice, but parties should NOT have to be the ones who spend resources and time making sure that "their people" are registered, or that "other people" cannot register.

IF YOU ARE A CITIZEN , IT'S YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE.

You should not have to jump through flaming hoops and grovel on election day.

There are plenty of unemployed people who can count, and who would love the opportunity to earn a little money every so often, by working elections.

By making voting mysterious, time consuming and scary, millions of people do not vote.

If elections were simplified, we would soon start to see legislatures doing the work instead of rich people pouring in shit-loads of money to push their private agendas. MANY people only want to vote for president, senator and congress.. they don't WANT to vote for the other stuff on those pages-long ballots....and most people probably don't even bother to read up on them anyway.

Get people the IDs that identify them.
Get people the VOTE cards that entitle them to vote in the primary & national election
Make standardized CARD-ballots for nationally held offices
Hire local people to oversee elections

"Registrars" of voters would only be needed to see that everyone had their "pre-loaded 2-votes" cards.. They would not know who was a republican and who was a democrat, since that would be between the party & the voter only.

Also, every polling place should be equipped with CCTV, and the whole day filmed and the film stored with the national office ballots. Once verified, tallied & reported, the ballot cards could be scanned onto CDs for storage.

Automatic full recounts should be triggered and done in ALL close elections. After a few cycles, people would once again have faith that their votes counted..

I also think that some "interesting" outcomes would occur.. There have been many "questionable" victories in recent years..


example:

[amdezurik]

2. like these folks?

http://www.411.com/search/FindPerson?extra_listing=mixed&form_mode=opt_b&post_back=1&firstname_begins_with=1&firstname=mickey&name=mouse&street=&city_zip=&state_id=&localtime=survey


those darned tubes keep bringing silly facts onto it...

[amdezurik]

3. several real people named Della Ware

too