Let’s be very clear. Voting illegally is a felony and can be punished by jail time. Shout from the rooftops that voting illegally can lead to jail time.
There will always be those who poopoo voting and don’t bother to vote because their one vote “won’t count” because it won't make a difference. But every vote is counted and actually voting means that you are participating in the democratic process and thereby making it stronger. The USA has set up an excellent voting system. Indeed USA citizens should be proud. I love being able to mail in my ballot or hand it in at a drop box. And of course I can go and stand in line if that makes me feel good.
One of the best ways to ensure that voter fraud does not occur is to keep reinforcing the message that voting fraudulently is a felony and can lead to prison time.
Of course there are those who want to cast suspicion on the existing voting system. Some of the finger pointing seems to rule out anyone having an ounce of common sense when confronted with the felony risk of illegal voting.
I was in a line (not to vote) and an individual said to his friend, in a loud voice wanting everyone in line to hear, that he had just received a ballot addressed to the previous resident who had died. In his view what made this worse was that this deceased resident had also received a ballot for the previous election some years earlier. Oh how easily a felony could have been committed!!! I asked if he had returned that earlier ballot . He had not. I pointed out in an equally loud voice that if he had bothered to “return to sender” the earlier ballot then the second ballot would not have been sent some years later. The system works. It is always better to do something than to complain.
A mail in ballot can land in the wrong hands and be used by an idiot. A fraudulent ballot may be because someone registered and voted at more than one location — to do this probably shows you have serious memory problems or are just extremely dishonest and a felon. But the number of instances of voter fraud in any year by state is but a mere handful. And if you want to see the scale of criminal convictions you can search through the names and what they actually did — electionfraud.heritage.org/…There are those who would cause huge inconvenience to legitimate voters for an argument based on baloney. www.npr.org/...
But there is a more sinister aspect. Simple racism. You can only vote in a USA election if you are an American citizen. So that implies that voter fraud must be carried out mainly by non-citizens! How convenient. Remember how bad immigrants can be. Our future leaders can put out stories that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield Ohio. www.rollingstone.com/… An implication is that non-citizen immigrants could also go and vote (but shh don’t mention that voter fraud is a felony).
The Trump brand of hatred is exemplified by this quote “We cannot let the Democrats get away with NO VOTER I.D. any longer. These are horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS,” Trump wrote. Perhaps this is a simple example of a felon projecting felonious behavior onto others. www.theguardian.com/...
The anti-immigrant sentiment can be used to stir mistrust of a functioning election system by pretending that non citizens are voting. Changes can be made to the advantage of one political group rather than another. As an example the person who works two jobs may find it impossible/impractical to vote in person and if you feel this person would vote against a party on the side of billionaires, then if they would vote against your party, you would insist on in person voting.
Perhaps the Republicans will try to twist the system www.dailykos.com/...
See how quickly disinformation can spread. www.nbcnews.com/… The phony baloney story was that half a million migrants were illegally registering to vote spread from a single post to being adopted by social media having 135 million views in less than a month. If you are a racist then the Republican Party is the one to vote for. (I'm not saying that if you vote Republican that means you are racist). Oh my, perhaps I'm wrong www.dailykos.com/… I’ll let you decide.
The timeline of having the right to vote is complicated. Once upon a time only landowners could vote in the USA. That spread to most male citizens over time. Women could vote by 1920. And African Americans in 1965 were given voting rights.
