The real secret ballot question

The generous and benevolent people who run the country’s companies [aka management] went to a lot of effort to see that we learned of the need for employees to have secret ballots in union organizing endeavors. There were labor and DFL types who did not agree that such a secret ballot was in peril.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the attempts of Marty Seifert and others [mainly Republicans] to demand photo identification for voting, noting the likely inherent pro-GOP such a disenfranchisement might bring about.

However I noted then that I would be posting about a possible source of abuse which practices now encouraged by DFLers and Democrats have come to embrace. That practice is absentee voting.

Only a ballot which has never been out of the presence of two or more judges of different parties can be really considered to have an assurance of privacy. When you get to a voting station on election day [or at an early voting location] two or more judges of different party give you your ballot which has been examined and initialed by two or more judges of different party and you take it to a booth and fill it out. You place the completed ballot into a secrecy folder and insert it into the counter yourself. If the machine is not working there are procedures established to place it into a sealed compartment where judges, again from different parties, will process it and others similarly placed there when the gizmo is working again.

After the machine prints its totals in the evening, the ballots are removed, sealed, and sent to an election office always in the presence of two or more judges of different parties.

There may be an occasional screw up but these are few and can happen with absentee ballots too.

What makes most absentee ballots [there are exceptions such as when judges take ballots to hospitals or nursing homes] so vulnerable to attacks on its privacy is clearly that any ballot spends a good amount of time out of the custody of the election judges and officials.

Back to the comment on union elections: Remember the campaign spot which showed somebody who was designed to bring to mind a gangster-type union official welcoming a poor voter in to vote? Just imagine how that could work out when it is just you the voter, your boss and a piece of paper. And if a boss is not intimidating, what about a spouse? or a mother-in-law? or your clergyperson? or whoever strikes terror in you?

Before this year’s election there was concern about the “Bradley factor,” the idea that people might profess tolerance but not carry it out in the ballot box. Can we speculate what might happen if the guys at the lodge decided to have a “ballot party”?

Maybe we should eliminate absentee voting or at least limit it to the most extreme circumstances [e.g., military, public officials whose jobs put them elsewhere]. If people think this unfair, maybe we could make early voting more common.

No picture, no vote?

The closeness of the Coleman-Franken election has prompted Marty Seifert to come out with another attempt to require producing photo identification as a qualification to vote. A Minnpost article by Marisa Helms [which also addresses other election matters] notes that Seifert and the House GOP consider the matter high-priority and says that his caucus will “push the envelope” for this “simple reform.”

Of course, the fact that this requirement would be so simple and would be hardest on people who are less affluent and who move with the most frequency would certainly not be in the mind of somebody as fair-minded as Mr. Seifert. I am certain that he would consider this pure coincidence.

He also notes that one has to show an ID to get on an airplane or buy a beer. While I am not sure that I agree with that even that amount of personal invasion, it should be noted that traveling and drinking and participating in our civic, governmental processes are different things and rally cannot be compared. We have no law now which requires the possession of identification and we should all be concerned that as we demand photo identification for ever more things that we are approaching the time when we will find ourselves having to carry internal passports, something the libertarian faction of any party must shudder about.

It should be noted that until about a quarter century ago that a voter’s registration card was present at each precinct and the judges had the opportunity to check the voter’s signature with the signature on the card. I do not know why that safeguard was ceased and I know that if used that it would likely have different results than photo ID, but it seems that it could address some of Seifert’s concerns and not require the presentation of the ID card.

But we know that everybody’s concerns about fairness in election depends on perspective.

There will be another post soon on one of the possible sources for abuse that DFL people seem to like.

Earlier posts on Marty Seifert can be seen by clicking the label "Marty Seifert." Two posts of interest are

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/well-now-we-know-how-much-time.html [3/3/08]

and

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/rosario-seifert-is-sir-punisher.html [3/10/08]

Can we hold back on the posturing and just get them counted?

Pat Kessler of WCCO television has noted that Norm Coleman gained more over Walter Mondale when the final numbers came in six years ago than Al Franken has gained on Norm this year, but nobody really noticed or cared. But this kind of difference is close enough that it makes Norm uneasy and causes him and his attorneys to carp daily and keeps Franken’s hopes alive for a while. I do not doubt that if the numbers were working the other way around that Franken would posture similarly.

We may find votes which did not register because people did not mark ballots correctly. Our election laws do not require that ballots be marked for the convenience of optical scanner, their inventors, or users. They require that the best effort be made to determine the voter’s intention.

Properly counting these votes may produce some interesting results in a race this close, but the law neither requires that the voter be smart enough to follow instructions nor that they be conformist enough to fill out the ovals. [Not everybody did well at coloring within the lines when a child.]

And it may be that there may be enough of these ballots to make a difference. Democracy is not always pretty.

November 11

1ovember 11 brings to mind that life is dangerous. If we don’t create havoc to ourselves, nature may to it to us.

Last year on this date, I posted on both Veterans’ Day and the Armistice Day blizzard. Nothing much has changed.

The links are

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/veterans-day-observations.html

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/armistice-day-blizzard.html

Be smarter than the man [woman] you vote for?

I won’t go into how much life follows fiction, but I am remembering that on an old Red Skelton sketch from 1960 Red’s Clem Kadiddlehopper character who was portrayed as a dumb bumpkin got discovered and became an overnight political sensation as the country got swept up in the slogan, “Be smarter than the man you vote for.”

I am catching up on some articles which I was not seeing for a while and have noticed one from C. Ford Runge in MinnPost on a while back in which he pans what he perceives as Governor Palin’s anti-elitism.

He states that the Alaska governor has established a new standard in American politics: "dumb as me"

Intellectuals have been bewailing anti-intellectualism in politics for as long as it has been around. They sometimes are correct. And it seems that you cannot ever go wrong attacking the elite, although we do not always agree on who the elite actually are.

Intellectuals often feel superior by what they know and the dumb as me folks refuse to become intimidated by them [an attitude which can be confused as a reaction to an intimidation].

But both sides and the rest of us need to remember that we need to have open minds when we look at public affairs regardless of which side we are on.

Perhaps Runge’s article might be a place to start thinking of some of this. And, then again, it may just be a piece of gobbledegook.

Do we always know who we are voting for?

We often don’t hear about who runs for or gets elected to the position of supervisor for Ramsey County Soil and Water Conservation District. Nobody knows what they do or who is running or why we should be voting for them.

Four years ago, a very qualified Marj Ebensteiner was unseated, likely because so many new voters brought in by DFL registration efforts connected her somehow to the state GOP’s leader whose name was Eibensteiner and/or were swayed by the Scandinavian name of the victor. The fact that Ms. Ebensteiner had very clear and historic DFL identification evaded them.

This year the recently-deposed Maplewood City Manager Greg Copeland sought the position. I voted for him because I thought he could make the District visible and maybe even interesting. But he lost. It wasn’t even especially close and I have not seen a precinct-by-precinct breakdown, but it would be interesting to know how much he carried/lost Maplewood by.

And this year’s winner was named “Humphrey.”

Interesting?

Should prosecutors and sheriffs choose judges?

There may be several small posts in the next few days dealing with post-election and post-campaign matters. There is not shortage of places to read pontifications on some of the big things, so I will try to get light on some of the things few others seem to notice.

From a MinnPost article by Joe Kimball on the election of Gail Chang Bohr to a Ramsey County judgeship we are reminded that she had the endorsements of many big names. Names like Mondale and McCollum are one thing, but doesn’t anybody get just a little queasy at seeing the names of the county attorney and the sheriff on there. We are entering a new era of political involvement on judicial elections and we don’t always know how we will always navigate the new waters, but involving officials so close to the operation of the court system in this process can create a few questions.

Are we too anti-intellectual in our politics?

I am catching up on articles from places which I was not seeing for a while and have noticed one from C. Ford Runge in MinnPost on Thursday last in which he pans what he perceives as Governor Palin’s anti-elitism.

He states that the Alaska governor has established a new standard in American politics: "dumb as me"

Intellectuals have been bewailing anti-intellectualism in politics for as long as they have been around. They sometimes are correct. After all, one cannot ever go wrong attacking the elite, whoever the elite actually are.

Intellectuals often feel superior by what they know and the dumb as me folks refuse to become intimidated by them [an attitude which can be confused as a reaction to an intimidation].

But both sides and the rest of us need to remember that we need to have open minds when we look at public affairs regardless of which side we are on.

Perhaps Runge’s article might be a place to start thinking of some of this. And, then again, it may just be a piece of gobbledegook.

I am already tired of this senate election

I am a bit surprised that Dean Barkley has not moved up in the polls considering all the invective that Franken and Norm and all of their surrogates have been using. I do know that they have convinced me to send the former Senator back to D.C.

And I am already tired of this election.

There have just been too many strange things in this campaign, whether one refers to the untimely filing of a suit against our senior senator which we are supposed to believe that the comedian from Gotham had nothing to do with or where Norm sleeps [I rented a basement bedroom when I was in college and it did not make me a member of the household and at least he did not pull a Durenberger and bill the government to stay in his own residence] the idea that corporate owners are more concerned with workers’ rights than their unions are [and the radio commercial refers to “America under Al Franken” like he was running for President].

I have always considered CCM as more idea-based than candidate-based and have not used this place to endorse candidates, although I suspect that sometimes people can make their inferences, such as in last year’s Helgen-Haas race.

But I guess I’ll vote to return Dean Barkley to Washington.

Also notable: Dean Barkley and Al Franken are both too old to become new senators because by the time that they have enough seniority to do much they will be too old. However, Barkley, because of his previous service, would go in at the top of the class.

Any boy can grow up and become . . .

I remember when I was a child being told that any boy born in this country could grow up and become President. [Of course, this was bull. There isn’t enough time for everybody to become president even if the term is just for one day. And, funny, I don’t remember the same being said about any girl.] But figuring out who was born in this country can put some people in fits.

Late in the 1964 election cycle, Melvin Belli, a famed torts lawyer of the time, filed a lawsuit alleging that Barry Goldwater was not eligible to be President because he was born in the Arizona territory, not in one of the United States.

His case was never heard in court. Courts do not usually rule unless there is a case in hand and with the short timeline and Goldwater’s rejection by the people of 44 states, there was never a case to put in front of any judge[s].

.

The press at the time laughed at the idea, because people born in US territories are citizens at birth. Congress has made it so. But I remember reading some law professor saying shortly afterward that the suit would have had at least some theoretical merit, apparently reading the language to require that a president be born in one of the United States. I looked at my copy of the Constitution and was not sure that I agreed, but figured that it was one of those things that law professors have fun with. Several years later I remember seeing a similar article. A lot of Latin was thrown about.

Now we might have a similar case coming up since John McCain, although a citizen from birth, was born in Panama. A foreign country is not the same as a territory, so the case would be different, but it seems a lot the same to a non lawyer like me.

Pat Kessler of WCCO poo-poohed the idea that Senator McCain is ineligible the other day and most other people have too. I am pretty sure that they are right in the theory.

But even if they are not right, I think it mainly a matter of fact that if the McCain-Palen ticket carries enough states to have 270 or more electoral votes that they will be declared elected.

Let’s think of things practically. When the electoral votes are counted on January 6 and Dick Cheney [possibly after an objection is raised by somebody in Congress] declares that John McCain has been elected President, somebody [maybe not even a nutcase] will likely be running to a federal court house.

But can anybody imagine that the federal court system would step into this separation-of-powers argument to say that the American people’s choice cannot take office after a joint session of Congress has declared him elected, for a legal reason that even most attorneys cannot understand.

Even if the Supreme Court did not have a 7 to 2 Republican majority this would not happen. But it will give a few lawyers and professors something to think and talk about for a while.

Lawyers and professors are free to enlighten us here, but the matter seems clear to me.

The Constitution refers to our republic as the “United States of America.” Barack Obama was born in neither North America nor South America, but on a Pacific island. Will anybody run with this?

If you don't trust the polls, maybe you want to think of things this way

We are entering the time of the election cycle when we start hearing about how irrelevant things affect our elections. This morning I heard that when the Redskins win on the last day before the election that one party wins and when they lose the other does. It supposedly worked out that way for the last dozen or so quadrennial cycles.

Others have based similar theories on things like hem lengths of skirts, whether the Dow Jones goes up or down the day/week/month before the election, or whether the American League or National League team wins the World Series. If you take a small enough sample you can make any of these work for a spell, and indeed their could be a relationship between stock prices and politics.

But I have observed one thing which nobody seems to have noticed. I don’t know that there is any cause-effect thing here, but I do admit that we are not as geographically united a country as we sometimes seem to think we are.

But the truth I have noticed is this: SINCE 1944 EVERY WINNING NATIONAL TICKET HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE CANDIDATE WHO WAS RESIDENT OF OR NATIVE TO A SOUTHERN OR BORDER STATE, border state being defined as one where slavery was still legal up until the Civil War.

To be specific

1944. Harry Truman [Missouri]

1948. Truman and Alben Barkley [Kentucky]

1952 and 1956. Dwight Eisenhower [born in Texas]

1960 and 1964. Lyndon Johnson [Texas]

1968 and 1972. Spiro Agnew [Maryland]

1976. Jimmy Carter [Georgia]

1980. 1984, and 1988. George H. W. Bush [Texas]

1992 and 1996. Bill Clinton [Arkansas] and Al Gore [Tennessee]

2000 and 2004. George W. Bush [Texas]

So who is it this year?

Palin and McCain don’t qualify, so I guess it will have to be Obama and Biden [Delaware].

Maybe we will know if this holds out some time next week.

ADDENDUM [11/5/08]: Well, it was Obama and Biden, so the string continues for one more cycle.