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Vote or Else

A modest proposal for curing election fraud.

Mar 21, 2005, Vol. 10, No. 25 • By ALLISON R. HAYWARD
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IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, it may be that a governor will serve for the next four years who was not properly elected. Voter registration rolls and election practices are sloppy enough--not just in Washington, mind you, but in many places--that in very close elections it may be impossible to know for sure which candidate has received more properly cast votes. (In three separate counts in Washington, the margins were 261, 42, and 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast.) It is past time we address this problem, and here's a thought: Maybe the United States should require eligible citizens to register to vote, and then to vote.

For most people, this idea is radical and distasteful. Why should we want presumably uninformed, apathetic people voting? Wouldn't they be influenced by caprice, last-minute mud, or improper entreaties? Isn't it a person's right not to vote if he doesn't want to? Only nasty one-party regimes make voting mandatory, right? And Venezuela, for one, requires its citizens to register and vote, showing that mandatory voting and massive fraud can coexist.

The usual defenses for mandatory voting seem tepid in contrast. People would be more "engaged" in government. The underclass would be better represented. "We, the people"--not some motivated subset--would elect representatives. It is not obvious that any of these arguments is true or, if true, is sufficient reason to require voting.

Moreover, it would seem American elections face more urgent challenges, voting fraud and voter intimidation being the most notorious. Yet it is as a palliative to these ills that mandatory voting would have its greatest appeal. That is because a mandatory system would require government to take voter registration--including the issue of fraud--seriously.

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