Prop 39 Deserves your YES Vote
Santa Barbara Current publisher James Fenkner has been analyzing the California referendum propositions on the ballot this year. Unlike most of these propositions, SBCurrent strongly recommends you vote YES on Proposition 39, the Voter ID law.
Will Proposition 39 cure all that ails us in California with respect to potential voter fraud and cheating? The answer is no but the Proposition is an excellent first step to restoring trust in our elections and providing a check on the spate of laws passed by our state legislature in recent years to make it ridiculously easy to vote in California.
Very few people know that you can vote in California without ever presenting an authorized and legitimate government-issued ID to officials in charge of our elections.
Simply put, Proposition 39 requires voters to show a govt-issued ID to vote in person or provide the last four digits of government ID number to vote by mail. It also directs the state to issue free ID cards to anyone who needs one and it requires election officials to maintain accurate voter rolls, including verifying citizenship.
You would think that it is simply commonsense to put in place procedures to help identify voters and to ensure they are legally residing in California and/or are U.S. citizens. But if you listen to the powers that be, they say the law will suppress the vote by making it harder to vote. They want virtually everyone to vote with very few safeguards.
They continually say that voter ID laws discriminate against minorities and poor people. If that is the case, we wonder why they support laws requiring an ID to get on an airplane, buy alcohol, open a bank account, rent or buy a house, get married, buy a cell phone, apply for welfare, Social Security or Medicare, and a ton of other stuff. But for some reason it is the end of our democracy to require it for voting.
Voting illegally is not only easy to do in California, but it also carries no negative consequences, as it is virtually impossible to verify the voter’s status after the ballot is counted.
Misleading Proposition Wording
To highlight this absurd argument, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who oversees writing the language for the referendums on the ballot, led the analysis with this sentence, “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
Just how disingenuous is that?
No one is suggesting or proposing that citizens can’t or shouldn’t vote. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The law is designed to ensure that non-citizens can’t vote.
The other argument opponents like to make about Prop 39 is that there is no or very little cheating with respect to voting in California and that, subsequently, this law is unnecessary. How convenient to make this argument when there is no practical way for anyone to verify that people registered to vote are indeed citizens of the U.S. Remember, as of today, you do not need a govt-issued ID or any ID that verifies citizenship to register to vote in California.
We would like to know how it would be possible to verify citizenship of voters if they are not required to prove it. All they need to do currently is attest and sign a voter registration affidavit that they are a U.S citizen. In California, the law does not require documentary proof of citizenship.
Although SBCurrent is unhesitatingly endorsing Proposition 39, we also don’t feel it goes far enough to restore integrity to our elections. In California, voting can extend weeks and even months after the election is over. Many close races can’t be called until considerable time has elapsed after election day.
This is preposterous.
“Harvesting” the No-Proof-Required Mail-In Ballots
The main problem with voting in California is the presence of universal mail-in balloting, where everyone receives a ballot in the mail whether they requested it or not. Apparently, the state of California believes dead people should be able to vote since many of the deceased are receiving ballots.
I guess you could call this the “cemetery vote.”
Further, the ballot can be mailed and supposedly postmarked on election day, thus ensuring the ballot won’t be counted until many days after the election is over. It can take considerable time to properly record the ballot since the signature has to be verified, an almost impossible task since most signatures are illegible nowadays.
In addition to the lax rules governing mail-in voting, California inexplicably allows ballot harvesting, a form of voting that is prohibited in most other states or has stringent limits on how it can work, and in fact is banned in most countries.
Not California, where anyone, not just a family member or person in the same household, can collect the ballot and submit it on behalf of the voter. In fact, most people are unaware that the people who collect the ballots on behalf of the voters can be paid by political parties or public labor unions in the state.
If you don’t think that is an invitation for shenanigans or chicanery, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Vote YES on Proposition 39
Although we wish Proposition 39 were far more comprehensive, we see it as a necessary first step in correcting a maliciously conceived voting process.
We enthusiastically recommend a YES vote on Proposition 39.
So many problems with our voting system. Here’s just one: I lived in a large apartment house in LA. There was one central rack of mailboxes in a hallway off the lobby. The postman would throw any undeliverable mail in a large tray underneath. It was always full of mail-in ballots at election time. Any dishonest person could pick up an armload and mail them in. Mail in voting is fraught with fraud opportunities.
You laid it out very well Lou. Yes the bill needs to be more comprehensive and more work is definitely needed to tighten things up and to make sure that votes are counted ON election day. Not three and four weeks later (as they’re needed by the Democrats). It’s gonna take a lot more than prop 39 to restore my faith in anything that has to do with California elections.